Congratulations to the Winners of GW's 2025 Student Open Source Awards Program!
We are thrilled to announce the winners of the 2025 Student Open Source Awards Program here at The George Washington University! We are so grateful that we are able to celebrate and encourage GW’s strong open source community. Our talented students have showcased exceptional skills and effort in developing open-source software projects that contribute to our broader community. These recipients mark our second successful year of our annual Student Open Source Awards Program.
Open Source Project Awards
Undergraduate Track
1st Prize:
- Rohan Rajesh, Dane Van Horn and Andrew Sotell for Medical Wallet - An innovative blockchain-powered platform designed to empower patients, particularly in underserved communities, by giving them secure control over their medical records.
2nd Prize:
- Nidhi Singh Rathore, Marc Choi, Ariana Mayeri and Tamara Rushby for Asterism Visual Research Tool - A wandering space that encourages users to explore beyond their personal algorithms and expand their visual research horizons. Rather than searching multiple databases, the platform offers users open-source content from text- and image-based archives to broaden visual literacy.
3rd Prize:
- Deeksha Ravi for GW Opportunity Finder - An open-source web app that helps students discover GW awards, fellowships, competitions, and programs. Users can search and filter by type, eligibility, and deadlines, making campus opportunities accessible and easy to explore.
Graduate Track
1st Prize:
- Philip Appiah for ccanis_lupus2.0 - A user-friendly, web-based tool designed for researchers and bioinformaticians to explore, analyze, and visualize microbiome datasets. Built with R, Shiny, and phyloseq, this app allows users to upload their own data (ASV tables, taxonomy, metadata, and phylogenetic trees).
2nd Prize:
- Satya Phanindra Kumar Kalaga and Deepika Reddyga for Danger Detection with ML - A real-time security system using ML to detect firearms and fire hazards through video feeds. It sends instant email alerts with captured images when threats are detected, offering automated 24/7 monitoring for schools, offices, and public spaces.
3rd Prize:
- Sameer Batra for SkillPhi-R - An AI-powered skill extraction tool from job postings using Phi-2 with innovative Chain-of-Thought reasoning and knowledge distillation from DeepSeek R1. Delivers explainable, accurate results for workforce analytics. Used in LAiSER (Leveraging AI for Skills Extraction and Research)
Individual Contributor Awards
We also recognize the outstanding contributions of individual students who have made meaningful impacts on public open-source projects:
- Caleb Okpaheifufue for their work on GW OSCON Art Project - “This is a contribution to the GW OSCON Art Project. I contributed an abstract art piece.”
- Rachit Rahul Das for their work on DocsGPT - “I contributed to the swagger file for DocsGPT OpenAI3.”
- Satya Phanindra Kumar Kalaga for their work on LAiSER - “I contributed to the extract module for LaiSER software.”
- Jaehoon Rhie for their work on CIB mangotree project - “As part of the CIB mangotree project from Civic Tech DC, I added the search feature to copypasta dashboard (n-gram analysis). The reason for this contribution was based on improving user experience as the current version of the dashboard didn't allow users to search by the keywords, which me and the project manager thought would be a crucial part when researchers want to go in-depth in exploring CIBs from the dataset. With the help of Cursor and following the instructions of the READ.ME file, I included two functions (get_search_filtered_data() and get_search_filtered_stats()) and considered what the project already has on their script so it moves interactively without any conflict. I've also communicated with the team and took feedback on how the team prefers having the search feature positioned on the dashboard webpage.”
- Sameer Batra for their work on LaiSER - “I integrated knowledge distillation and Chain-of-Thought reasoning into LAiSER's skill extraction pipeline. I distilled knowledge from DeepSeek R1 (671B parameters) into Phi-2 (2.7B parameters) to enable deployment on free platforms while maintaining accuracy. This approach provides explainable reasoning for extracted skills, reducing the black-box nature of the model while keeping computational requirements minimal for open-source accessibility.”
Thank you to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for making these awards possible and please check out the GW OSPO Student Award Program for details on how to apply and win in 2026.
Celebrating Excellence in Open Source
The GW Open Source Program Office (OSPO) is proud to support and encourage our students in their open-source endeavors. The goal of this award program is to foster a collaborative environment where students can develop software skills, improve research reproducibility, and prepare for successful careers in research and industry.
We extend our heartfelt congratulations to all the winners and participants. Your dedication and hard work are truly inspiring. We look forward to seeing the continued impact of your contributions in the open-source community.
Stay tuned for more updates and stories from our winners at the upcoming Open Source Conference on March 23-24, 2026, at the GW Student Center.
- Reference
This article is based on last year's Student Open Source Awards story.