GSoC Project 1: Dashboard for tracking MD simulation progress with the new streaming interface

[Pradyumn-cloud]

Hello Mentors,

I'm interested in working on the real-time MD simulation dashboard project for GSoC 2026.

To get familiar with the codebase, I set up a LAMMPS simulation locally using Docker and connected to it using imdclient to receive live frame data. Through this I tried to understand the IMDv3 protocol, what data each frame carries, and the constraints around streaming (forward-only, single connection per run).

Based on this, I've started designing the connection layer. The plan is to build a ConnectionLayer class that connects to any IMDv3 engine, reads frames in a background thread, normalizes raw frame data into clean typed objects, and exposes session capabilities (which data the engine is sending) so the rest of the application and the frontend can adapt accordingly.

I have a few questions before I go further:
For the frontend is there a preferred stack ?
For the topology requirement should the dashboard always require a topology file from the user...?
Currently I am planning for single user...

I am currently planning the implementation and learning the additional components required for this project.

Happy to share my design or discuss further.

Thank You.