All organizations · GSoC 2026 · Science and medicine, Artificial Intelligence

gprMax

Simulating electromagnetic wave propagation

gprMax is open source software that simulates electromagnetic wave propagation. It uses Yee's algorithm to solve Maxwell’s equations in 3D using the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method. It is designed for simulating Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and is used to model electromagnetic wave propagation in fields such as engineering, geophysics, archaeology, and medicine. There are a wide range of applications from assessing infrastructure such as bridges and roads, locating buried utilities, mapping glaciers, finding anti-personnel landmines, to detecting tumours in the human body, and exploring the sub-surface of Mars and the Moon. gprMax is command-line-driven software written in Python with performance-critical parts written in Cython. It does not currently feature a graphical user interface (GUI) which allows it to be very flexible and scriptable software that can run in high-performance computing (HPC) environments, i.e. on supercomputers. gprMax can be run on either CPU or GPU. The CPU solver has been parallelised using OpenMP which enables it to run on multi-core CPUs. The GPU solver has been developed using the NVIDIA CUDA programming model. gprMax also features a …

  • python
  • cuda
  • openmp
  • mpi
  • opencl
  • science
  • engineering
  • geophysics
  • electromagnetics
  • ground penetrating radar

Project ideas

4 ideas on its 2026 ideas page; of the 4 that state a difficulty: 4 medium. Sizes: 4 large.

  1. Project 1. GPU Acceleration of Plane Wave Source Formulations in gprMax large medium
  2. Project 2. Reactive Simulation & Analytics: Integrating marimo with gprMax large medium
  3. Project 3. Building a Comprehensive Test Suite large medium
  4. Project 4. Implementing CI/CD Automation large medium

Read the ideas page. Ideas are for scope reference; never copy one into a proposal.

History

In GSoC since 2019, 6 years. Projects per year: '19: 2, '21: 4, '23: 4, '24: 4, '25: 4, '26: 3.

On GitHub

3 repositories pushed to in the last year. Main languages: Python (1), TeX (1).

Links and channels

go deeper in your terminal
git-into-gsoc org "gprMax" --shortlist
git-into-gsoc repos "gprMax"
git-into-gsoc issues --org "gprMax"
or ask your assistant:
"Which gprMax repositories merge
newcomers' pull requests, and which beginner
issues are still free?"

Those commands read live data: which repositories merge outside pull requests, and which beginner issues nobody has claimed. Install in two minutes.