The Linux Foundation has had a robust mentorship program for years that invests in new talent and diversity that helps the open source community – no matter what the focus or project – thrive as a whole. Since its formal launch in 2019, the LFX Mentorship has graduated more than 190 mentees and has hosted almost 100 mentorship programs.
This Spring, the ELISA Project is hosting two mentorships that will help developers gain real-world knowledge in a hands-on learning experience with Linux and open source. It also provides a more defined path for ELISA to connect with the next generation to inject more talent into their developer base.
The Spring Mentorship session, which kicked off in March, paired mentees with leaders from Codethink, the Linux Foundation and Mobileye. The ELISA Project is excited to welcome Irenge Jules Bashizi, Shefali Sharma and Wenhui Zhang as the newest mentees in the ELISA community. Please see below for more details about their mentorships and mentors. As they settle into their new roles, we hope to feature their mentorship journey in upcoming blog posts.
Mentorship: Analysis of eBPF (extended Berkley Packet Filter) Verifier
To make eBPF programs “safe”, the Linux kernel validates all eBPF code before loading. However, the current validator has many known limitations, leading to rejection of working programs.
Focus in this mentorship will be:
- In-depth analysis and review of the eBPF validator, and its use to validate eBPF programs.
- Code enhancements to the validator to improve usability.
- Identify use cases for kernel profiling in safety critical applications.
Mentor: Elana Copperman, Chair of the Linux Features for Safety-Critical Systems Working Group and System Safety Architect at Mobileye (part of Intel)
Elana provides support for designing safety features in Mobileye products, including system boot; drivers; and Linux infrastructure. Before working at Mobileye, she worked as a Security Architect for Cisco-Il (formerly NDS) and more recently as a security consultant for major European automotive concerns on behalf of various Israeli startups. Research interests focus on software engineering methodologies and security engineering.
In particular, focusing on expanding open source and Linux-based tools to support safety critical and life saving product development.
Mentee: Irenge Jules Bashizi
Jules is a Computer science student at University of Manchester. He is a certified Linux System administrator. Jules is interested in improving his skills in Kernel engineering by contributing to the Linux Kernel community by submitting patches. This internship offers him a unique opportunity tailored to improve and contribute. As a hobby, Jules enjoys jogging..
Mentee: Wenhui Zhang
Mentorship: Discovering Linux kernel subsystems used by OpenAPS
OpenAPS is an open source Artificial Pancreas System designed to automatically adjust an insulin pump’s insulin delivery to keep Blood Glucose in a safe range at all times. It is an open and transparent effort to make safe and effective basic Automatic Pancreas System technology widely available to anyone with compatible medical devices who is willing to build their own system.
What happens when an OpenAPS workload runs on Linux? What are the subsystems and modules that are in active use when OpenAPS is running? What are the interactions between OpenAPS and the kernel when a user checks how much insulin is left in the insulin pump?
The ELISA Medical Devices Working Group set out to answer these questions. Understanding the kernel footprint necessary to run a workload helps us focus on the subsystem and modules that make up the footprint for safety.
The mentee will:
- Use Linux kernel tracing and strace tool to discover Linux kernel subsystems used by OpenAPS.
- Find Linux system calls supported on various architectures.
- Write a blog/whitepaper on the findings which will aid ELISA Medical Devices WG to focus on the subsystem and modules that make up the footprint for safety.
Shefali Sharma has started working on the project to advance the work Shuah and Milna have shared in their recent blog here.
Mentor: Milan Lakhani, Co-Chair of the Medical Devices Working Group and Systems and Software Engineer at Codethink
In open source, Milan’s contributions to Linux kernel are aimed at achieving ELISA project goals. Other than that, he has previously worked in the Trustable and community – mainly STPA analysis on design and writing requirements and tests and also some patches to help with making a webapp and porting.
There are a lot of aspects and opportunities to really learn through experience and take responsibility to make an impact on a highly approved, tested and growing Closed Loop Open-Source insulin delivery system that is really helping to reduce issues of people with type 1 diabetes. There should also be some variety in the tasks and the approach that the mentee can do. Milan is excited to share his skills and knowledge with STPA (our method of safety analysis for the system), the OpenAPS system and codebase (OpenAPS is the medical device itself) and Linux kernel.
Mentor: Shuah Khan, ELISA Project TSC Chair and Linux Foundation Fellow
Shuah is an experienced Linux Kernel developer, maintainer, and contributor. She has extensive experience in open source development, actively working across Linux Kernel sub-systems.
She currently maintains the Kernel Selftest, USB over IP, and cpupower tools. She is an active contributor to the Linux media sub-system.
Shuah has a passion for mentoring and educating the next generation. She loves mentoring and training engineers new to open source and helping them become committers and reviewers.
Mentee: Shefali Sharma
Shefali is a third year Computer Science Engineering student from Meerut Institute of Engineering and Technology, Meerut, India. She likes to explore new technical domains. She is very excited to work on the OpenAPS project as it will give her an opportunity to use her technical skills for the welfare of others and to get involved in the Linux kernel community. Apart from this she is also interested in DevOps and Machine Learning.