University of Moratuwa Climbs to the Top with GSoC 2008

For years University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka has been doing a kick-ass job in the process of converting talented youngsters in Sri Lanka into world class computer engineers and IT professionals. It is not a secret that out of all the IT education centers in the country University of Moratuwa is the best in the business. Graduates passed out from the University of Moratuwa can be found virtually in any software firm in Sri Lanka and every year a significant number of University of Moratuwa graduates end up joining some of the finest organizations and universities in the world.

Talking about kicking butt, this time around University of Moratuwa has managed to kick some really serious butt big time. Being able to secure the first place in the Google Summer of Code 2008 (GSoC 2008) top participants list is no ordinary thing. According to the latest statistics from Google it is from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka that the largest number of GSoC 2008 applications has been received. The blistering number of applications is 93! The second place of this list goes to University of Campinas, Brazil. 29 applications have been received from University of Campinas. So clearly University of Moratuwa is way ahead from the rest of the world with this regard.

Also Google has declared that University of Moratuwa has forwarded the largest number of winning GSoC 2008 applications. There are 23 winning applications from University of Moratuwa this year from which 18 are from the department of Computer Science and Engineering. I personally feel very proud of this achievement and feel really happy about myself for being able to be one of those 18 winners.

Sri Lanka is among the top 10 GSoC 2008 participant countries this year. Sri Lanka is holding this position along with countries like USA, Canada and India who are at the frontier of the global IT industry. However out of all the IT education institutes in Sri Lanka only University of Moratuwa has earned a position in the top 10 GSoC 2008 participant institutes list. This is an clear indication of the level of excellence University of Moratuwa has reached over the past couple of decades in terms of quality of education. In addition to that this achievement by the University of Moratuwa is an indication of the fact that a new generation of computer engineers and IT professionals who appreciate and support open source software is being created at Sri Lanka.