GSoC 2017 - pdepe/bvp4c solvers

[Vasilis Lefkopoulos]

Hello,
I am Vasilis Lefkopoulos, and I'm interested in contributing to a 
project as part of GSoC 2017.

I've studied the list of suggested projects [1] for GSoc 2017. I've also 
read the more general list of projects for Octave [2]. Specifically, I 
would be interested working on the "solver for initial-boundary value 
problems for parabolic-elliptic PDEs in 1D" [3] or/and the "solver for 
1D nonlinear boundary value problems" [4].

I would like to know:
1. What is the current status of these projects? I know that they're not 
as of yet implemented into Octave, and I also saw that they were 
implemented in the past but were taken down due to copyright issues with 
Matlab.
2. Are these projects suitable for my GSoC application (and potential 
3-month full-time work)? If yes, is there a relevant mentor that could 
support me?
3. Is there any relevant short project that I can work on, to 
familiarize myself with these topics and also prove that I'm capable of 
committing to them? I've contributed to Octave Forge before, so I am 
familiar with the way contributions are made.

Thanks,
Vasilis

[1]: http://wiki.octave.org/Summer_of_Code_Project_Ideas#Suggested_projects
[2]: http://wiki.octave.org/Projects
[3]: 
http://wiki.octave.org/Projects#Implement_solver_for_initial-boundary_value_problems_for_parabolic-elliptic_PDEs_in_1D
[4]: 
http://wiki.octave.org/Projects#Implement_solver_for_1D_nonlinear_boundary_value_problems