Rust is participating in Outreachy

Source: Rust Blog

Introduction

The Rust Project has been building a strong history of participating in open‑source mentorship programs, including Google Summer of Code for three years (including this year) and the previous OSPP. We’re happy to announce that this year we are also participating in Outreachy as part of the May 2026 cohort.

Outreachy provides internships in open source to people from any background who face under‑representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the technical industry where they live. Learn more about the program on their website.

What is Outreachy and how is it different than Google Summer of Code

Outreachy is similar to Google Summer of Code (GSoC) in some aspects, but different in others.

• Unlike GSoC, Outreachy interns first apply to the overall program and then apply to specific communities.
• While GSoC applicants often submit contributions before applying, Outreachy requires a dedicated contribution period.
• Applications are reviewed by communities, which select interns based on the application and the contributions made.

Outreachy runs two internship periods per year: May → August (the current cohort) and December → March.

A key difference is the source of stipends. GSoC stipends are covered by Google, whereas Outreachy stipends and overhead are funded directly by the participating communities.

Mentoring 4 interns for the May 2026 cohort

Because of limited funding and mentoring capacity, the Rust Project selected four interns for mentorship. Below are the projects and mentors.

Calling overloaded C++ functions from Rust

• Intern: Ajay Singh
• Mentors: teor, Taylor Cramer, Ethan Smith

The project aims to implement an experimental feature for calling overloaded C++ functions from Rust and to begin testing that feature in representative use cases.

Code coverage of the Rust compiler at scale

• Intern: Akintewe Oluwasola
• Mentor: Jack Huey

The goal is to develop workflows to run and analyze code coverage of the compiler across the entire test suite and on ecosystem crates detected by Crater. This will help detect insufficient testing and enable continuous analysis.

Fuzzing the a‑mir‑formality type system implementation

• Intern: Tunde‑Ajayi Olamiposi
• Mentors: Niko Matsakis, Rémy Rakic, tiif

The project will implement fuzzing for a‑mir‑formality, an in‑progress model for Rust’s type and trait system, with the aim of generating programs that expose underspecified semantics.

Improve the security of GitHub Actions of the Rust Project

• Intern: oghenerukevwe Sandra Idjighere
• Mentors: Marco Ieni, Ubiratan Soares

This project will develop tools and workflows to analyze Rust Project repositories, detect security‑related issues in GitHub Actions, and ensure best‑practice security configurations are maintained.

What’s next

Over the next three months, the interns will work closely with their mentors to advance their projects. When the internship period ends, we’ll publish a follow‑up blog post to share the results.

We thank everyone who submitted applications and contributed. Selecting interns was challenging, and we hope to participate in Outreachy again in the future. The Rust Project offers many other opportunities for involvement—feel free to stay engaged!