Week 1 — Mentorship kickoff and first merged contribution

Hi — I’m Shubham Singh (@FirePheonix), contributing to PySAL through Google Summer of Code 2026 under the NumFOCUS umbrella.

Project: Implementation of geographically weighted matrix decomposition algorithms (starting with GWPCA) in the gwlearn sub-package.

During the first week of GSoC, I had my first video call with Serge, where we spent around 30 minutes getting to know each other and discussing the project ahead. He introduced himself, shared insights about his work and the students he has mentored, and we discussed my background, interests, and previous experiences. The conversation helped establish a strong foundation for collaboration and provided valuable context about the project and expectations for the summer.

First mentorship call with Serge

Alongside the introductory discussions, I began contributing to the codebase by working on pull requests related to my GSoC project, Geographically Weighted Principal Component Analysis (GWPCA), with a focus on adaptive bandwidth kernel functionality. During this period, I worked on and successfully merged a contribution into the PySAL ecosystem, helping me become familiar with the project’s architecture, development workflow, and review process. This initial contribution marked the beginning of my hands-on involvement with the codebase and laid the groundwork for future development throughout the GSoC program.

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