Merge branch 'master' of github.com:wona/wona.github.com

_posts/2019-08-25-summer-diaries-codess.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Summer Diaries: Codess"
+image: "tina1.png"
+tags: [wona]
+author: "Tina Oberoi"
+category: summer2019
+excerpt: 'I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the Microsoft family via Codess. Initially, like many of you know, I was unaware of the opportunities available out there for empowering women. Codess is one of those amazing opportunities offered by Microsoft to students.'
+---
+
+
+I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the Microsoft family via Codess. Initially, like many of you know, I was unaware of the opportunities available out there for empowering women. Codess is one of those amazing opportunities offered by Microsoft to students.
+
+## What is Codess?
+Codess is a community for female coders by Microsoft, established to explore ways to promote gender diversity in the engineering field. 
+
+## How to be a part of Codess Family? 
+The procedure involves one online coding round which involves three questions with different difficulty levels (1 easy, 1 medium, 1 hard). The candidates selected after the coding round are invited to attend a seminar held at the Microsoft campus, Hyderabad. 
+In the first half of the day, there were a couple of leadership talks focusing on the idea: ‘Be the CEO of your idea’. We were shown a video of Tim Cook unveiling an iPhone which presented us with many insightful points about presenting ourselves. Over lunch, we interacted with a lot of leaders and students from different colleges. The main highlight of the event was the second half of the day in which we had a hackathon. We were divided into teams of 8-9 members and each team was assigned a mentor. In the 2-hour long hackathon, we were asked to come up with any technology idea and cover points like how the idea is to be implemented, what accomplishment is expected to be achieved through the idea, etc. The mentors assigned for each team shared the best practices, while the teams deliberated and discussed different approaches and came up with solutions. The mentors also assessed each of us on different skills (like confidence, knowledge of tech, team spirit, etc). After 2 hours of brainstorming, we had to present our ideas (keeping in mind what we were taught during the morning sessions) in front of the leaders. It was a great event as we came in teams to collaborate on new and innovative ideas and experienced how team spirit plays an important role in driving towards a goal and how everyone's participation makes it possible to achieve that goal. Although the winners of the hackathon were announced at the venue itself students selected for the internship were announced via mail after a few days. 
+
+
+
+## Work Culture 
+
+After the orientation, each intern is assigned to a team and a project. The intern is assigned a mentor and a manager. The mentor is your go-to person, he is the one who has experience of the project and will be guiding you for the next two months. 
+
+## The Project I Worked On
+
+I worked under the Azure Networking team. Azure Networking is further divided into various other smaller teams based on the products, services, and platforms they are responsible for.
+Second Year: 
+In the second year, I interned in Foundry. I was under the AzureNetworking NetPerf Team. 
+We were a team of 5 members(4 developers and 1 UX-Designer). Our project was named PEAS (Performance Evaluation As a Self-service). It aimed at providing a platform to monitor health to ensure the availability of their network solutions with automated monitoring and alerts. 
+
+![pic](/images/posts/tina2.png){: style="width:70%;height:auto;"}
+         
+*I got a PIO (Pre-Internship offer after my internship in the second year)*
+
+### Third-year:
+
+
+I was assigned EAP (aka Elastic Autopilot)Team. In this process, I was assigned a mentor. I was glad that my project was not a POC and was something that will soon be in production. My work mainly focused on improving the overall monitoring and automation by reducing false alerts, thus reducing the load on ICMs and avoiding redundant manual efforts put in by the team as of now.
+
+## The Overall Experience
+In the beginning, I was quite overwhelmed by my project, but eventually, you get a better understanding of it. The only important thing is that you put your issues on the table, ask for help if you need. Since I was the only intern in my team(in the third year), it took me a while to know the project, people and get comfortable with them. But the best part was, though you are assigned a mentor and he is responsible for resolving your issues, the other team members are also supportive. You just need to ask for help and everybody is always there to help you in the best possible way they can.  
+There are no strict office timing schedules that you need to follow, but try to sync it with your daily scrums and also with your mentor’s office timings. There is no dress-code, wear anything you are comfortable in. There are various efforts put by the team to make you comfortable which include team outing and team lunches. 
+We had team lunches at some very fancy places in Hyderabad (perks of a corporate life :-p) 
+         
+
+![pic](/images/posts/tina3.png){: style="width:70%;height:auto;"}
+
+I was also given a farewell lunch on the last day of my internship. 
+               
+![pic](/images/posts/tina4.png){: style="width:70%;height:auto;"}
+
+Apart from your projects, Microsoft also has an annual entertaining event called “Unwind” where you have stand-ups and band performances. An “intern week” is also organised during the internship, where they have events like painting sessions, leadership talks, and others. Gladly, the overall corporate experience for me was fun and insightful.
+
+## My Takeaways 
+I really like the work culture Microsoft has adopted and the best part is that they have maintained this culture over the years without fail. If you want to learn about a particular team’s work, their plans for future projects or you want to discuss something about that particular field, the only thing you need is the will and the courage to ask and some people will help you irrespective of their positions, teams or experience. It does not matter if you know them or not, you just have to send a message and ask them if they could meet you for lunch or coffee to discuss that particular topic. They will be more than happy to do so. Believe me. I have tried and tested it. 
+          
+
+
+
+

_posts/2019-08-27-branch-change.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Branch Change - Clearing the Mist"
+tags: [wona]
+category: academics
+image: branch-change-1.jpg
+excerpt: "To be or not to be a BC"
+author: "Jayati Shrivastava, Divyam Goel, Arnab Mukherjee"
+
+---
+
+> To be or not to be a BC
+
+The IITs are considered to be the most coveted institutions for undergraduate studies across the country. The fact that only around 1% of the candidates appearing in the entrance exam manage to secure a seat in these institutions is a testament to the quality of students that manage to get through.
+
+But added to this is the disadvantage that your fate is left in the hands of that little amount of magic that you produce during the 6 hrs of one of the most difficult and strenuous examinations across the globe. The incredible load of expectations of all those who surround the examinee sometimes leads to blunders that can cost the candidate his/her dreams. However, the system itself provides the candidates with another chance to deem themselves worthy of their dreams, with the opportunity to change their branch in their freshman year.
+
+In the oldest technical institute of the country, this opportunity presents itself at the end of the first semester. The best part about it? The students compete as equals with nothing but merit separating them from their dreams. That, and of course their JEE rank that comes back to haunt some of the candidates. Most of the freshmen find themselves struggling to strike that sweet spot of balance between exploring the plethora of opportunities that the campus has to offer and studying “hard enough” in order to have a better shot at changing the cards they were dealt with.
+
+The main aim of this article is to dispel some of the myths that seem to surround the idea of changing your branch, make past year statistics easily accessible, and hopefully provide perspective with regards to the ideology behind the process.
+
+## Rules and Regulations
+
+The guidelines for the branch change procedure for the academic year 2018-19 can be found here: [https://channeli.in:8080/media/notices/pdfimages/BranchChangeNotice2019.png](https://channeli.in:8080/media/notices/pdfimages/BranchChangeNotice2019.png){: style="text-decoration:underline"}.
+
+Key Takeaways:
+
+1. The additional 10% seats “added” at the end of the semester are calculated using the original number of seats being offered by the department during the JoSAA counseling. Extra seats are also vacated if students from a department change their branches. (see next picture)
+
+1. Grades are the only criteria on which preference is given to students. In the case of equal grades, the JEE Advanced rank will be the tiebreaker.
+
+1. B.Arch students aren’t eligible
+
+
+> “In India, we don’t choose our major but our major chooses us.”
+
+Reflect on this for a second. Most of the students who enrolled in IIT Roorkee in any branch whatsoever did so without much research about what they were getting into. In fact, the research generally begins after the JEE ranks are out and your future has already been partially decided. Most of us are told to choose any available branch from the old IITs simply because of their reputation(sounds familiar?).
+
+According to the modern-day convention, almost everyone seems to be aiming for the circuit branches without actually even knowing what the stream is all about.
+
+But since we’re already here, how about adopting a different approach?
+
+The first step in any life-changing decision is to identify why you think taking that decision means so much to you. Most of the candidates that think about changing their department do so citing the placement statistics of the previous years. While not the best way to make that decision, we don’t discourage you from going down that road. But what we certainly encourage you to do is to understand that now that you are on campus, you have the opportunity to talk to a vast variety of seniors, all of whom are working in various different fields. In doing so you enable yourself to make an informed decision of what you want to do, at least for the next few years if not eternity.
+
+Citing the fact that a number of students look forward to the process, the rules and regulations for the same were considerably relaxed last year. Owing to this, the students now enjoy a much better chance to change their branch than they did prior to 2018. The following diagram shows the number of students that successfully changed their branch last year:
+
+![graph](/images/posts/branch-change-3.png){: style="width:100%;height:auto"}
+
+## Adopting a Holistic Approach
+
+Contrary to popular belief, being a traditional “ghissu” is not the key to changing your branch. For most of it, it is a journey in parallel to the one you embarked on when preparing for JEE but also a lot different in terms of the opportunity cost and final outcome.
+
+Most candidates who give their everything towards the idea of a department change often make the same mistakes, the most major of them all being never actually stepping out of their rooms to explore what the campus has to offer. This decision either comes back to haunt them if they fail or becomes something that just falls into the pit of buried regrets if they are successful.
+
+Adopting a holistic approach in getting through your time on campus is probably the best thing that you can do regardless of what your aspirations are. Devote yourself to your studies, the idea being to give your best but not to be bogged down if you’re unable to do so (this is where relative grading is most helpful). At the same time don’t disregard all the talks and lectures that the institute and the various campus groups organize.
+
+The key is to manage your time exceptionally well and also to be persistent with your efforts towards the final goal (see the similarities yet?).
+
+## How tough is it?
+
+To put things into perspective, we now follow up with a diagram based on last years statistics. The numbers provided here are just to give the viewer an idea of what he/she needs to do in order to secure a branch change. It is important to note that these numbers do not form a standard basis and change each year according to the preferences of the candidates that year.
+
+As mentioned earlier, the rules for this procedure have been considerably relaxed but even so the entry into the “much coveted” circuit branches(CSE, ECE, and EE) remains an uphill task. The required SGPA last year was as follows:
+
+| Branch | Opening SG | Closing SG |
+|---|---|---|
+| CSE | 9.905 | 9.81 |
+| ECE | 9.714 | 9.619 |
+| EE | 9.667 | 9.381 |
+| MSM | 9.429 | 9.429 |
+| ME | 9.381 | 9.048 |
+| CE | 9.333 | 9.333 |
+| EPH | 9.286 | 8.714 |
+| CHE | 9.048 | 8.857 |
+| IN | 9 | 8.81 |
+| GPT | 8.714 | 7.81 |
+{:.mbtablestyle}
+
+## Final Word of Advice
+
+The truth is that changing your branch is by no means easy, but consistency and persistence go a long way in getting you what you want. It is important to remember that your college isn’t just here to provide you with quality education, being an IITian is a lot more than that. It’s about modeling yourself into a better individual, something that is only possible if you step out of your room and your comfort zones to experience the journey that is IIT-Roorkee. So although putting a semester into something that draws you as much as the idea of a branch change (and we know it does), it wouldn’t be the worst idea to allow yourself to indulge into the little joys of campus life as well.
+
+## Hear it from them
+
+> “What I followed was simple, I attended all the lectures, made notes and attempted all tutorials. Whenever I found any topic difficult, I read the textbooks referred by the professor. If I ever felt the need for additional resources for the common courses, I contacted students of other branches. Regular study and consistency is the key. It is important to understand that being completely absorbed in just studies will do no good, rather it will cause frustration. My simple advice to any aspirant is that be regular and sincere. If you ever feel stressed or bored, just knock on  your friend's door.”
+
+\- **Sparsh Gupta** (2nd Year, Branch Changer from EE to ECE)
+
+***
+
+> "The best advice that anyone can give you regarding changing your department is to stop thinking about it right up until the time you actually have to fill out the choices. I followed a similar approach but only after a set back in my mid sem examinations.
+>
+> In my experience, the most difficult part of getting my department changed was rising above all the years of spoon-feeding that we received when at school and our coaching centers. The teaching standards seemed to have dropped all of a sudden where the professors expected us to do nothing more but either rote learn the formulae or take the high road and not study at all.
+>
+> But in this process of discovering the right recipe to success, I ended up learning the true meaning of self-study. Do not let things get monotonous. You could study 8 hours a day and not get anywhere or study as many hours as you actually require and get to a place where you're more comfortable with yourself. Involving yourself in the other activities being carried out on the campus. DON'T MISS OUT. Believe me, when I say this, it will keep things interesting and if you play your cards right you might just be able to get your department changed."
+
+\- **Divyam Goel** (2nd Year, Branch Changer from BT to ECE)
+
+***
+
+> "Early on I realized that the curriculum courses were not too demanding.The actual challenge was to stay focused through the hullabaloo around.
+>
+> The start of the semester sees many students excitedly entertaining the prospect of branch change, but the interest and the will to work hard fade over time. The lectures are tedious and waking up for the 8 am class may not seem worthwhile. You might not see immediate results of your efforts. Also, the sense of having too much to do in too little time never leaves, but you gradually get better at multitasking.
+>
+> My performance in the mid-semester exams was barely satisfactory and its easiest to give up when the odds in your favor "seem" so low. But if you truly, sincerely want something, you will keep trying and your efforts are sure to see you through."
+
+\- **Jayati Shrivastava** (2nd Year, Branch Changer from PSE to EE)
+
+***
+
+> “Even while taking up chemical engineering, I had it churning at the back of my mind that I NEEDED to get into mechanical engineering; I had convinced myself that I was undoubtedly passionate about it. Turns out, after a couple of semesters into my new branch I am pursuing research in physics( which I am not entirely sure of either ). The moral here is that interests are extremely volatile and keep changing, and if you indeed are truly passionate about something, you’ll be able to do it regardless of your branch, even though it might be trickier in some cases.
+>
+> One thing you can do is to make full use of all the opportunities this campus has to offer. Never spoken in public before? Try debating. Never tried putting in ink the things that roam in your mind? Try writing for a magazine. Try making a website of your own and see if it interests you. Reach out to seniors for help. Roorkee can be a lot of fun if you manage your time here well and have some self-awareness."
+
+\- **Sudhang Varshney** (3rd Year, Branch Changer from CH to ME)
+
+***
+
+> “You might not feel so good about the lectures. Don't worry, even I didn't. Self study will help you sail through. But I suggest that you should attend the lectures regularly and try to be attentive. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t. Also having a good attendance helps you in bunking classes before the mid-sem and end-sem exams to study. Complete the tut sheets on time and attend tutorials regularly to clear your doubts.Mostly the questions asked in exams are from the tut sheets.”
+
+\- **Gurdeep Singh** (2nd Year, Branch Changer from EE to CSE)
+
+***
+
+> "Scoring a high SGPA is not difficult if someone completes the assignments in time and keeps up with whatever the professor is teaching in the class. Reference books give you confidence in the course. Match your class notes with the referred books to better understand topics you are not clear about. My mid-semester performance was just above average. At that moment, I could have concluded that branch change was not my cup of tea but my consistency and persistence paid off.”
+
+\- **Nitish Aggrawal** (2nd Year, Branch Changer from MECH to EE)
+
+***
+
+> “Staying attentive to all the lectures throughout the semester is not possible, but try not to let the workload pile up for the end moment. Also, be serious about the CWS marks as they make quite a difference to your final score.”
+
+\- **Radha Jayaraman** (2nd year, Branch Changer from PSE to CHEM)

_posts/2019-08-27-summer-diaries-vaibhav-gsoc.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Summer Diaries: GSoC at Zulip"
+image: "vaibhav-gsoc.jpeg"
+tags: [wona]
+author: "Vaibhav"
+category: summer2019
+excerpt: "Google Summer of Code is a global program focused on introducing students to open source software development. Many open source organizations apply to the program. Then you apply by writing a proposal for a project in one of the selected orgs. I wrote a proposal for a project in Zulip (a team chat platform) and got selected."
+---
+
+GSoC stands for Google Summer of Code. To quote [about page](http://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/about/){: style="text-decoration:underline"} of the GSoC website:
+
+> “Google Summer of Code is a global program focused on introducing students to open source software development.”
+
+Many open source organizations apply to the program. Then you apply by writing a proposal for a project in one of the selected orgs. If your proposal is accepted, Google awards you with a stipend for working full time for 3 months with that particular organization.
+
+For more details on how the program works and how you can get selected, refer to this article -- [watchout.iitr.ac.in/2019/05/summer-diaries-gsoc](http://watchout.iitr.ac.in/2019/05/summer-diaries-gsoc){: style="text-decoration:underline"}.
+
+I wrote a proposal for a project in [Zulip](http://zulipchat.com){: style="text-decoration:underline"} (a team chat platform) and got selected.
+
+## Making it there
+
+In first year, I saw my seniors apply for the program. I tried but failed. Though the effort that I put into searching for an organization turned out to be helpful. I discovered Zulip and found the community to be welcoming and extremely helpful.
+
+I started contributing to Zulip in December 2018. Searched for an issue that I could get started with easily as a new contributor and submitted a pull request for the same. All the issues on Github are appropriately labelled, so that really helped. By March I had around 40 commits on the main repository.
+
+It's not just about how good your proposal is for getting selected. What matters more is how much you contribute to the organization. By contributions I mean submitting pull requests, opening issues, and even getting involved in the community.
+
+If you want to apply for GSoC in future, you should pick an organisation based on your interests and then prioritise the one which has an active community. You really do get to learn a lot of things when working in such an environment.
+
+## Work and culture
+
+All the contributors were informed that the projects we'd be working on would be flexible and would change during the course of time. Unlike many other organisations, all the GSoC interns work on many different projects, even if some of them weren’t part of their proposal.
+
+I like to have a bunch of different things to work on at the same time. On a regular basis, I work on a project that was mentioned in my proposal. Apart from that, I am frequently tagged in issues and PRs that need my attention.
+
+Since it’s a remote internship, timings are flexible. Some (people from India) tend to work at night when people on the other side of the globe are awake, while some are awake during the Indian working hours. In any case it’s much better to fix a particular time to work.
+
+My mentor regularly asks me what I have been working on. At Zulip, we have a dedicated stream on the chat called "checkins" where members post about what they're working on or even something that's happened in their lives. It's a nice way to be in touch with everyone :)
+
+One really interesting thing is the planned discussions. These take place frequently and the topics vary from debugging to history of Zulip. Of Course they are knowledgeable. Everyone is involved and you get to hear a lot of interesting opinions.
+
+Sometimes you face challenges but that’s where you ask the community. Everyone is extremely helpful. It hardly takes any time to resolve an issue that you face. Overall my experience here has been great.
+
+## Summing up
+
+GSoC is unlike other internships. Here, you're actually expected to deliver. You're treated the same way any other person working in the organization is. It's not hard to "crack" GSoC, you just need to find an organization that aligns with your interests (and hopefully it has an active community).
+
+I've liked my time working at Zulip. If someone wants to contribute, feel free to reach me out. Of Course you can also leave a message on the [open chat](http://chat.zulip.org){: style="text-decoration:underline"}. Someone will definitely help you to get started with an issue that you find interesting. Or you could just give it a visit and get to know what Zulip is.

_posts/2019-08-30-summer-diaries-razorpay.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Summer Diaries: Razorpay"
+image: "razor1.png"
+tags: [wona]
+author: "Divyanshu Tiwari"
+category: summer2019
+excerpt: 'This year, I spent my summers interning at Razorpay as a full-stack designer where I spent the majority of my time designing and developing digital experiences.'
+---
+
+This year, I spent my summers interning at Razorpay as a full-stack designer where I spent the majority of my time designing and developing digital experiences.
+
+
+# Getting in
+
+
+## Deciding to apply
+
+
+Towards the beginning of my 2nd year spring semester, I was completely clueless and didn't have any plans for my summers. I had the option of doing a Design internship as I'd been working with IMG as a designer, but the idea didn't feel that exciting at that point.
+
+
+I got my hands dirty with design and development early on in my college life since I loved building stuff, especially because it involved my creativity and intellect. "Building" sounds like a really generic word. You can't really associate it with a particular job title. There are different job titles like those of a designer and a developer that work together to make something new, and that interested me as a whole, but the roles did not interest me individually.
+
+
+As the semester progressed I grew more restless with regard to my summers. My seniors at IMG advised me to go for a design internship in case I didn't have anything else to do. This way I'd not only get industry exposure but would also get to know whether I would like to pursue design further or not. And by the middle of the semester I had decided to go with this plan.
+
+
+## Preparing to apply
+
+
+I began by documenting all of the projects that I had done so far. I wrote case-studies on Medium about the applications that I had designed and uploaded the source code of my dev-related projects on GitHub. Next, I updated my LinkedIn profile and resume. Since I was aiming for a design internship, I specifically kept it design-focused. I was now ready to apply but I didn't have any company emails to begin with. Seniors couldn't help me much either, so I made my own list. You can do this too by:
+
+* Going through the career pages of various startup websites
+
+* Sending several LinkedIn connection requests to the people whose team you want to join. You can see their email once they accept your request. (Please don't spam people. Be polite, respectful and dignified in your approach)
+
+* Contacting them on Twitter or similar social media platforms.
+
+The first company I emailed was Razorpay and their design lead replied back a week later and scheduled my telephonic interview for a week later.
+
+## The Interview
+
+
+During the interview, I was asked to explain two of my major projects in detail. I was questioned on a number of design decisions that I had taken in those projects. It's really important for designers to back all of their decisions with logic (more on this later). You should always be able to answer the **whys**. Though I had applied for a Product Design internship, I was also questioned on my development skills, mainly HTML/CSS and JavaScript (since my resume mentioned that i had worked on development related projects too). Lastly, I was asked if I was interested in doing a full-stack design internship to which I replied positively. To assess my skills, I was given a small assignment to complete which I did and emailed. My internship was confirmed within two weeks. I kept sending emails to different startups and revised my cover-letter several times within this waiting period.
+
+## Work
+
+
+Razorpay has a number of products to offer, and each product serves a different financial use-case. This variety makes it difficult for industries to understand which products are meant for their needs and which aren't. Hence, to tackle this problem we thought of an interactive section for the website's homepage that can help industries understand their needs and recommend appropriate product solutions.
+The main intent of this project was to increase our reach to different industries through our website by making it easier for them to understand what the organization had to offer.
+The project was executed in three stages: user research, design, and development. I used to have frequent discussions with my mentor each week on this project. I also pursued a few side projects with the front-end team while I was working on my main project just to keep myself from not getting bored with a single task.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/razor2.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+
+## Culture
+
+
+People at Razorpay put an immense amount of trust in you and let you have complete freedom in terms of the way you want to work. You'll not only be made aware about your role in a project but also how you'll be impacting the entire organisation. This way, you know that your work is important and that you need to be responsible for it.
+
+
+Razorpay maintains complete transparency. Any employee can know about anything going on within the organisation irrespective of their position or vertical. You are free to question anyone on anything related to the organisation. There have been a number of instances where I went up to random people within the organisation to learn more about their work and experiences. Razorpay follows an open office culture and there are no offices or cubicles. This helps in establishing a sense of visual transparency and equality. Even the CEOs had the same desk as us and not a cubicle.
+
+
+As an intern you are free to do anything. Not happy with Design? Switch to Front-end or maybe explore marketing. You can even work on a project of your choice in case you are not happy with your current project, or maybe start one on your own.
+The thing I love the most about it was the free food at all times of the day. Every day I used to have a bowl of Chocos, buttered toast and a glass of fruit juice for breakfast. Now I hate Chocos.
+
+## Learnings
+
+
+Before I came to Razorpay, I used to practice what I call an intuition-led design process i.e. my design decisions were led by my intuition instead of explicit logic. Though my intuition was more or less good and my solutions okay-ish, this practice limited me in a number of ways:
+
+
+* I was only able to think of design solutions that were already in existence. Hence wherever I saw similar situations popping up I would simply apply solutions that I was already familiar with.
+
+* I wasn't exactly able to back up my decisions with verbal logic. My intuition always gave me good enough solutions but none of it came out from a series of logical statements and conclusions that could be used to defend my solutions.
+
+* This affected the uniqueness and originality of my solutions because to be able to come up with an original solution, you always need to go back to the fundamentals of a problem and work your way up from there.
+
+I learned to ask "why" to every decision that I took. This prevented me from getting biased by my intuition and approach a problem from a logical perspective. I learned to constantly ask "why" to land upon a fundamental truth and work my way up from there in a series of logical steps to arrive at a solution that's optimized for a particular need. You can apply this model to any decision-making process.
+
+
+## Conclusion
+My time at Razorpay has made me more sure of my love towards "Building". I've realized that I would like to play multiple roles at my workplace and hence on my next internship I might want to work with an early-stage startup.
+

_posts/2019-08-31-summer-diaries-maryland.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Summer Diaries: University of Maryland, College Park"
+image: "mohit1.jpeg"
+tags: [wona]
+author: "Mohit Jain"
+category: summer2019
+excerpt: 'I am currently doing a research intern at the University of Maryland, College Park. So far it has been 9 weeks since I have started. In this article I’ll try sharing with you my experience so far and how I got here.'
+---
+
+
+I am currently doing a research intern at the University of Maryland, College Park. So far it has been 9 weeks since I have started. In this article I’ll try sharing with you my experience so far and how I got here.
+
+## Before Applying
+
+I started going through courses on deep learning during the first semester of my second year. The reason being that I had wanted to go for graduate studies and deep learning and A.I. seemed like an interesting direction to explore. Just reading is never enough, so I practically tried out some of the things I had learned and did some small pet projects. Along with this, I maintain a blog where I penned down what I was learning along the way: https://mohitjain.me/ (shameless self endorsement).
+What motivated me to apply for a research internship and masochistically suffer the pain of the ordeal, other than being interested in trying research, was that I wanted to land an internship without taking any help from the college (although the IIT tag does still end up helping you I believe) and the stringent resume verification process as done by the placement office where you cannot list any personal projects made me shy away from the whole internship process in the campus. Not condemning them or anything, I understand there is a trust issue with personal projects.
+
+## Landing the Internship
+
+My not so amazing grades made sure that I would not qualify for any research programs. So, all I was left with was emailing professors directly. I started emailing professors for working with them sometime in September 2018. I got a positive response sometime in April 2019 around end-term exams and it took another couple of months of being on the edge waiting for the VISA process to get done. I was finally able to start on the last week of June 2019!
+Not trying to be a kill-joy but the days of sending emails was gloomy. The shadows of the days gone by still haunt me. If you sit in the campus internship and have put in some effort preparing you’ll get an internship at least before the semester ends. So naturally, most of my friends had already landed one. After that everyone around was having fun: endless gaming nights, binge-watching movies and anything else enjoyable under the blessed sun. While I was cooped up in my room dreading the future. Not a fun situation to be in.
+Enough of the brooding, some advice that I can give from my experience:
+
+Email each professor by writing an email specifically for them. No point writing a generic email and spamming every professor on the planet. You’ll end up not only hurting your own credibility but that of your institution as well. Doing this would result in you only sending one email a week or even longer but it's still better. Don’t listen to the banal advice which is thrown around that you have to email at least 100+ professors. Of course, quantity increases your odds of getting an acceptance but the quality is way more important. Out of all the generic emails I sent, I have gotten zero response. The emails where I actually framed the email specifically for the professor at least got me a rejection most of the time. Any response is better than nothing!
+Don’t use mail tracking services. It is just not worth it other than giving you false hope each time someone happens to read your email. And, if by chance the person you are sending email to notices that you are using a mail tracker would be very detrimental to your application.
+Don’t write an essay in your email. Keep your emails short but still, provide as much information as you can.
+Preservation is the key to trudging on this path. Just keep going and don’t lose hope. Although this doesn’t mean to blindly proceed. Judge your profile and see if you relevant projects or experiences to show. If not, take a break and work on something cool and then continue. This is what I did and the difference was vivid.
+Rant to your friends how unfair everyone is and people should at least reply to your email. Getting all this out of your chest every now and done can really help lighten the mood. I did it countless times.
+
+## Work
+
+![pic](/images/posts/mohit2.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+
+The University of Maryland, College Park has a huge 1,335-acres campus. So getting around can be quite time-consuming. However, the university runs free bus services through the campus and the city. College Park isn’t exactly an exciting city. There isn’t much to do. Since. Washington DC is nearby you can always easily go there to alleviate the boredom. My workplace is the recently opened Brenden Iribe Centre for Computer Science and Engineering. The building is gorgeous and made of glass funded by the co-founder of Oculus Brenden Iribe.  My work is on video domain transfer using deep learning methods. Since the project has just started I don’t have many details on it. However, everything has been enjoyable and interesting. So far my work has involved going through many research papers to come up with new ideas to experiment on and running these experiments. Going through existing code on GitHub can sometimes become very boring and exhausting but is necessary to come up with new and better ideas. The lab has a large number of resources. A huge number of GPUs of different memories and compute capabilities along with a massive amount of RAM and storage. I don’t think I could ever exhaust them by myself!
+
+## Living in the City
+
+![pic](/images/posts/mohit3.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+
+This is the first time I have lived so independently. Along with the internship so, many other tasks require your attention such as household chores and cooking that it sometimes gets tough to find any actual free time. Compared to living in India everything is very expensive. Unless you happen to own an oil well back home you don’t want to be eating out every day, leaving you with the only option to cook for yourself. The first time I have cooked is after coming here and it’s pretty fun but how I miss the mess food! On top of this having to budget the monthly expenses and saving up to pay for rent was challenging and I still find it quite difficult. Hopefully, things will get better. 
+
+## Summing Up
+
+
+Getting a research internship is difficult but has many benefits. It’s sort of like a Diabolical Nectar. There are risks but the returns are massive. You get to meet new people, experience new cultures and gain global exposure. Of course, if you are planning to go for graduate studies a research internship will play a huge role in your applications. If you are hoping for a research internship, I would advise you to dive right into the deep end and not vacillate between an on-campus internship and a research internship.
+Hope this article helped!
+
+Adios!
+

_posts/2019-09-02-summer-diaries-harvardmedical.md

@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Summer Diaries: Harvard Medical School"
+image: "hms5.png"
+tags: [wona]
+author: "Sourik Dey"
+category: summer2019
+excerpt: 'Be an exception, not an example that has always been my motivation in life. To begin on that note, I have spent my summer in the Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School affiliated to Harvard University.'
+---
+
+Be an exception, not an example that has always been my motivation in life. To begin on that note, I have spent my summer in the Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School affiliated to Harvard University. These 10 weeks were an enriching experience for me where I not only learnt many new techniques and developed my skill set but also learnt to love science for its uniqueness all over once again. This internship journey taught me many things, gave me some good friends, taught me humbleness and how to live a life full of happiness in this competitive world by loving what you do. It taught me to derive pleasure from the smallest success and how to overcome the biggest of failures with a positive mindset. So without further ado, I will elaborate on my journey in this article.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/hms2.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+
+
+## Before Applying:-
+
+Internships are as important for the Master’s students as it is for the undergrads. There may be lots of difference between the visions of these two sections of our institute, but the journey of securing an internship brings all of them together. It is like a bridge between these two factions that bring them closer to each other. Just like the undergrads, I too was focussed on getting an internship in the summer during the first year of my course. As we have only two years in this institute, the time within which we have to complete our tasks here is comparatively less. So I was determined to give my best for this search. Although I had done three national internships during my Bachelor’s, at first I was a little confused about how to get a foreign internship. I did not know many people here with whom I could discuss about all these topics. However, fortunately I met a senior from the M.Sc Geology Department, Surjyendu Bhattacharjee, who was a talented individual and had gone to Caltech for his internship through S.N.Bose Scholars Program. He was a very helpful person and his vision really inspired me. From that day onwards, I decided to work hard not only for my academics but also for building up my internship experience in the upcoming summer.
+
+
+## Making it There:-
+
+![pic](/images/posts/hms1.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+
+ I had searched thoroughly the Internet, websites like Internshaala, Biotechnika,etc and found many internships but many of them had different restrictions, like you have be a undergrad, have an excellent CGPA, be in the second year of your study and likewise. Some of them had explicitly mentioned that Master’s students were not allowed to apply for the program. Still, I did not get demotivated and filtered my search and found 13 internships for which I could apply (including some where it was written that preference for the position would be given to the undergrad students). I prepared my statement of purpose, curriculum vitae, recommendation letters and no objection certificate from the concerned authorities. I had talked to different professors and they were willing to support my application. I would like to mention Prof Partha Roy and Prof Krishnan Mohan Poluri who had supported my endeavours throughout the year. On the other hand, I also started mailing professors who were working on the research field in which I was interested. I read some of their papers and the brief synopsis of their work and modified my Statement of purpose by giving it a professional look as much as possible. I had mailed around 35 professors around the globe who were working on different aspects of Synthetic Biology, ranging from developing genetic circuits, biofuels, targeted drug delivery, cancer treatment, reengineering microbes and studying neurodevelopmental processes using the complex network of circuits artificially developed. Before being accepted by my Professor at Harvard Medical School, I had three Skype meetings with the lab members, including him, and only after that they unanimously decided in favor of my application was I sent the offer letter. The day on which I received the offer letter will be one of the memorable days of my life. The postdoc mentor I was assigned was really impressed and told me in detail about the project that I would be working on during my internship. The project that I was given made me decide that this was the type of work that I was looking forward to do for my summer. Also to give a heads-up, I had an advantage in answering the questions asked to me because I had prior exposure to such kind of work during my previous internships. 
+
+
+## The Department:-
+
+![pic](/images/posts/hms6.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+
+Systems biology is the study of systems of biological components, which may be molecules, cells, organisms or entire species. Living systems are dynamic and complex, and their behavior may be hard to predict from the properties of individual parts. To study them, the researchers in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School use quantitative measurements of the behavior of groups of interacting components, systematic measurement technologies such as genomics, bioinformatics and proteomics, and mathematical and computational models to describe and predict dynamical behavior. Systems problems are emerging as central to all areas of biology and medicine. The research interests there include developmental biology, synthetic biology, and spatio-temporal distribution of cellular components, pharmacology and cellular decision making. So, decided it was a best fit for me.
+
+
+## Project:-
+
+![pic](/images/posts/hms3.png){: style="width:60%;height:auto;"}
+
+During my internship I was working on the growth patterns of Vibrio natriegens, which is becoming a model organism for fast growing bacteria with a reported doubling time of less than 10 minutes. I had to use a quantitative approach to characterize V.natrigens growth and physiology for the first part of my project. Then we had to optimize media and growth conditions with single-cell resolution using microfluidic chips, following which their growth was analyzed both at constant or changing conditions. For the latter part of the project, the work became more focussed and challenging for me. I was assigned the task of developing synthetic genetic circuits and establishing them in Vibrio natriegens which was a work for which no relevant literature was available. For that I had to thoroughly survey the literature available and develop my own idea, protocol and experimentation techniques. I had to optimize many protocols only after which I could work on the toggle switch and the dual feedback oscillator (famous synthetic genetic circuits). I had to establish them both in E.coli and Vibrio and study the oscillation frequency, switching speed, tunability, signal to noise ratio and develop parameters to smoothen the oscillations. After successfully establishing the circuits in Vibrio, we then decided to analyse them in microfluidic apparatus and perform single cell quantitative imaging to see the oscillations and toggling of the circuits and their corresponding expression at single cell level, quantitated by the level of fluorescent protein, i.e, GFP and mCherry production and degradation . Fortunately the circuits worked in Vibrio and produced significant results. Then we analyzed the change in the behavior of the circuits in different media to see in which type of conditions they showed optimal performance. On another part of the project, I worked closely with another co-intern in the lab and developed a promoter library of varying strengths and used dye barcoding techniques to segregate and identify them in microfluidic chips. Such type of promoter library creation and their quantitative classification based on their strengths will allow us to perfectly identify the set of promoters that we want to use for creating our varied genetic circuits. Optical trap and laser technology will be used to then selectively isolate the promoter we want to use for our purpose from the plethora of promoters being expressed in cells being run on the microfluidic chips. The lab has developed such techniques which has made it possible and will bring a revolution in the field of synthetic biology in the near future.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/hms4.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+
+
+                                                                                                                                                                 
+## Work and Environment:-
+
+The work environment was extremely good at Harvard. Everyone is equally dedicated towards their work. Even at the lunch time, they discuss about new ideas and exciting research that is going on in the world. These discussions allow a person to gain knowledge about varied things in a small amount of time that took over a cup of coffee. No one demotivates you if you fail in your experiment. There were instances where things did not work out according to my plan and the experiment for the day did not produce desired results, but my postdoc mentor still motivated me and told me to not to worry about all these things. He repeatedly told me that failure is a part of science and without failure one can never expect to achieve success in life. I had amazing lab mates who were experts in theoretical, experimental and computational work and learnt something from each of them. Everybody was willing to help us in any way possible. I had an amazing co-intern and roommate beside me all the time, Piyush Nanda, a final year undergrad from IIT KGP, who cleared lots of my doubts and played a very important part in reshaping my scientific mindset for which I indebted to him. Both of us had a fun time learning, working in the lab, exploring new places, restaurants and going for short trips. The department arranged theory lunches, seminars, happy hours, discussion meetings and other recreational activities to allow the people to interact with each other. There were some brilliant undergrads visiting the department from throughout the world with whom I spent a wonderful time. The department also took us for a retreat to Maine along with the other people of the department where we had a wonderful time listening to lectures, going for hiking, boating, dinner table meetings and also most importantly dancing at the discotheque with all the faculties and students of the department. It was an excellent experience to see your faculties dance beside you in the party which showed me how well they can maintain a work life balance. All of these incidents have left an everlasting impression on me.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/hms5.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+
+## Funding and Related Information:-
+
+I had received replies from some of the faculties I had contacted and most of them appreciated my idea and expressed their interest towards hosting me in their lab. However, there were some problems regarding financial support, space crunch, and duration of the internship which prevented me from joining their labs. One of the best moments of my life when noble laureate, Jack Szostak replied back to my email and appreciated my idea but there being a space crunch in his lab I could not join his lab. However, these moments of happiness pushed me to keep on moving forward. I had then received acceptance letters from Max Planck Society of Plant Physiology, Genome Institute of Singapore, University of Saskatchewan (through Mitacs Globalink Fellowship Program), appreciation from EPFL@Life Sciences Internship Program Committee and Yale University. All of these internships were fully or partially funded by programs or the universities. My professor at Harvard offered me a hefty amount of stipend per month and apart from that I had also applied for the Travel Research Internship Scheme of IIT Roorkee for which I was selected and awarded an amount of Rupees One lakh. I am grateful to the institute to have provided me with the sum and I hope that I have been able to utilize the sum efficiently. The amount which I received was sufficient for the entire period of my internship and all the expenses were borne from those monetary support that I had received.
+
+## Summing Up:-
+
+I would suggest every student to try their best to find a suitable position for themshelves during the summer and to use the opportunities they receive wisely. Failures will come throughout the process but I strongly recommend to not stop trying because only if you try hard will you achieve success, no matter whether it is securing an internship or something bigger in life. 
+
+Best of Luck!!!!!!!
+
+
+
+

_posts/2019-09-05-summer-diaries-nancy.md

@@ -0,0 +1,79 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Summer Diaries: Australian National University"
+image: "nancy1.jpg"
+tags: [wona]
+author: "Nancy Gupta"
+category: summer2019
+excerpt: "I spent these summers with OzGrav group working on experimental aspects of Gravitational waves (of which I will talk in detail later) at Australian National University, Canberra, for which I was supported by Future Research Talent Award."
+---
+
+## Preface
+
+
+I spent these summers with OzGrav group working on experimental aspects of Gravitational waves (of which I will talk in detail later) at Australian National University, Canberra, for which I was supported by Future Research Talent Award.
+Before moving ahead, I intend to raze a few myths apropos to the country especially when it comes to research and social structure. I was warned multiple times by friends and family that ‘ Aussies are racist, be careful’, but if you give credence to my experience, Australia is one of the most welcoming and multicultural countries. Furthermore, research culture and network is no different and as good as it is in Europe despite its odd geographic location.
+
+## Making it there
+
+In my case, I was pretty sure that I wanted to go for an academic research internship, therefore I didn’t even give a thought to sit for on-campus internship sessions. Since my research is not at all inclined to my core branch that is Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, instead, it is more into the fundamental physics, therefore I was a bit skeptical initially but something that might have underpinned my application is my second year research internship at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics ( I believe I should have written how I made it to MPI before writing about my journey to ANU but I will leave it for later :p)
+
+
+I started mailing the groups working on experimental gravitational physics (which are not a lot in number) from mid September. Most of the groups that I emailed were in US where funding is always an issue, so the typical replies I got were addressing the funding issue, suggesting to apply later in December or to involve a third party funding agency like SN Bose scholarship etc. I finally decided to apply late in December for programs like Caltech SURF (which was one of my dream groups to work with as it is one of the prominent groups involved in LIGO). Meanwhile, a day scrolling through SAC FB page, a post caught my eyes calling for the applications for Future Talent Research Award which is a scholarship to work on a short term project at ANU, Canberra. (Those who haven’t followed SAC page, please do it as it keeps you updated from academic reforms to other important stuff in the campus). For me, it was a good opportunity because ANU has a group working on Gravitation waves and is centre for LIGO Australia (OzGrav). The scholarship is worth 6000 Aus Dollars. Since it is a collaborative program between IITR and ANU, I needed to be first nominated by the institute on the basis of my resume, write-up and recommendation. Once I got nominated, my name was sent to the research group of my preference, which made the final decision. Sometimes, in order to make a decision, the professor may want to talk to you over skype but it is not necessary, many other scholars directly got selected without getting through an interview or so, it kinda depends on your professor.
+
+
+PS: Before applying for FRT you must keep in mind that the confirmation about selection comes by mid December, before the applications open for programs like Caltech SURF, Charpak etc which is good but also have huge drawback because IITR gets a bond signed by you with the application stating that denial of scholarship is prohibited once you are selected and as a penalty institute will never ever support your endeavours in future!
+
+## Work
+
+**<u>Institute and the Research group</u>**
+
+Australian National University is one of the best universities with QS world ranking of 24. Despite this fact, it is a bit underrated and not as popular as the Western Universities. There are many underlying reasons for this and one of the most lucid one is Australia’s odd location ( The Real South :p) leading to the assumption that it might be disconnected from the rest of the world and scientific collaborations aren’t clustered about it but believe me this a whopper! Corroborating evidence to this is— Australia played a crucial role in Apollo 11 landing ( just bringing up to venerate 50 years of moon landing). Anyway, coming back to my research and work, I worked with a research group that is a part of bigger collaboration LSC (LIGO Scientific Collaboration). LSC is a combined effort to observe and probe the universe with a whole new spectrum of gravitational waves. Long term goal is to develop gravitational wave astronomy such that it proves to be a new tool to study cosmic events like Black Hole Merger, Binary neutron star merger etc.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/nancy2.jpg){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+*4 km arm interferometer (LIGO) at the Hanford site*
+ 
+**<u>The Domain of work</u>**
+
+In a bigger picture, I was working on bettering the sensitivity of current gravitational wave detector by overcoming the standard quantum limit. My task was to work on table top experiments (involving lots of optics and electronics) and to essentially observe opto-mechanical coupling (or more specifically optical spring effect) in a seismically isolated optical cavity. To break it down further in simpler language I was trying to measure the effect of photon radiation pressure. If you figured it out, yes I am an experimentalist...not as smart as theorists !! :P
+Though I worked for LSC during my second year intern at MPI Germany, yet the domain of work at ANU was totally different and new to me therefore I spent a few weeks reading some books and papers and once I had enough background, I was dragged to a sophisticated clean laser lab to work on my cool experiment.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/nancy3.jpeg){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+*Up on the screen, that’s the fundamental mode of light !!*
+
+
+Despite the fact that the work I was doing requires a considerable amount of experience, I was able to do it only because of the constant support and input of my postdoctoral mentor who was always ready to troubleshoot any problem in my experiment. Apart from this, the lab environment was pretty accommodating, I was allowed to come to the lab at any time 24*7 (I did go on weekends to collect measurement in the hope of less noisy data :P). Our Muti-cultured group of Indians, Aussies, German, Dutch, Kiwis etc used to go out for dinner and drinks on Fridays which I believe helped me to bond a lot better with my colleagues and mentors.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/nancy4.jpeg){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+Friday evening drinks with the group :)
+
+## Beauty in the peace of the city!
+
+Canberra is the capital city and unlike most of Australian cities, it is not situated on the coastal line. Also, Australia is different in terms of seasons from the rest of the world, Aussies celebrate Christmas in summers . Since it is in the southern hemisphere, it experiences winters (min -4 celsius) from May - July and summers in December- February. Taking you back to the history of the city which is no older than one and half century, when the different Australian colonies formed the Commonwealth of Australia, the new country needed a capital and both Sydney and Melbourne wanted the honor. However it was later decided to build a new capital at Canberra and a competition to design the new city was held which was won by Walter Burley Griffin. So, yes, it is a planned city and yet it is naturally vibrant, you can encounter possums and kangaroos even on the ANU campus.
+
+
+To justify the heading, let me address the beauty in the peace and silence of the city. Canberra has very less population density and also it is surrounded by hills with a big beautiful lake at the heart of the city which upholds my former statement about serenity. On a bright, sunny day, nothing is as satisfying as enjoying barbecue and drinks by the lakeside.
+You can go hiking to nearby hills and mountains (Mt. Taylor, Mt. Ainslie, Black Mountain) which is always fun to do solo or with a group, also you can easily encounter vibrant Australian wildlife during such hikes ( Don’t worry you won’t encounter poisonous snakes and spiders !!)
+
+
+If you are done with Canberra and start missing the crowd, you can head to Sydney which is not very far. Sydney offers you a bunch of interesting deals, some of my favourites are walking along Bondi beach, and a ferry to Manly. I visited Sydney during lights festival when the whole area near Opera House and Darling Harbour was covered by a sheet of light.
+“ My arrival to the city was marked by skepticism, but departure with the hope of the arrival”
+
+![pic](/images/posts/nancy5.jpg){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"} 
+*Kangaroos in their natural habitat*
+
+![pic](/images/posts/nancy6.jpeg){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+*Lake Burley Griffin on a sunny day*
+
+## Takeaways
+
+For me the major upshot, apart from academic and technical knowledge, is the impression that research always involves iteration, one can succeed in it if she/he is enjoying it and having pleasure in finding things out. I did have many setbacks during my project but the only thing that kept me going was the amusement at how beautiful and predictive things in physics are. I feel, after this internship I developed a more profound and firm belief in science and rational thinking.
+
+
+At last, I want to add, please don’t adapt to the herd mentality, I know there is always pressure on us ( especially at the end of sophomore year) to get a good internship and so on, but never forget you won’t be able to perform up to your limit until you are enjoying your job. No matter how rarely travelled the desired path is, follow it, I am not sure if you’d be successful at it but you will definitely be satisfied. I too had the choice to opt for more conventional paths like data science or my core but I knew that the only thing that excites me is physics and today I am happy and satisfied with my pick.
+Since I am Richard Feynman’s fangirl, I would love to end this with his quote taken from ‘Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!’—
+
+
+_**“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.”**_
+
+