Need a mentor, and a project.

Hello there,

I am a graduate student at the University of Washington, Tacoma
(http://www.tacoma.washington.edu/tech/) with an interest in databases (especially query processing). I am familiar with database theory and in an earlier life I used to be an application developer and have done a lot of SQL/database related work. I have been interested in learning and contribution to postgres for a while now. This quarter I was the TA for the undergrad intro to database class. I convinced my Prof. to use Postgresql to teach and it has been fun. It has also allowed me to familiarize myself with postgres from an external user's point of view.

Next quarter I am planning to do an Independent Study course where the main objective would be to allow me to get familiar with the internals of Postgres by working on a project(s). I would like to work on something that could possibly be accepted as a patch.

This is (I think) somewhat similar to what students do during google summer and I was hoping to get some help here in terms of:
1. A good project to work on for a newbie.
2. Would someone be willing to be a mentor? It would be nice to be able to get some guidance on a one-to-one basis.

Thanks for your time. If you have any questions or need more information, please do let me know.

Regards
Ashish