Comprehensive Redesign and Feature Expansion for MPS Lab Website (v3)

[kaustubhharapanahalli]

Overview

This pull request introduces a complete structural overhaul and feature expansion for the MPS Lab website infrastructure using Astro and React. It brings numerous new content sections, dynamic data integrations, improved UI/UX components with dark mode compatibility, and Python-based automation scripts for effortless content management.

Core Infrastructure

• Astro & React Setup: Established the new website foundation utilizing Astro components, React components, and dynamic content collections.
• Content Collections: Implemented organized, scalable data layers for publications, news, members, and research to enable seamless static content generation.

People & Alumni

• Dynamic Member Profiles: Replaced hardcoded listings with dynamic profile pages utilizing the new MemberGrid.
• Tabbed Navigation: Organized the personnel page with clean tabbed views, distinguishing current members, faculty (Principal Investigators), and categorizing alumni by their respective roles.
• Member Details: Integrated member resumes and dynamically mapped "Associated Researchers" onto specific research discipline pages.

Research & Publications

• Expanded Research Pages: Added highly detailed research project pages covering Vision, Challenges, Recent Results, and dedicated visual assets (e.g., AI Compilers, Quantum ML, ML Acceleration).
• Curated Reading Lists: Introduced reading lists tailored to specific research areas, rendered beautifully on research detail views.
• Enhanced Publication Cards: Included new buttons for direct external website links and specific code repository links. Excluded website fields from auto-generated BibTeX blocks.
• Metadata Refactoring: Updated publication fields (renamed keywords to research, tppubtype to category) to properly align and filter related publications on corresponding research pages.

Teaching & Resources

• Teaching Section: Introduced a new teaching page featuring comprehensive syllabi and external links for university courses.
• Software Projects: Added a dedicated Software tab on the publications page, providing software manuals, display cards, and direct GitHub links.

News & Gallery

• Timeline-based News: Refactored news articles and awards to dynamically group and sort updates by year.
• Interactive Gallery: Implemented an image gallery with dynamic routing and a custom React lightbox component for accessible image viewing (featuring content from recent events like DAC 2025).

Additional Website Sections

• Sponsors: Added a dedicated section on the homepage displaying sponsor data and their associated logos.
• FAQ Section: Introduced a categorized Frequently Asked Questions page to cleanly address common inquiries.

Automation & Workflows

• Figure Captioning: Implemented automatic figure captioning using a specialized rehype plugin for markdown files to maintain consistent styling.

Styling & UI

• Dark Mode & Aesthetics: Enhanced image borders, content constraints, and updated the CSS variables to seamlessly support dark mode environments.
• Icons: Updated quick links, research cards, and buttons to leverage dynamic Lucide icons for a more polished and modern aesthetic.

Documentation

• Extensive README Updates: Added comprehensive instructions regarding the project structure, technology stack, content management pipelines, and newly created BibTeX fields.

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Note to Reviewers: Please ensure all newly added automated scraping scripts have been invoked to populate the local src/content/ collections, and verify that the routing to dynamic member/research pages operates smoothly in the build pipeline. All new teaching pages and local software manuals should also be accessible.