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---
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layout: post
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title: "Summer Diaries: American Express"
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image: amex1.jpg
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tags: [wona]
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author: "Manan Jain"
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category: summer2019
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excerpt: "During my first 2 years, I had worked on various webD projects as a member of SDSLabs. I also got to explore software development as a GSoC intern right after my 2nd year. So when American Express arrived looking for ‘Software Engineer’, I decided to sit for the test."
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---
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> During my first 2 years, I had worked on various webD projects as a member of SDSLabs. I also got to explore software development as a GSoC intern right after my 2nd year. So when American Express arrived looking for ‘Software Engineer’, I decided to sit for the test.
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> AmEx was one of the earliest companies that came to offer summer internships to pre-final year students.
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## Making it there
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Students from all the branches are eligible to sit for the test. A part of the reason I ended up choosing AmEx was my branch (Chemical). Although I am not aware of the exact cut-off, a CGPA > 7.5 should be fine.
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**Online Round:** <br>
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This round comprised of 20 MCQ questions which were to be solved in 35 minutes. You don’t really need to prepare for it as the questions were doable and tested basic Mathematical Aptitude, Data Interpretation and Non-Verbal Reasoning. Just ensure that you don’t commit silly mistakes in this particular section as there is a strict cut-off. Around 15 people were shortlisted for the next round.
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**Technical Round:** <br>
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It began with me giving a brief description of myself (which was the most uncomfortable, if not the toughest, part of the process). Thereafter, the discussion revolved around the projects I had done. I was asked to explain the logical aspect and the architecture of a couple of them. I was also asked about the improvements that can be made to them at a superficial level.
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It was followed by questions pertaining to Probability and Statistics. The round concluded with a prolonged discussion on the practical application of Statistics to real-world problems.
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The idea behind this round is to analyze your ability to understand a problem and then propose a way to solve it. In my case, the problems were loosely based on web/software development projects I had done. So it is important to be thorough with the projects you list down on your resume.
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**Technical Round + HR:** <br>
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The interview began with me listing down my strengths/weaknesses (second most uncomfortable part). I was given a couple of puzzles to solve which was followed by a guesstimate question. The interviewer encouraged me to come up with different approaches to the problem. The latter part comprised of more HR-esque questions (interests and goals). The round, somehow, concluded on a philosophical discussion.
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**Tip 1** : Be prepared for a “Why should we hire you” question.<br>
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**Tip 2** : Try to ask a follow up question at the end of the interview. If you don’t have one, conjure one up during the interview, as I did.
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Given the nature of my interviews, I was expecting my role to be software/development oriented. However, I was assigned the role of a Data Analyst, which was quite surprising.
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## Work
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{: style="width:70%;height:50%;"}
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Most of the AmEx interns, including me, were allocated the Gurgaon office while the others got the Bangalore one. The Gurgaon office seats over 6000 employees distributed across the 3 major divisions -
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Enterprise and Digital Analytics (EDA), Credit and Fraud Risk (CFR) and Technology.
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I was a part of the Membership Rewards team from EDA with my profile being that of a Data Analyst.
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My building was part of the One Horizon Center which gives you all the corporate vibes you would want from your office. AmEx has an open workspace culture. So all the employees, be it a senior manager or a director or just an intern, share the same space. This is one of the things I liked the most as in addition to watching and learning from your senior leaders, you can seek help with ease. The office timings are pretty flexible but I’d still recommend aligning your work hours with your team/project members (to make the most of the internship).
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**Note:** The workspaces on the lower floors have been laid out quite creatively. Also from the higher floors you get an amazing view of the skyscrapers around and the nearby golf course. So, try to take a trip around the office as soon as possible. I found a massaging chair on our last day.
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The responsibility of delivering a project is given to smaller groups of 2-3 members and each person works on multiple projects. Most of us received our individual project’s description a week before the joining date. Once we were there, all the interns were assigned a mentor to assist during the project.
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So my team, i.e. Membership Rewards, worked around the Reward Points a customer receives on using the Amrican Express credit card for various transactions.
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My project was to analyze and answer- <br>
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* Why were the customers calling up the Customer Care when most of the things were available on the website? <br>
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* Who were these customers? <br>
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Different models were devised to form sort of a journey for each customer and identify the problem areas. They were identified in terms of the information available on the website and also its UX. Most of the work was done in HQL (fancy SQL) and SAS. The models I leveraged were written in Python. So it would be good for you to have a basic understanding of SQL and Python as they were also being used by most of the other teams as well. The most encouraging aspect about working there was that I was trusted with a project which was to be presented to other business partners. In turn, it would be fair to say that interns there are treated like regular employees. However, you are also expected to deliver in an equal measure.
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The best thing about AmEx has to be the people there. On the first day itself we got to interact with the senior leaders of the company, who were really welcoming. The Director and the VP of my team got really involved in the work I was doing and we used to have regular brain-storming sessions. Also, the team members really looked out for each other and were quite helpful. I had a great time discussing everything and anything over lunch with my team.
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The HR people also made some efforts to arrange sessions with top executives from India and the US offices.
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## Summing up and key takeaways:
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{: style="width:70%;height:60%"}
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I had been involved in development before but AmEx gave me an opportunity to explore the field of Data Analytics. The internship was an amazing learning experience not just in terms of the flavour of the corporate world that I got, but also in terms of the insightful discussions I had with some really smart people. During one of the meetings, my VP said “You can teach a person to code for the project, but you cannot teach them to care about the project”. That basically sums up the values that powers this company.
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Even after a lot of deliberation, I still haven't made up mind as to what I'll be doing after these 4 years.
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I am glad I was able to contribute by bringing a fresh perspective to the table. The most important thing that I have learnt is that at the end of the day, the value and quality you attach to your work defines you. So whatever you do, give it your best shot.
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Some final tips:
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1. Try to pitch in new ideas/methods for your project.
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2. Interact with the people as much as possible. They are obviously more experienced and it’ll definitely develop your social skills.
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3. Look at this internship as a golden opportunity and make the most of it in every way possible.
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---
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layout: post
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title: "Summer Diaries: Reckitt Benckiser"
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image: rb4.png
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tags: [wona]
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author: "Suyash Singh"
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category: summer2019
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excerpt: 'As a student of chemical engineering in IIT Roorkee, the options to get a core intern are very limited, Majority of the students do their third year internships in non-core domains (mostly software and data science) and are then placed in similar fields a year later.'
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---
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As a student of chemical engineering in IIT Roorkee, the options to get a core intern are very limited, Majority of the students do their third year internships in non-core domains (mostly software and data science) and are then placed in similar fields a year later. With such demotivating stats and me personally not trying enough to build interest in chemical engineering (which happens with most of us), I had no plans (or rather hopes) to get an on-campus internship in a core company.
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During my campus life, I was mostly involved in management profiles (including Convener, Thomso-2018), but during my 2nd year Summer break, I took a chance, or rather two, to explore chemical engineering. I did two internships, one in a management profile (Business operations in particular) and the second one in a paint manufacturing company. I got both these internship offers through LinkedIn. I suggest all sophomores to use this great platform as effectively as possible.
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## Making it there
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{: style="width:90%;height:auto;"}
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So it was the latter internship which instigated me to pursuing Chemical Engineering as a career choice. But mostly, it was the prevalent hype of Reckitt Benckiser (RB), being a Day 1 Company that comes in the same slot as ITC, and of course the fancy stipend they offered, that I eventually applied for this company.
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**Criteria for applying:** <br>
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Reckitt Benckiser (RB) opens for Chemical, P&I, Metallurgy and Biotechnology. For their internship program, they do a basic resume shortlisting (there is no CG cut-off but a 7.5+ CG with an overall decent resume seems to do the trick). The CG clearly stops playing any part after this, as there were interns with a CG of 7.8 to 9.2 from other IITs, mine being the lowest of them.
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**Group Discussions:** <br>
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This is followed by a Group Discussion which usually involves discussion on new product development under already existing brands, presented to us in the form of a case challenge. A thorough reading of the presentation that they present before the GD, is preparation enough for the group discussion.
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**Tip**: Reading time allotted before the GD starts is quite less, so just going through the keywords and understanding the deliverables expected out of the case given to us, helps to start first and perform better in the discussion.
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**Technical Round + HR:** <br>
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The only other round after the GD is the personal interview; the interview is a mix of technical and HR. Some preparation on any particular core topic (branch related) does help in moving the discussion in the right direction. In my case the discussion moved to the detailed technical part of my previous internship (the one in a paint manufacturing company). There was also a long discussion about comparing my work experience as Thomso Convener and sitting here for an R&D intern. But just being truthful and portraying your learnings from each of your previous work experience helps to move the discussion to an encouraging and desired side.
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The HR part of the interview involves discussion on what your expectations from the company are. Some knowledge of RB’s brands can help you a lot here as well.
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## WORK
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**Profile and location:** <br>
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Summer interns from various IITs are sent to the Gurgaon R&D facility. This is among the only 7 global R&D category centres for RB. It handles R&D for a 12.5 Billion GBP company, so trust me when I say this, working here does make a lot of difference!
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**Aim of the internship:** <br>
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All interns are given live market relevant projects, which are categorised mainly into two parts: New Product Development (NPD) and Existing product development (EPD). We are given full freedom to lead the project in our own way and to use the R&D facilities necessary to shape our project. I personally got the opportunity to work on Lizol Floor Cleaner. My project involved formulating a Lizol with some given specifications according to the need in the South Asian Market and recent technological trends, globally. So, my project involved a lot of research as well as Lab work, making samples and trial batches of new Lizol formulation.
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Second phase of my project involved Cost Optimisation and new claim study which gave me an opportunity to interact with the marketing, regulatory and various other corporate teams of RB. This not only helped me to understand the origin of my project but also provided me with a broader business perspective of FMCG companies at a global level.
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<br>
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RB being an MNC (present in 60+ countries), it provides enormous opportunities to interact with RB employees across the globe if you need project related assistance.
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One of my co-interns got a project, which demanded connecting with RB employees from various teams in different countries, so he was mostly on US Skype calls late in the evening (that was an experience in itself!)
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**Work Culture:** <br>
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If I compare it with my previous intern (the one in the business operations), nobody here was in a rush, and it’s quite contrasting to the picture I had in my mind of the corporate world. The best thing about RB has to be the people here. On the first day itself we had a pizza party with the senior leadership team of the company, who were really welcoming and interactive. The official work hours are 9AM- 5PM, 5 days a week and nobody expects you to stay or work beyond that (although you have the freedom to stay till late evening, as I did sometimes till 9pm), which is pretty comfortable, considering how much some other companies expect an intern to work. People are pretty relaxed and as long as you achieve your deliverables, nobody would put any pressure on you. If anything, there are days when it gets a little too relaxed and you have absolutely nothing to do as your batches are under study.
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RB has a future leadership program(FLP) through which they have been hiring engineers in the last few years, which means you will easily find a hierarchy of seniors from IITs which eases your opening up with the other senior members of the team.
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{: style="width:100%;height:auto"}
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{: style="width:100%;height:auto"}
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## The Place
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One plus point of working in RB is that there’s a mess which serves awesome lunch. Just like in labs, RB experiments a lot with food too and we get so much variety to eat!
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(P.S: For Non-Veg lovers: We get Chicken every day, except on Tuesdays*)
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As about the city, Gurgaon is synonymous to pubs and fresh brewery at Sector 29 and Cyber Hub.
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RB was kind enough to provide us a 2 week hotel just outside the Sector 29 market, which compelled us to try every pub in the complex.
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## Summing Up
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As a company, instead of just expecting you to do what you are told, RB expects the interns to challenge them and provide a fresh perspective to their approach and thoughts, and I’m glad my work was appreciated and recognized because of the off-stream approach I followed.
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<br>
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Overall, the experience at RB gave me a perspective of what R&D means in FMCG world, which I would term as ‘Business pro R&D’.
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After exploring diverse fields in 3 years of my college life, these 2 months’ experience at RB gave me a much needed direction to restructure my thoughts regarding my career, and to decide what’s best for me after graduation.
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**Few Tips for the Students interested:** <br>
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* Read about the brands under RB.
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* Brush up your core subjects a little before going for the interview.
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* Prepare the HR questions really well; you should have clarity of thought while answering those.
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* Once you get there, make the most of it by networking with people.
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---
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layout: post
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title: "Summer Diaries: Bold and Beautiful"
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image: nikunj1.png
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tags: [wona]
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author: "Nikunj Gupta"
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category: summer2019
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excerpt: 'For a person who has never been abroad, a foreign research internship provides an inexplicable opportunity to get his feet outside of India and gain some insights as an intern while travelling places you like. And that’s exactly why I ended up applying for a foreign research internship.'
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---
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For a person who has never been abroad, a foreign research internship provides an inexplicable opportunity to get his feet outside of India and gain some insights as an intern while travelling places you like. And that’s exactly why I ended up applying for a foreign research internship.
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## Getting There:
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My journey starts last year in August post-GSoC (Google Summer of Code) completion results. I wanted to do a foreign internship taking inspiration from the articles I read and the people I met. But I was skeptical about applying to STE||AR GROUP, Center for Computation Technology (CCT), LSU which happened to be my GSoC mentor’s university. The primary reason being my backward thinking, that a lower ranked university might not provide me with enough research opportunities. Or that I might end up wasting my time working on something I’m not interested in. In hindsight, I had forgotten all the interesting topics I learned thanks to the project (which was tagged as “hard”, and my mentor had almost no faith in the project completion). So, I started looking for universities like every friend of mine did and throwing random emails, showing interest in their work and how I could help with my prior experience, to professors expecting replies. I got replies from IST Austria and MIT (I applied seriously to 4 universities, so I was glad by getting a reply from 2). Unfortunately, the prof at MIT was going out for a 2-year vacation and decided not to take me in. The prof at IST Austria showed interest in my work. I had applied to IST Austria for a winter internship, so the professor demanded more time. I had to obviate from taking IST as my summer preference, again due to the same thinking. Finally, I applied to LSU for the winter internship to which my mentor happily agreed. Unfortunately, the USA visa takes 3+ months and I was simply out of time. I had to, therefore, settle for a research internship at IITR during winters. By the time winter vacation hit, I met a few people who got me rid of my plagued thinking, and I finally threw in a casual email asking if there’s an internship opportunity available at LSU.
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This time my mentor made sure that all the paperwork was done on time. And that’s how I ended up at LSU.
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## The Work:
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My research internship lies in a niche subdomain of Parallel and Distributed Computing, a paradigm of distributed computing also known as Asynchronous Many Task (AMT) systems. My advisor was the same person who mentored me during my GSoC project. Prof. Hartmut Kaiser is a well known person within the AMT community for his work on HPX. He is also a voting member of the ISO C++ committee.
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One of the best parts about the internship was my power to choose any project to work on. I chose to work on the project “Resiliency in HPX” (HPX being an AMT runtime system). It was to add fault tolerance to the HPX runtime system for supercomputers that would appear in the next decade with exaflops range (or as we like to call it, the extreme scale computing domain), the details of which are mundane to the generic audience. My advisor gave me complete responsibility for the project and therefore, I was supposed to write code for the complete architecture and formulate the final report as well. Working hours were flexible. As long as I could show progress and get results, my advisor had no issues with me taking a leave or leaving early. This charade was soon taken over when I started working and realized that I will have to work late hours to get the work done. Initially, I remember working on weekends to complete the work that I had to do. But soon, the project became relevant and work eased out. This is when I started exploring places on the weekends. I made friends and did trips outside of Baton Rouge.
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## The Cultural Shocks:
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Being from Delhi, I had lived a metropolitan life and I did not expect any cultural shocks. I did face a few shocks, one of which being over friendly strangers. If you’re in India and you randomly say “Hi” or nod your head as a gesture, the other person will probably think that you’re in your correct state. It’s completely different in the states, where I had random conversations with strangers based on what was written on their t-shirt! Next shock was what we people tend to call out as 1st World Problems. I always thought of it as jokes, never did I know it was literally the case here. What came as a surprise was the rising vegan culture. Finding vegetarian food is not difficult provided you decide to go vegan and drop the dairy contents as well. The food itself was also not as bland as I expected. It was actually good and I appreciated a lot of the dishes I ate.
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Another key difference that I found here was how people treat each other within the group. People here call others on a first name basis. That meant that I was calling people doing their PhDs or Post Docs or even professors by their first name which is next to impossible to observe in India. Also, I was never treated as an undergraduate trying his hands on research. I was treated with the utmost respect and my work was valued.
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{: style="width:90%;height:auto;"}
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## Home and Office:
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I got a whole office room to myself which is something that I did not expect as an intern. I was given access to the STE||AR GROUP’s home brewed cluster “Rostam”. I was given a workstation grade computer to work with. The workstation I worked on was the fastest personal computer that I had worked on. It was a dual socket machine and had 2 Xeon CPUs with 64 GB RAM and a powerful Nvidia RTX 2080 graphics card. Apparently, the specs were considered old by my advisor who constantly advised me to work on the cluster!
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I rented a fully furnished studio apartment from the recommendation of my advisor. This meant that I had to take care of the food, laundry, and cleaning by myself. With no experience of cooking whatsoever, I tried making the simplest of Indian dishes using online recipes or video calling my parents. It was the first time I valued mess food and probably the last time as well. With some practice, I was able to make some simple dishes perfectly and learned French dishes from one of my colleagues.
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{: style="width:90%;height:auto;"}
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## Visiting places:
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If you join the STE||AR GROUP with the intent to visit places in the USA, you will be heartbroken to hear that Louisiana is in the middle of nowhere. All the lovely places you’ve heard of namely New York, Miami, Orlando, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. are thousands of miles away. And to add a cherry on the top, Bus services in the USA are horrible. To the extent that I decided to buy flight tickets to places once I experienced the buses. New Orleans was the first city I visited. The city of Jazz so to say will never get you bored if you’re a music enthusiast. Amongst others, I visited Atlanta (Georgia), Houston (Texas), Austin (Texas) and plan to visit New York before I return.
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||||
Baton Rouge itself is a fun place to live in for a couple of months doing an internship. It’s not the most dynamic city you will come across, but you will be amazed to see what the city has to offer!
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{: style="width:90%;height:auto;"}
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## Key Takeaways
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|
||||
The most lovely thing about my group is culture and group dynamics. The group is integrated well with the industry so the work carried in the group has a direct impact on the software people use. Contributing to such a group opens up new boundaries all together in terms of research work and industry exposure. Some key takeaways from my experience would be:<br>
|
||||
|
||||
* Apply early if you’re applying to USA without enrolling yourself in a program. Visa times are surprisingly high.
|
||||
|
||||
* Do NOT judge a research group by the rank of the University. If the work they’ve been doing interests you, go ahead and shoot them an email.
|
||||
|
||||
* Do not shoot hundreds of emails. Try to find professors or research group that align with your interest. Writing 3-4 good emails will have more probability of you ending up with an internship than sending hundreds of them with similar content.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
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@ -1,57 +0,0 @@
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---
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||||
layout: post
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||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Schlumberger "
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image: layan1.png
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tags: [wona]
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||||
author: "Layan Kaushik"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'The idea of exploring different core engineering fields has always excited me. I had already experienced a research project based internship after my 2nd year. So, a leap into the corporate sector was what I sought for since the beginning of my third year.'
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
The idea of exploring different core engineering fields has always excited me. I had already experienced a research project based internship after my 2nd year. So, a leap into the corporate sector was what I sought for since the beginning of my third year.
|
||||
|
||||
## Schlumberger, what about it?
|
||||
|
||||
Schlumberger is the only Oil & Gas services company (read core engineering) that visits our campus and recruits (offering decent package) from almost all departments. In India, they have their bases located at Mumbai, Barmer, Pune (IT segment) and Kakinada - which is where I pursued my internship. The management of the entire Indian East Coast, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and North East India is administered from Kakinada.
|
||||
|
||||
## Making it there
|
||||
|
||||
Although the notice for internship at Schlumberger came early September, but the shortlisting and interview process got delayed and finally took place the following year in the month of April. Due to this delay, the recruitment process was cut short to two rounds - the first being resume shortlisting and followed by a personal interview. They prefer candidates with a decent CGPA (>7) who also have performed reasonably well in co-curricular activities, possess good soft skills and have held various positions of responsibilities throughout their career. A peak in any two of the above mentioned skills and a decent display in the rest can help you grab an internship at Schlumberger. During the personal interview round, few technical questions related to basic engineering knowledge may be asked but more emphasis is given to classic interview questions (‘about yourself’, ‘strengths and weaknesses’, ‘why should we hire you?’, and ‘why Schlumberger?’) to test one’s soft skills.
|
||||
|
||||
## Work
|
||||
|
||||
Previously, the duration of the Internship used to be 4 weeks but this year onwards it has been extended to 7 weeks. Similar to previous internship programmes, all interns at Schlumberger had to attend a 3-day induction programme at Nerul base, Navi Mumbai. There we were introduced to the Oil & Gas Industry and given an extensive demonstration of various safety instructions required to follow religiously while carrying out any job at the workstation.
|
||||
For the rest of the days, we were sent to our allotted locations and segments. I was assigned to the Completions Segment at Schlumberger’s Kakinada base in Andhra Pradesh. On arrival at Kakinada, I was introduced to my team and was assigned a mentor who briefed me about the project. I was working with another intern from IIT Delhi throughout the period of the internship. The project assigned to us was quite simple. The Completions segment recently won a huge ONGC contract, therefore, the segment area was doubled. We were asked to perform 5S lean management method and later develop a layout of the proposed area in accordance with its workflow. More stress was given to learning the oil and gas industry and the tools used in the Completion segment’s work.
|
||||
Apart from this, we were sent to Reliance workshop to get a first-hand experience of how jobs are practically done and also to get our hands dirty. These workshop visits became an everyday affair, which helped us understand the ins and outs of the segment and attain a sense of belonging.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Life at Schlumberger
|
||||
|
||||
As stated in the previous few dairies, Schlumberger functions like a relentless well-oiled machine. Employees work round the clock depending on the task assigned. They have a strict ideology of doing the job correctly the first time, hence the pressure on every employee is tremendous. Moreover, they have a stringent HSE (Health, Safety and Environment) policy: working without a proper PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) or driving without the seatbelt fastened can put your job at risk. However, Schlumberger has a very friendly work culture, where help and guidance are always available from fellow employees. The lively atmosphere along with the music which is played in the workshop gives a positive vibe to the workplace. Moreover, frequent movie nights and parties with the team made my stay a little more fun.
|
||||
Schlumberger also provides luxury accommodation for all interns and the Schlumberger base is equipped with ample facilities for leisure activities such as Table Tennis, Gym, Squash courts and rooms for those who want to take a power nap during office hours. Meals and travel are all taken care of quite efficiently and as per requirements.
|
||||
|
||||
## Location
|
||||
|
||||
Kakinada is a small remote industrial city in the eastern coast of India. The weather during my stay was pleasant as monsoon came in early. A recently constructed multiplex made my life more convenient as I could enjoy a few of my favourite food outlets and did not miss out on any of the latest movie releases. The nearest city, Vishakhapatam is a 4-hour drive North from Kakinada but none of the interns could visit as it required prior consent from the management of Schlumberger which made life beyond Kakinada non-existent.
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing up and key takeaways
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:90%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
The work assigned to an intern is quite basic as more emphasis is given on getting accustomed to the Schlumberger work culture and its lifestyle. One can easily find an excellent peer group with whom he or she can discuss and share things of interest. It was lovely to see the employees make efforts to help all the interns fit in and make everyone feel like home.
|
||||
Few tips for people gunning for it:
|
||||
|
||||
* Be thorough with what you’ve written on your resume.
|
||||
|
||||
* Practice the basic interview questions, preferably give mock interviews.
|
||||
|
||||
* Build your resume while you can.
|
||||
|
||||
* Be calm and confident during the interview.
|
||||
|
||||
* Feel free to contact me for any further questions!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,77 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Harvard"
|
||||
image: aarush1.png
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Aarush Gupta"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'TL; DR: I spent 11 weeks at Harvard as a part of my summer internship. I had a great time there and the internship would go a long way in helping me with my career. Below, I will try to summarize my experience there, as well as share how I landed the internship.'
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
**TL; DR**: I spent 11 weeks at Harvard as a part of my summer internship. I had a great time there and the internship would go a long way in helping me with my career. Below, I will try to summarize my experience there, as well as share how I landed the internship.
|
||||
|
||||
## Before Applying
|
||||
|
||||
I worked on a couple of Deep Learning projects with professors at my department during my second year and a remote collaboration last summer. Consequently, I had a fair idea of what research constituted of and what I could expect from an academic internship. It gives you the freedom to choose a problem that interests you, try out your ideas and work at your own pace. There are deadlines, but they are scattered and more relaxed than what you would find in the corporate world. But most of the on-campus internships offer the role of a software developer. Therefore, I opted out of the on-campus internship season and applied for a research internship instead.
|
||||
|
||||
## Making it there
|
||||
|
||||
The most common method of applying for a research internship is by emailing professors. With a research paper from last summer’s project, I was pretty sure that I would get an internship easily. But that did not happen. I emailed around 15 professors (after going through their work and writing customized emails to each one of them) from around July till November but did not get a single reply. So, if you don’t get any replies, don’t be disheartened and keep trying. It is all a part of the process. Honestly, it also depends a lot on your luck. I have seen people getting an internship after their first email, and people who did not get any offer until near the end of the academic year.
|
||||
|
||||
I also started looking for other options on the way. I applied to Naver Labs, a South Korean AI industrial research lab, and got through. But I had a preference for an academic research internship instead, so I kept on applying to various research labs. I also applied to various internship programs such as Mitacs, Summer@EPFL, ISTernship Summer Program, etc. without any luck. I expected this because my CGPA was not up to the mark. Until March, I just had an industrial research internship offer. Shortly after that, I was shortlisted for the SN Bose Scholars Program. For those of you who don’t know, it is a scholarship program to support Indian students for an internship in the United States. The scholarship includes a stipend of $2500, airfare and health insurance. Out of around 1500 applications, only 50 get through in the end. Each department from the participating institutes nominates two students for the program. Applications without nominations are not accepted. Following the nomination, the applicants are required to fill in an online application, submit their CV, statement of purpose, research statement, and some supporting documents. Based on the applications, students are short-listed and are required to find a mentor in the United States. Having a mentor beforehand also works. The program organizers also help you to reach out to mentors from previous years. Once you get a mentor, the rest of the proceedings follow (getting the award and offer letters, the visa application, etc.). After being short-listed, I selected around 6 prospective mentors from different universities and shot them emails. I got a reply shortly from 4 of them asking to schedule an interview. I gave the interview for Harvard first and got through. What did they ask in the interview for Harvard? I just gave a presentation on my research paper and answered some related questions. That’s it! I also got an offer from the University of Southern California, where I was supposed to work on Natural Language Processing.
|
||||
|
||||
So, in the end, I had three internship offers, viz. from Naver Labs in South Korea, the University of Southern California, and Harvard University. Having a preference for academia, I chose Harvard over Naver Labs. Also, I was more inclined towards working in Computer Vision rather than Natural Language Processing and therefore, I went ahead with Harvard instead of USC.
|
||||
|
||||
In retrospect, I think that the SN Bose program lays more emphasis on the research profile of the applicants rather than their CGPA only. In my opinion, CGPA is actually not a good criterion for gauging someone’s research calibre. But that’s the way it is. A piece of advice, if you have a low CGPA, you are in for a tough fight. But you’ll get through :).
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## The Institute
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:90%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
Harvard University is the oldest higher education institution in the United States. Situated in Cambridge, MA, it is an Ivy League college and has the highest annual endowment in the world for an educational institution (around $40 billion). It is famous for the business, law, medical and engineering schools as well for its notable alumni, including Barack Obama, Franklin Roosevelt, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Natalie Portman.
|
||||
|
||||
## Project
|
||||
|
||||
My internship was a part of the Connectomics project, broadly involving the segmentation and analysis of brain scans obtained by electron microscopy (EM). The overall objective is to develop 3D maps of connections in the human brain to help in neuroscience. How so? There are many diseases and disorders that are attributed to “wrong wiring” somewhere in the brain. With interactive models of neuron wirings, neuroscientists can better understand these diseases and possibly arrive at a cure. The project further aims to improve the understanding of how the human brain actually works, how memories are stored and so on.
|
||||
|
||||
Multiple research groups at Harvard have been working in collaboration on this project for about ten years now. The reason why it's taking such a long time is the staggering amount of data associated with a single human brain. To give you an idea, it takes around 100 terabytes (roughly 100000 gigabytes) just to record all the connections in a salt grain-sized block of the brain! One of the tasks associated with this project is to detect mitochondria in neurons automatically. It turns out that mitochondria are very different in shape from what was taught to us in high school. Instead of the globular structure that you might remember from your high school biology textbook, mitochondria look something like this:
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:90%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
The conventional methods used for medical image segmentation fail for such non-convex morphologies. Another problem is that a large number of mitochondria are in contact with each other, making the problem more difficult. During my internship, I worked on developing and testing neural network architectures which take into account these priors and give better results than the standard methods.
|
||||
|
||||
## Work and Academics
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:90%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
The work environment at the lab is very accommodating. On paper, the interns are expected to work for around 40 hours a week. But that is flexible and largely depends on the amount of work on your hands. There are no specific timings to work, and the labs can be accessed anytime using a Harvard ID. People usually come in at around 10 in the morning, leave by around 5 or 6 in the evening and don’t work on weekends. Group meetings and lunches are held every week to catch up on work-related stuff or for chitchat. One thing that I really love about Harvard is that there are plenty of computing resources here. I could easily train multiple models at the same time, with each one being trained on 8 Graphical Processing Units (GPUs)!
|
||||
|
||||
Harvard has an exceptional research output and the people here work hard, no doubt. But they also take time out of their schedules for recreation and hobbies. There is a foosball table and a grand piano just outside my lab. I see people playing foosball or just trying out a new piece of music on the piano almost every day. There are a few people who play the piano really well, and it’s a delight to work with soothing tones playing in the background. The point is that they pursue their interests, be it academic or otherwise, passionately.
|
||||
|
||||
With MIT at a walking distance from Harvard, researchers from both the institutes collaborate regularly and students of one institute can attend courses at the other. Also, for the undergraduate program at Harvard (and at many other universities), students have three semesters to decide upon a major, unlike the universities in India where you have to choose a major at the time of admission. Both the institutes also allow students to take up multiple majors and minors (instead of one, as is the case at IITR) during their course of study. One of my friends at MIT is majoring in Physics and Philosophy, with minors in Maths and Music!
|
||||
|
||||
## The City
|
||||
|
||||
Boston, named after a small town in England, is a great city except for the erratic weather, which was a total bummer initially. It is a thriving port city with economic bases in finance, business services, biotechnology, and information technology. Thanks to multiple colleges and universities in the city, Boston has around 2000 start-ups. With a lot to explore, the weekends were usually packed. Various events, such as art walks, food festivals, and concerts, were organized from time to time. Other times, I would just hang out with some friends at MIT at one of its fraternities, Alpha Delta Phi, playing Cards Against Humanity. I also attended the orientation program organized for Bose and Khorana Scholars at the University of Chicago and visited New York recently.
|
||||
|
||||
Housing is expensive in Boston with the city having one of the highest costs of living in the United States. I rented an apartment with four other interns at Harvard from India, which eased things financially. The apartment was about 20 minutes away from the campus. I usually commuted by bus, which was quite convenient and affordable.
|
||||
|
||||
There is a wide variety of food to try out here. You can try out the local dishes such as the Boston Cream Pie and the New England Clam Chowder or experiment with other cuisines like Japanese, Korean, Thai, Lebanese, Mexican, etc. The Indian cuisine being on the spicier side, I initially found most of the food here rather bland. So, during the first month, we would cook Indian food almost daily at the apartment. Slowly, you get used to it and ease into the different cuisines.
|
||||
|
||||
Almost every department at Harvard has a cafeteria serving decent and affordable food. Each meal costs about 8 dollars. If you want to shell out a little more, you can go to nearby restaurants or cafes at Harvard Square, the historic centre of Cambridge. You can have pizza, burritos, waffles, gelato, burgers, salads, souvlaki, and whatnot. The list is endless. Although if you are a vegetarian, you might have to struggle a bit finding vegetarian options.
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing Up
|
||||
|
||||
Getting a research internship is difficult but has its own perks. You meet a lot of new people from different countries, experience a new culture, and learn a lot of new things. If you work dedicatedly, you can expect a strong recommendation letter from your mentor (which is useful
|
||||
for higher studies and even for getting a job) and a publication depending on how your project progresses. In my opinion, it’s worth the extra effort. If you get a chance, I’d strongly recommend going for a foreign research internship at least once during your undergrad at IIT Roorkee.
|
||||
|
||||
Cheers!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,49 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "There was a sense of infinity about those days, like they will last forever"
|
||||
tags: [wona, column]
|
||||
image: ruhela.jpg
|
||||
category: memoirs
|
||||
author: "Utkarsh Ruhela"
|
||||
excerpt: "You've left that room, that place, that safe haven. Do you feel anything? Do you feel different? Are you really oblivious to the fact that you will never be at that place where you spent 1500 days of your life?"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
You've left that room, that place, that safe haven. Do you feel anything? Do you feel different? Are you really oblivious to the fact that you will never be at that place where you spent 1500 days of your life? There was a sense of infinity about those days, like they will last forever.
|
||||
|
||||
You don’t miss your college perpetually like you miss your lover. No, it is sporadic. One moment you see a colonial structure resembling the James Thomason building and your mind drifts away; you sigh. Not of pain or missing, but the melancholy and a sweet ache that you might never get to run on that trail. Or go on those lavish South Indian meals on your bike.
|
||||
|
||||
That's why it has taken me more than a couple of months to pen this retrospective piece down. It is anti-climatic really, I haven't been missing college all that much, maybe it will dawn upon me slowly.
|
||||
|
||||
As I ponder upon my experiences, I wonder if I have performed upto the "mark". I slowly realised that the “mark” changes with time, as you move and grow through this time-space curve, so does your sense of purpose.
|
||||
|
||||
Gradually those Solani canal trails started calling me for another 5k run, the mighty Himalayas calling me to trek them, my friends calling me to show up for another short quiz session. In my own room, there was oblivion of The Anathema and vigour of The Who and Nirvana. Reading Seth or Dostoevsky after a session of recreation. Or, in my more lucid moments I had Paul Kalanithi or Herman Hesse with the cheapest and best Americano I have had. I tried to understand life through the lens of these eccentric experiences. My sense of purpose for a while was to experience everything that Roorkee and college had to offer.
|
||||
|
||||
Throughout my college life, a major white noise was that of seeking of validation for myself. I tried seeking it everywhere, in some academic subjects, in my discipline, in my meditation. No accolade, no achievement, no grade, no lover could satisfy that hollowness in long-term.
|
||||
|
||||
Since graduation, there's a sudden gong of mortality, of that finiteness of things. Those five years were magical. School to college transition was just a kink, to more fun times, to more independence. When you are in college, you have this infinite reservoir of energy and will. You're full of explosive optimism, looking forward to a life full of possibilities.
|
||||
|
||||
I used this mantra, whenever I was anxious or concerned about an issue, I would question if it would matter after 5 years. Because the things which are not under your control have a poetic sense of justifying themselves in the hindsight.
|
||||
|
||||
Funny how we were going to conquer the world just a couple of years ago, now we merely seek to find a place in this absurd (?) world. Has the definition of conquer changed or have we? Are we settling for less? Or have we learnt that Ozymandias fell too?
|
||||
|
||||
Here comes the sermon now.
|
||||
|
||||
There’s no grandiosity in your existence. Many existentialists have offered a similar thought. There’s no grandiosity, there are no perfect moments, there’s just plain human existence. All your problems are just humane, which are not going to go away after achieving that star-studded internship, placement, or PhD offer. Your life will still stay the same. All those thoughts will be still there after a fleeting moment of distraction due to exhilaration from your achievements. It all sounds gloomy so far, but people who know me personally would know that things aren’t bad for me. I have tried taking this outlook and morph into something positive, acting in “good faith” as Sartre would point out. Existentialists describe bad faith as phenomenon in which human beings, under pressure from social forces, adopt false values and disown their innate freedom, hence acting inauthentically. In essence, one must find their own sense of purpose.
|
||||
|
||||
All the productivity you require out of yourself stems from a sense of purpose, be it the JEE exam you took, or the course you aced at in college. That sense of purpose, even of temporary nature, lets you gather that will and do something. I know a part of my sense of purpose lies in learning different sports, languages, understanding humanity and nature more minutely. But, these are peripherals, as my friend coined this term for these interests. I am still to get to the crux of it. Or, I might find out there is no crux, the peripherals are all there is. The point is, we must explore and search for this meaning for ourselves.
|
||||
|
||||
Eventually you must realise that whatever you did was the best you could manage to do in those circumstances. So fret not for you are always putting in your best.
|
||||
|
||||
On a lighter note. Ten things the author recommends to try while in Roorkee (disclaimer— author might or might not have done all of this):
|
||||
|
||||
1. Trek the hell out of Uttarakhand, Himachal too if possible. Start with Chandrashila or Triund. Warning: Do not go to Gaumukh-Tapovan glacier in your trainer shoes, you might just fall off of a crevasse.
|
||||
1. Solani road stretches serenely till Bahadrabad, one should cycle along that stretch. It is a forty five kilometre cycle ride that will be etched in your memory forever.
|
||||
1. Try noting down every detail of your life in a journal for at least a week.
|
||||
1. There's a bridge connecting old Roorkee to Civil Lines area, which goes to the Cemetery. Visit both the places. Maybe take your girlfriend there (refer to disclaimer above) .
|
||||
1. Find friends in your seniors and juniors. Friends being the operative word. Don't create rigid hierarchies when dealing with human beings.
|
||||
1. Try going to the football field at night with your friends and run a 100meters dash in an inebriated state. Watch the sunrise too, it's a hell of a view from there.
|
||||
1. Play as much sports as you can. Also, you will never find an avenue better than sports to make friends.
|
||||
1. Try living your life in frugality for a week or a month. Save all the money and spend it on one meal. Just for kicks, you know.
|
||||
1. Attend as many SPIC MACAY concerts and institute lecture series as you can.
|
||||
1. Learn swimming if you don't know yet, and dive from the 10 meters diving platform. Also, go touch the bottom of the 20 feet(?) pool. The pressure down there is ethereal.
|
||||
1. Live.
|
||||
@ -1,80 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Goldman Sachs"
|
||||
image: "abhishek-kumar-1.jpg"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Abhishek Kumar"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'Goldman is probably one of those Day 1 firms that people across all the branches aspire to work for.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Goldman is probably one of those Day 1 firms that people across all the branches aspire to work for. This might be because of my prejudice or a small and biased sample space, but even while preparing, Goldman was the firm most of us targeted. All this buzz around GS made me apply for it.
|
||||
|
||||
## Criteria For Applying
|
||||
|
||||
JEE ALL is the eligibility criterion and that’s all they demand of you on paper, after that it’s about your cleverness, talent and preparation. Goldman shortlists all those who apply for an online test irrespective of your cgpa, branch etc.
|
||||
|
||||
## Online Test
|
||||
|
||||
The test is extremely crucial in the selection process (Your test score isn't only a standard to qualify for the interview, it is also taken into consideration while making the final decision, so make sure you give your best). The questions or the weightage of different streams seem to vary every year,I’ll try to give you a flavour of it:
|
||||
|
||||
**Coding section:** We had just one coding question whereas some IITs had two.The question appeared big and the story around it made it seem like it was tough but it was a straightforward question based on Hashmap.
|
||||
|
||||
**Computer Science Section:** This is a comprehension based section that checks your basic knowledge of data structures and operating systems. I felt one could answer it without any previous knowledge and just by going through the passage but a couple of beginner articles from geeksforgeeks should be good for you.
|
||||
|
||||
**Probability:** A lot of folks especially from the non circuital branches rely heavily or sometimes entirely on this section. This section had 8-10 questions of probability. You don’t have to do good in all the sections to get shortlisted, exceptional performance even in one section sometimes gets you a call for the interview but keep in mind that a huge number of people will solve 8 out of the 10 problems of probability, So evaluate your chances accordingly.
|
||||
|
||||
Sometimes, they have a section on machine learning as well, but last time, they had just two basic questions from ML which were in the computer science section itself.
|
||||
Balance your time properly, don’t spend your entire time coding only one problem nor leave it untouched because you were flirting with probability throughout.
|
||||
|
||||
## The Interview
|
||||
|
||||
Each division of Goldman that visits the campus, prepares its own rank list depending on a combination of questions from that test. And based on these lists, you can be shortlisted for one or more divisions. The count of interview rounds you have depends on how many divisions selected you in their lists.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Four division visited Roorkee last year. Risk, Technology, Securities and GIR(Global Investment Research). I was shortlisted for all the four and had almost continuous 7-8 hours of grilling interviews. It’s not this harsh for everyone, I have friends who made it through after a couple of rounds as well. The questions in the interview will be mostly from competitive programming or probability. Make sure you are thorough with whatever is included in your resume. I had an entire hour of interview on machine learning because my areas of interest mentioned it. Don’t unnecessarily write stuff to fill your resume or to make it look big. Sometimes, you may experience that the interviewer is asking stuff that you have no knowledge of, he may encourage you to think about it. Do not hesitate to try such questions, they are asked purely with the intention of judging your approach and not your knowledge or the correctness of your answer.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Almost all the rounds have a very similar structure. It starts with ‘tell us something about yourself’, a couple of questions of competitive programming, something from your resume or a question from probability and ends with “Do you have something to ask from us?”. I don’t really know if it matters but people recommend to ask something and so I did.
|
||||
|
||||
“Tell us about yourself” is the section that can be used to play around a little. Tell them something about yourself that might have relevance to the interviewer and he may end up discussing that rather than a random question which might not click for you at that time. This doesn’t always work but you don’t lose anything by trying. 2 out of my 8 rounds were based on Java,OOP and RXJava, because I had brought up my second year’s internship where I worked on these(Preparing your resume accordingly can do this trick as well). But it’s up to you to decide if you really have a strong suite that may interest the interviewer or whether you are good at solving these problems there.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Work
|
||||
|
||||
### Project
|
||||
|
||||
There is a wide spectrum of work or the areas that Goldman offers but what you will be working on is not in your hand nor do you have any way of finding it. Approximately a month after your selection, you’ll get a mail that will have your division, this can help you get a rough idea of what work you are going to get. I was asked in the final round which division I wanted to work with (It was probably because I was interviewed for multiple divisions), but honestly, I had no idea of what each division does. You will not know till the interview the divisions which are visiting Roorkee so I don’t think this helps much.All I said was that I want something on the intersection of tech and finance and probably all of their division except technology fits this.
|
||||
|
||||
My team worked on core systems and there was not much of finance except having the chance of interacting with people who are good at it. There is not much that I can disclose about my work because of a non-disclosure that I have signed and the fact that Goldman takes it very seriously.I’ll try to give you an abstract of the nature of work. There were a couple of projects that I worked on. In the first one I was expected to research on a new database design,prototype and deploy a scalable real time database design for their data on which they carried out a huge number of calculations everyday (I am not sure if I can write what these calculations are for), this project was expected to save a couple of thousand computing hours for them. Second one was mostly around debugging a complicated platform that they already had. It took a lot more memory in a few scenarios than expected and crashed, I had to find the component that caused it and identify its origin.
|
||||
|
||||
### Work Culture
|
||||
|
||||
This is something that is not uniform across Goldman and depends heavily on your team. But one thing is constant: You will have work to do.
|
||||
|
||||
My team didn’t have any timing as such. Everyone had their own set of deliverables and they spent time accordingly .You don’t really have to report to anyone everyday or every week for that matter. There will be times when you can walk in at 12 and leave at 7 but there will also be times when you stay till 2 AM, it's about how you manage your work and how much of it you want to do during your internship. The best part(may not be true for all teams), I had absolute autonomy on my project.
|
||||
|
||||
It is not that you get free from work if you finish your project early. I remember someone saying, “We are never out of work at Goldman”. But no one would push you to work more or tell you that you are expected to do more, except during your mid term review when your manager gives you feedback on how you have been doing so far. You will definitely be judged for your work though(Your PPO’s decision is mainly based on this).
|
||||
|
||||
The best part about Goldman is its flat organization. You can walk up to anyone without an appointment and have a chat. Your manager isn't always right just because of his seniority. You and your views are valued equally. Obviously, this is the way it is intended to be and there may be scenarios where this may not be true but luckily I had a supercool manager in this respect as well.
|
||||
|
||||
The biggest perk that you can probably take away as mentioned by some really senior leader during our orientation is, “You work with a set of really smart and passionate people and the more you network, the more you can take away from here”. Your life can get really dull and hectic in Goldman in some time if you are missing out on this part. Goldman organizes a couple of networking sessions for the interns with senior employees of the firms(Free lunch would be what you can look up to, if you don’t like talking).
|
||||
|
||||
Goldman also takes you out on a day for Community TeamWork. This is with the motive to give back to the society and understand the diversity that this world has. I was taken to a wildlife hospital where we painted and cleaned cages/shelters of monkeys, parrots, bears, deers in which they are kept during their treatment.There is an intern party that the company sponsors other than numerous others that your team takes you out for(Team dependent again, you gotta be lucky).
|
||||
|
||||
Towards the end,you have a poster presentation(expo) kind of event where you showcase/present your work to entire division(It happens in the Risk Division, not sure of others).This is a chance for you to get noticed by the Managing Directors and other senior leaders and make a good mark . Trust me, your two months of hard work is on one side and the visibility that you get on this day is on the other. You can and should definitely aim to shine out among everyone.
|
||||
|
||||
### Place
|
||||
|
||||
Goldman has shifted to a new office this year. This office is crazy and has amazing things to fall in love with. More than anything else; the monitor. You have a giant beast, a huge curved monitor, a super fancy lift,recreation room, gym, adjustable desk(You can stand and work) to mention a few. And, Bangalore is too famous for me to say anything (Very bad traffic :P).
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing Up
|
||||
|
||||
Generalising anything would be tough about Goldman, because be it work or culture, its extremely diverse across different teams. But Goldman has a set of principles that it follows extremely seriously and expects you to do the same. It is a brilliant place for those who don’t limit their work to their desk and to whose who may want to explore the finance world but stay connected to technology at the same time.
|
||||
|
||||
To those who want to work with cutting edge technology and are sure about it, you may want to reconsider this option.
|
||||
|
||||
You should stay connected with friends from other IITs, there will be around a week’s gap in the recruitment. So you may get a rough idea of the question paper pattern from them.
|
||||
|
||||
**Note:** Since Goldman Sachs doesn't allow any pictures of the premises to be take, these images were procured from the internet.
|
||||
@ -1,44 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Brandenburg Technical University"
|
||||
image: "harsh1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Harsh Dabariya"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'The internship season starts with the advent of autumn semester accompanying a stressful atmosphere. But as this went on, it became smooth, fun and a great learning experience for me. So, here’s a journey of me landing myself a research internship and the knowledge gained during this period.'
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The internship season starts with the advent of autumn semester accompanying a stressful atmosphere. But as this went on, it became smooth, fun and a great learning experience for me. So, here’s a journey of me landing myself a research internship and the knowledge gained during this period.
|
||||
Making it there:
|
||||
|
||||
As my third year started, I was quite sure that work in the mechanical core sector is what I would love to do during my internship. But still, I wasn’t quite sure as to which amongst a core industry and a research internship to go forward with. I had some experience of a research intern due to one performed after my second year and also knew a bit about the core industries through various seniors.
|
||||
Having secured a decent CGPA and some research experience, I decided to try for both the fields. The first to come up was ITC, followed by BAJAJ, and I applied for both only to be rejected later. In ITC, I couldn’t make it to the interview round, but for BAJAJ, I got to the interview stage but wasn’t selected. During this time, I was also looking for a research internship abroad. There are various research internship programs available most of which offer scholarship like DAAD-WISE, MITACS, NTU-India connect, SN Bose, etc. The number of such programs is increasing year by year, and we get notified about these by the international relation cell of IITR. But, the essential source of me knowing about these programs was my seniors. I applied for DAAD-WISE, MITACS, NTU-India connect and was selected for the DAAD-WISE scholarship.
|
||||
MITACS offers a wide range of projects running in various Canadian institutes. From there, you need to select seven projects in order of priority along with your curriculum vitae (CV), transcripts, and Statement of Purpose (SOP). The professor you choose and your SOP are the significant factors on which your selection is dependent.
|
||||
DAAD-WISE program targets undergraduate (pre-final year) students who aim to do a research internship at a publicly-funded German higher education institution or a research institute. For applying, you need to have an offer letter from a German institute, which is the most time-consuming part of the application process. So, starting to mail the professors early may provide you a better opportunity. Your mail consists of a cover letter along with your CV, both of which should be appealing and depict your true potential. Your cover letter should be written explicitly according to the research interests of the professor, which shows that you have a decent idea about their work and requirements. Also, while preparing your CV, keep in mind to lay more focus on the academic aspects with a clear picture of the research you have performed. Your areas of interest should be per the professor’s requirements. The most important factor during this phase is to remain patient. There would be several instances when your mails are not even read but never lose patience until the end.
|
||||
Although a CGPA requirement of 8.5 is required for application, after analysing the previous results, students below a CGPA of 9 have very less chances of getting through. A mistake that I committed during my application was me directly mailing to the professors. The professors usually are very busy to reply to your mails so, prefer sending mail to their lab assistants or PhDs. Nearly after 15 mails, I got two positive and four negative replies. So, at last, I was able to get a WISE scholarship for my research at Brandenburg Technical University.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Work:
|
||||
|
||||
Brandenburg Technical University is a renowned technical university (especially for its mechanical engineering) in the Brandenburg state with two campuses in Cottbus and Senftenberg. My lab, i.e., engineering mechanics and machine dynamics, is located on the Senftenberg campus.
|
||||
My research project comprised of both experimental and theoretical portions. Initially certain tensile, cyclic tests were performed on polymers at variable environmental conditions. Then a theoretical study on the behaviour of viscoplastic materials was done, and a material model was developed in MATLAB for a 1D response. The results obtained from the experiments were compared with those derived from the MATLAB model. In the end, I was expected to develop a 3D viscoplastic material model that correctly depicts the behaviour of polymers, and I was lucky enough to complete the task within the time boundation. I was grateful that the work was exciting and had proper help in case of a problem. The job was not very demanding but required sincerity and patience.
|
||||
During this, I learnt a great deal of MATLAB along with obtaining a lot of information about viscoplastic materials and how they are becoming the next big thing in mechanics. Experimental work made me well versed with UTM machine and infrared camera used for catching the temperature variations during testing. One thing that I observed was the great deal of professionalism and sincerity that people in Germany possess. Despite this, people were also accommodating and caring. I usually reported my progress to one of the PhDs (assigned to me by the professor) and sometimes, the professor. The professor usually visited the lab once a week and discussed about the project and the other stuff as well, which was very comforting.
|
||||
There were no fixed working hours, but I usually remained in the lab from 10 am to 5 pm. Also, it was a five day week, so I could easily go on trips on weekends, which I most others were doing in Senftenberg. I used to have lunch with the other lab members in which the professor also joined us sometimes. This helped me in adjusting better and also increased the joy of living and working in Germany.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## The Place:
|
||||
|
||||
Senftenberg is a town in southern Brandenburg, Germany, capital of the Oberspreewald-Lausitz district. It was located in the eastern part of Germany which is considered as the not-so prosperous part of Germany. It does not have a huge population or many big buildings, but its beauty lies in the natural environment, which makes it quite and calm. I resided in a student dormitory, which was close to the university and some of the supermarkets, making life very comfortable. Initially, in May, it was quite cold out here but became warmer in June, making it a familiar condition.
|
||||
|
||||
## Travelling around:
|
||||
|
||||
The best part of being in Europe was having a Schengen visa and getting to visit almost every European country. This was supported by an excellent public transport system which helped me to explore not only Germany and other countries as well. I saw various aspects of life during this— best represented by the Berlin wall separating two sides. They are named the same but have substantial differences in culture and standard of living. I was able to visit Hungary, Amsterdam, and Italy, with each country having a distinct flavour and culture. But one thing was the same everywhere, the people and their helpfulness. Travelling made me much more confident and somewhat improved my decision making.
|
||||
|
||||
## TAKEAWAYS:
|
||||
|
||||
This internship was one of the best experiences of my life and added much to my personality. Living on your own for three months makes you more independent and maybe more efficient.
|
||||
At last, I want to say if you are willing to get yourself a research internship or even want to try research, this is your best possible chance. So, put in all your effort in preparing your cover letters, CVs, and SOPs. Also, CGPA does matter, so always try to maintain a decent CGPA. And luckily, if you get a research internship, still maintain a proper balance between work and leisure. This may provide a good recommendation, further helping in strengthening your CV and getting an MS or Ph.D. opportunity.
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,51 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Flipkart Design"
|
||||
image: "nipun1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Nipun Vashishta"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: '
|
||||
A week after I joined Flipkart as a design intern, I entered a conference room where the user research team was sharing their insights on a study they conducted for the next hundred million users, who are not the usual tech-savvy users, consumers that are not part of the millennials or Gen-Z demographic.'
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
A week after I joined Flipkart as a design intern, I entered a conference room where the user research team was sharing their insights on a study they conducted for the next hundred million users, who are not the usual tech-savvy users, consumers that are not part of the millennials or Gen-Z demographic. To understand why they do not shop online, the team conducted a year long study on a single emotion - Trust. I was overwhelmed by the amount of effort the whole team puts in to understand a single human emotion out of the dozen emotions which stopped them from shopping online. I knew at that time that the organisation is pursuing design at its core. I knew at that moment that I would get to learn and work with a lot of brilliant minds in the upcoming three months.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## How I joined Flipkart
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
I joined Flipkart in the Product Design team for the summers through an on-campus internship. I was never the ‘on-campus intern’ guy in college, since there are a very few companies which come to campus to hire designers. But in the past 3-4 years, design culture in IIT-R has seen exponential growth, and designers working in the industry have also noticed this trend about ‘Roorkee Design’ so a few companies have started to hire on-campus as well. I initially applied at Flipkart for an internship off-campus, they considered my case and took it forward. I waited for a month (not that unusual when you are applying off-campus) to know the status of my application and eventually lost hope of ever hearing back. But one day I got a call from a IIT-R alum who is working at Flipkart as a Product Designer. He told me that the management has decided to come to campus for hiring, given the large number of applications from IIT-R for both full time and intern roles. The hiring process started just a few days before end-term examination (to all those who get sad if they do not get an intern in the peak intern season when all companies come to campus - please sit back, do your work and have some patience), the whole process took almost two weeks. They shortlisted students based on their portfolios and the shortlisted candidates were given a design assignment that they were supposed to do in a limited time. On the basis of design submissions, they picked two students from our campus. There was a small informal interview after that, and we were in!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Wait, what is Product Design?
|
||||
|
||||
The role ‘Product Design’ might seem a little ambiguous to some. And it is not their fault, since it is a constantly evolving field. Have you noticed how you experience different emotions when you are using Instagram as opposed to when you’re scrolling through Facebook? If yes, than the designers have done their jobs well. Product design at tech-organisations is more inclined towards digital product design or designing experience for a product with digital touchpoints. It is about understanding the needs and constraints of users, business, and technology, which then forms the basis for designing an optimal experience for potential consumers of the product. If you want to pursue design as a career, start looking for the ‘why’ in everything, in every app you use from Snapchat to Linkedin. Think about why Snapchat looks the way it does. Why are you met with a camera when you open it? Try going through as many design books and articles as possible,since there isn’t really anyone on campus to teach and acquaint you with the industry standards. Try working on a real or concept project in collaboration with developers or people with business ideas in the campus. Or just look around and take a second to notice all the problems around you then pick one and think of what you can do for it.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Work and experience
|
||||
|
||||
Coming back to my internship experience, Flipkart Bangalore HQ has around 10,000 employees, and there are numerous teams to handle each and every part of Flipkart. I was working in the Product Design team under UAG (User Acquisition and Growth) segment of Flipkart. I was assigned in the user engagement and retention pod with a mentor and a manager for any help that I needed, and also an HR buddy whose role in my whole internship is still questionable except handling my relocation brilliantly.
|
||||
|
||||
My project at Flipkart was to design an end to end experience for one segment of Flipkart Travel which involved online ticket booking (I cannot tell you the specifics of the project because it has not been launched yet). Week one started with understanding first how Flipkart functions, what different products we have and how we are to approach design for different projects in a different manner. So during my first week there, most of my time was spent on ‘1 on 1 interviews’ with my peers and seniors, it taught me a lot about different design processes people use in the industry for different types of projects. At an organisation like Flipkart, it becomes essential to understand business and practical aspects of your design too. If you create a design that does not make profits but it has a good experience then it is no good for anyone. Then I started to understand how the travel industry works and what kind of people actually come to book a ticket online, what are their intents, what are their goals, how do they behave, how they see things. Before designing any product, it is really important to know everything about the people that you are designing for and the industry around it. If somebody asks you why you have used list-view instead of grid-view in your designs, you should have a good justification behind it, and that only comes when you know your product inside-out. I tried a few methods like ‘Survey Form’ to Flipkart customers to understand the demographics and traits of the users we are aiming at, and got really interesting insights out of it. ‘Competitor Analysis’ to know the current industry standards and use them to cut down time on research that has already been done. ‘1:1 interviews’ and ‘Recall sessions’ with users to know what problems they are facing in the current systems in place. ‘Card sorting’ to prioritise and group different elements in my designs. All these practices were relevant to my project and helped me, but it is not necessary to use these for each project. Every project at Flipkart has its own requirements and according to that you create your process.
|
||||
|
||||
By the end of my two month journey, My designs were done and ready for approval and feedback by the design team, iterating on the same, followed by approvals and feedback by the directors and senior directors of the company before the whole thing could be handed over to the developers, who would then push it into production. Being a designer, your job isn’t done when the designs are. You have to align all the stakeholder teams on the same page as you and your design research, to be in the loop with developers when they are developing your ideas, make sure that what you designed and what went live matches, it is not at all a desk job and is actually quite fun.
|
||||
|
||||
Coming to the fun part/work-life balance/work culture, whatever you associate it with. Flipkart is one of those huge corporates that still have a start-up-y vibe to their work environment (except when you have to take approvals, or when you have to manage your calendar everyday, or when you spend more time in meetings than actually working) But jokes apart, they have a really good working culture, it is fast-paced, you face new challenges on an individual and organisation level everyday. They don’t force you to work, or even come to office (unlimited work from home, yes) as long as you can keep up with deadlines. On day one I was asked what my expectations were, instead of forcing their expectations on me. During my induction, they took to me warehouses to see how a product actually arrives at your doorstep. I had so many formal and informal outings with the team in two and a half months that it wasn’t easy to keep track.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing up the summers
|
||||
|
||||
Flipkart design has a very strong design team as of now with almost 30 people, and one of the best user-research teams in India too. For anyone who wants to learn about design research and conduct it by going to ground should try aiming for user researcher roles. For designers who are more inclined towards creating experiences hand to hand with business, go for product design role. For both of these roles you will need some hands on experience with a few college-time design projects. Projects which are not just designing screens but also involve social, business, human and tech aspects. Collaborate a lot, work a lot, practice a lot, observe a lot.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,55 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Germany: DAAD"
|
||||
tags: [wona, column]
|
||||
image: kashish1.png
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
author: "Kashish Garg"
|
||||
excerpt: "Start of the third year is a confusing time - everyone is talking about the internship they want to land. With the amount of money offered in each of them and other pros and pros, it starts to get a little tense as time proceeds. One thing that is usually discussed id if one should pursue a research internship at all. In this article, I will explain why I did a research internship and what benefits it had on me."
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Start of the third year is a confusing time - everyone is talking about the internship they want to land. With the amount of money offered in each of them and other pros and pros, it starts to get a little tense as time proceeds. One thing that is usually discussed id if one should pursue a research internship at all. In this article, I will explain why I did a research internship and what benefits it had on me.
|
||||
|
||||
## Making it there
|
||||
In the beginning, I was not sure whether I wanted to pursue a research internship at all. Having done one research internship already in my second year summers, I wanted to explore the possibility of working in a core related company. I was sure that I wouldn’t do a coding related intern since my knowledge there was pretty much zero.
|
||||
|
||||
During the intern season, I applied for ITC and Bajaj, only to be rejected by both. During this, I decided to go for a research intern, DAAD WISE to be specific. The only reason at the beginning was the possibility to explore Europe for two and a half months on someone else’s money. For DAAD, I mailed around 20 professors, getting a negative response from around 5, and positive from 2. I got the offer letter from both of them and eventually, ended up applying for an Intern at Rostock University.
|
||||
|
||||
Although there are a lot of funded foreign internship programs, I applied only for DAAD, Mitacs, and NTU-India Connect. I didn’t get selected for Mitacs but did manage to get both DAAD WISE scholarship and NTU-India Connect. The central dilemma I faced was choosing between these two. On one side, it was one of the top-ranked institutes in the world, and on the other, it was the name of DAAD and the amount of money. I chose the latter because I didn’t want to spend money out of my pocket while doing an internship. Also, the project offered at Rostock sounded more interesting to me.
|
||||
|
||||
If you are looking for DAAD WISE, the main hurdle you have to cross is getting an offer letter from a German university. For that, you should start at the earliest as it gets a bit tense when you are not receiving any replies. Starting in August-end should be good enough. Also, take care in writing the cover letter and try not to make it sound generic. Attach your resume to the mail and a project report of any project or internship that you might have done. For resume, it is an excellent option to build it online on ShareLaTex. Also, do mention that you are looking for funding from DAAD and would not require any funding from their side.
|
||||
|
||||
After you are selected, the only thing you have to worry about is booking the air tickets, finding accommodation and getting the VISA. The VISA part is straightforward once you have the scholarship.
|
||||
|
||||
## Life in Rostock
|
||||
Rostock is located in the eastern part of Germany, which is usually considered to be a lot cheaper than the western side. But, if you are looking to stay only for three odd months, it gets hard to find affordable accommodation. The best option that is available is the studentenwerk hostels. They are pretty cheap and would be located close to the university. However, in my case, studentenwerk Rostock didn’t allow a stay of fewer than six months, and hence, I had to look for other options. There is a website called wg-gesucht, which is an excellent portal for finding shared accommodation in Europe. Although there are a lot of scammers on the site, you can be safe by not agreeing to pay anything in advance. I used that, and after a lot of requests, I finally found an affordable accommodation, the only problem was it was 3 km from the workplace. I had an option to use the tram for getting there, but I decided to walk both to save money and explore the city. Also, my accommodation was located close to the harbor, so it was nice to go out for a walk in the evening or on weekends.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Eating outside is expensive, and I had to cook for myself, starting with simple things like an omelette to more complex ones. I did lunch at the university canteen which offers a lot of variety and an excellent student discount. The work culture in Germany is of five days a week, Friday and Saturday evenings are usually spent partying at a club or drinking beer. The surroundings are spotless, and people follow the traffic rules religiously, and there is no honking on roads, which makes walking all the more enjoyable. My flatmate was a German, and so, I got to know a lot of things about German culture from him. One of these was how to open a beer bottle with a water bottle or a spoon. Just a bit of advice, It’s a good option to carry some food items like daal and spices by yourself from India. It can be costly in Germany and sometimes hard to find even. I also took some packets of Maggi as it helps when you don’t want to cook. For other stuff, it’s good to see some Indians already living there, by joining a Facebook group called Indians in Germany. They can advise you more on what to bring by yourself and what can you get there only.
|
||||
|
||||
## Traveling in Europe
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
It is difficult to explain in words how much I enjoyed living and traveling around Europe. The Schengen Visa allows you to visit 26 countries, which is more than one can explore. In all, I visited three other countries apart from Germany (Rostock, Berlin, and Hamburg) which were Netherlands (Amsterdam), Hungary (Budapest) and Italy (Venice, Florence, and Rome). Traveling was expensive, but it was an excellent option to buy a bus pass called interflix. Using that, you can go to any city on the bus five times just for 100 euros. And the buses here are equipped with on-board toilets and free Wi-Fi, so long journeys are not that troublesome. For staying, hostel culture is prevalent in Europe where you can find affordable accommodation in a mixed dorm room. Here, you can meet a lot of new people from different parts of the world. I shared rooms with people from Italy, New Zealand, America, England, and Russia during my travels. Also, the people here are quite friendly and courteous, and you will always find people who can speak English, so communication is not a big problem. Although, I’d advice to download German dictionary offline and the language of any country you plan to visit.
|
||||
|
||||
Watching the fireworks show while enjoying a cruise ride in Budapest was one of the best experiences for me, so was roaming around in the streets of Florence. Also, trying different cuisines in Europe is a pleasant experience. In particular, the Italian Pizza and gelato. Public transportation in Europe is excellent and so, traveling around in different parts of the city is easy. Overall, this is the most beautiful part of a foreign research internship.
|
||||
|
||||
## Work
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Having done research internship both in India and Germany, I’d say that the experience has been a lot different than I’d imagine. People here pursue research because they want to and take it professionally. They work quite seriously on weekdays during the working hours and enjoy as much on weekends. For me, I was usually in the office from 10 to 3 or 4, due to the light workload. My main project was related to Energy planning, which involved reading about the renewable energy scenario in Germany, Mecklenburg vorpommern in particular and learning new software for the same. Based on an existing model of the Hanseatic city of Rostock, I extended the model to include the whole of Mecklenburg- Vorpommern. For a part of the project, I also had to learn a bit of python, which was both fun and also an enriching experience. I learned to use Pandas in python to refine data. The refined data was then used to plot graphs to compare simulation and experimental data. It taught me the value of coding in research. I used to have lunch with my guide and other Ph.D. guys, which was an excellent place to talk and make new friends. Overall, more than just technical knowledge, it was an enriching experience for me comprising of both new learnings and fun.
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing it up
|
||||
As this was the first time I was traveling to a foreign country, the experience was bound to be remarkable. I followed traffic rules religiously like I never did before, had to learn to eat with a knife and fork.
|
||||
|
||||
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and you can never travel like this except when you are a student. Apart from the knowledge you gain, the life you live for these two-three months will live with you forever as memories. Also, for getting a foreign research internship, having a good cover letter is a must. Try to send personalized emails to each professor and work on your SOP (Statement of purpose). Also, your C.G.P.A. does matter, so try to keep it up. Also, people here seem to have a lot of expectations from a DAAD scholar, so try to do some work while also taking out time to travel.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,40 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: DAAD"
|
||||
image: tanya1.png
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Tanya Ratra"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'In this article, I have tried to summarise my internship experience in short and mainly focused on the "making it there" section. For all those who wish to score a research internship, I hope this article gives you a good starting point.'
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
In this article, I have tried to summarise my internship experience in short and mainly focused on the "making it there" section. For all those who wish to score a research internship, I hope this article gives you a good starting point.
|
||||
|
||||
## Making It There
|
||||
|
||||
To be honest I was not trying to get a foreign research internship as I had done one in my sophomore year. I wished to do a foreign industrial intern in an ideal case as in a foreign internship, apart from learning technical skills you also hone your interpersonal skills and learn to see things from a different perspective. I was only applying for research internship programs as a back-up. However, not finding something suitable in industries landed me up in this internship.
|
||||
|
||||
I had applied to various programmes like DAAD, MITACS, SN BOSE, NTU-India Connect, ANU-FRT and 2-3 more, I guess :p. I will be writing another article soon for the
|
||||
applying procedure and making a suitable SOP, However, I will try to cover all the major points for applying to DAAD here.
|
||||
|
||||
So, In DAAD-WISE program you first need to have an invitation letter from any german professor before applying to the program. Hence you need to start with emailing the professor. I searched for the QS ranking of the universities in Germany and then searched for profiles of professor in catalysis as I had prior experience in the same. For students who don't have prior research experience, I would still encourage you all to apply for different programs as I didn't have any research project in my sophomore year but still made it to the University of Tokyo Research Internship Program. The only thing that is required is a proper presentation. You need to present yourself as a dedicated and sincere student who is interested in the topic the prof is pursuing.
|
||||
|
||||
Coming back to DAAD, in the mailing procedure, I had sent 10 emails in top 2-3 universities of Germany. I got an acceptance from Humboldt University and TU Berlin and I chose the former as I liked the project more. Also, I was lucky enough to get a reply this early. Don’t hesitate to write more emails if you are not getting a reply. The trick is to write more personalised emails, just don't copy-paste the same mail for every professor. I generally use to write 3 paragraphs in a mail and dedicate one to the work of the professor and the rest two remained the same in every mail. Write the email in such a way that the professor gets to know that you have read his papers and are truly interested in his work. Further, follow-ups play a very important role. I got both the acceptance mails on follow-ups, therefore schedule them wisely.
|
||||
|
||||
Once you have the invitation letter you require one recommendation letter and an SOP for applying. In DAAD-WISE program, C.G.P.A also plays an important role. Again, to be brutally honest, you require something above 9.3 or so to get selected. However, other programmes don't look at the grade-point that much and I too believe that C.G.P.A is not the right criteria to judge someone’s research calibre.
|
||||
|
||||
## Work and the Place
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:90%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
My work here at the Lab is to develop a photocatalyst for CO2 reduction. The lab timings are chill; 9-5, five days a week. You will be asked to leave the lab by five because being an undergrad you are not allowed in the lab alone. Hence you have enough time to roam around and explore the city. As every foreign internship, another common perk is travelling. Further, in Europe, inter-country travel is cheaper than intercity travel. Consequently, you can travel 2-3 different countries during the weekend :p. Besides, talking specifically about Berlin, It is well known for its nightlife. So if you are a party person like me you won’t even know where your weekends passed. So, I would recommend DAAD-WISE for students who want to have a taste of research or for those who love exploring new places and cultures. The difference I felt in the research culture in Germany was that I was not just doing experimental things but was also developing scientific reasoning to improvise my project.
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing Up
|
||||
|
||||
On the whole, I would say I absolutely enjoyed my stay in Germany; working in lab, travelling and obviously the weekend parties!! One last thing that I want to say is related to the on-campus internship period, Everyone has some expectations from themselves and what they want to do. I just want to advice all the juniors from my experience that, please don't panic or be disheartened if things don't go as you would want them to. Just be patient and do your best and trust me, hard-work does pay at the end. I hope you all have a lovely experience in getting your coveted internship!!
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:90%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,88 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Carnegie Mellon University"
|
||||
image: "dakshit1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Dakshit Agrawal"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'My attempt to summarize the mind-boggling journey I have had in the past year, from being in for the long haul while applying for research internships, finally landing one at the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University via the SN Bose Scholarship, to having a fruitful and joyous summer in the States.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
My attempt to summarize the mind-boggling journey I have had in the past year, from being in for the long haul while applying for research internships, finally landing one at the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University via the SN Bose Scholarship, to having a fruitful and joyous summer in the States.
|
||||
|
||||
## Scenario Before August 2018:
|
||||
|
||||
I started reading about AI and deep learning seriously during the summer after my first year in college. Some research projects under professors at IIT-R during the following semester helped me develop an idea of how a research problem is formulated and approached. With this experience, I was able to convince professors at ETS Montreal to be my advisors during the summer after my second year. We submitted our research work to the EmotiW 2018 challenge, and surprisingly, ranked 4th among all participants. The awesome benefit though? A paper published in ICMI 2018 as a result of our novel approach in the challenge.
|
||||
|
||||
It’s that summer which turned around my internship plans. How? Two things:
|
||||
|
||||
The experience during the summers helped me realize that research in Deep Learning was the primary thing I wanted to do, specifically I wanted to improve certain aspects for a better application to real-world scenarios.
|
||||
Having a research paper made me believe that I should be getting a lot of opportunities to work in some of the big colleges (totally not true as I found out later).
|
||||
|
||||
## Landing that Internship:
|
||||
|
||||
The top 5 Department Rankers of CSE get a direct offer from Adobe Research, which is a pretty sweet deal given that you don’t have to go through nerve-wracking days and nights during the internship season giving tests and interviews (believe me, it takes its toll, unless you get an offer in the first week). Most of the other on-campus internship profiles are software engineering based. After consulting with seniors about their experiences, I just didn’t believe I would be able to do the work that I wanted to do and hence opted out of the internship season itself, banking on my previous summer research experience to land me an internship at a good research lab. Little did I know that I was in for a long run of applications.<br>
|
||||
|
||||
A tip I got from my seniors was to start early in emailing professors regarding internship opportunities. So, from August to December, I kept on emailing professors at various labs, sending well-curated and specific emails, as well as applying to numerous research programs. In January, I got an email that I had been “provisionally” shortlisted as an SN Bose Scholar, meaning I would get a scholarship if I found an advisor in a US university research lab. Backing up a bit: the SN Bose scholarship was a two-stage process. Firstly, around September, I was nominated by my department (only 2 from each department could apply to the program). The research experience I had played a major role in the nomination. Having a good CG definitely helps, but I believe it shouldn’t be a strong criterion if your research experience is great. After getting nominated, I applied to the SN Bose program in October and was one of the 50 students selected out of the 1500 odd applicants in India. The SN Bose scholarship provides $2500 as scholarship money, flight tickets as well as reimbursement of the health insurance (a necessity in the US). In short, I now had the funding but needed a research lab to go to. You would think that my summers would be sorted in a week, but it took another 2 months to finally find someone who agreed to have me over for the summers. But it was sure worth the wait, since I got a research internship offer at the Machine Learning Department at CMU, the #1 ranked school for that department in the world. There were many learnings from the 7-8 months of applying to various research labs of which some of the important ones I list down:
|
||||
|
||||
1. Apply to places that actually interest you, else you might waste your whole summer intern hoping you had gone somewhere else.
|
||||
|
||||
2. Be specific, to-the-point and polite in your emails, but don’t dwell too long in drafting one. A little blunt here, but if a professor is searching for an intern, they’ll show interest; if not, there won’t be a reply. It’s as simple as that.
|
||||
|
||||
3. Install Mailtracker to at least give you the satisfaction that your email has been read (or misery that you got rejected besides the prof reading it, half-full half-empty scenario). However, make sure that you leave no evidence that you’re using it. Professors do deem it as off-putting if they receive a mail with Mailtracker.
|
||||
|
||||
4. Don’t be hesitant or judgemental of applying to lower-ranked universities. You need to get rid of the mentality that “ranking of college > research lab”. It works the other way around in research.
|
||||
|
||||
5. Just hang in there. You’ll spend lots of hours sending emails. You will hardly get a response. I am talking about 5-6 replies from 45-50 well-curated emails. Even most of those will be negative, but the prof was kind enough to reply. Some people get lucky, and have their summer plans sorted by November. Some don’t, and have their plans sorted out by May. But if you persevere, you’ll get through. :)
|
||||
|
||||
## Work Experience:
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
To start with, the US probably has the most stringent and longest visa process, and it takes nearly 2 months to get the J-1 visa. Thankfully, I was able to get it in time and was in Pittsburgh by May 14. Carnegie Mellon University is world-renowned in Computer Science, and its Machine Learning Department is ranked #1 in the world. My advisor was Katerina Fragkiadaki, whose current work was primarily to find a good 3D scene representation for embodied agents to use, and using that representation on various computer vision and reinforcement learning tasks. Her lab had found a viable way to learn 3D scene representations from multiple 2D images. Why 3D? They gave a much better understanding of the scene, especially when some of the objects in question were occluded by others in 2D images.<br>
|
||||
|
||||
For Actor-Critic based algorithms of reinforcement learning, you need a large sample pool of steps (an action taken by an agent in the simulation) and rewards (score the agent gets for taking that action, the more the better). These samples were being collected on the CPU via Mujoco (a standard simulation environment for RL), which is pretty slow. Shifting the sampling process to the GPU would make things a heck lot faster.<br>
|
||||
|
||||
So, there I was shifting all of the agent step and reward calculations, as well as the 2D image inputs for generating the 3D representations, onto a fairly new simulator called Nvidia FleX, which ran solely on the GPU and whose only resources to refer to were the documentation and source code. The work was way out of my comfort zone, having to deal with C++ code and reading through the source code of the inner workings of a simulator. I did expect a much more deep learning centric work, but I trained just one neural network during the whole internship. Most of the time, I was scavenging for solutions through the source code, and it wasn’t easy at all. But working on a simulator gave me experience and confidence of being able to create a new environment in Nvidia FleX, and also a more general understanding of what RL algorithms require from simulators. <br>
|
||||
|
||||
The atmosphere of the place, however, was quite relaxed, with extremely flexible work hours. People solely care about the work getting done by a certain deadline, although that was also flexible for me as I was working on something completely new. The workplace is pretty open, with lots of areas for discussions where you can just write on the wall (and erase it afterwards :P). There are lounges where you can get coffee and free snacks, and sit around to chat with someone about almost anything, since there is such a large diversity of people in the department, as well as the college in general. People respect your personal space, allowing you to work literally at any place. Just walking around the campus, you can see people sitting on the grass, benches or big chairs with their laptops and notebooks.
|
||||
|
||||
## Getting Used to the Differences in Culture:
|
||||
|
||||
Staying alone in a foreign land is daunting, and to tell the truth, I was a bit anxious. But I was fortunate to get an awesome roommate, who made my months in the States go by so quickly. My apartment was nearly 2 km from CMU. Unlike in India where we can have maids, you’re off on your own to get everything done. That meant I had to clean my apartment, do the laundry, wash the dishes, but most importantly, cook by myself. I tried my hand at cooking for the first time. With time, we were able to make pretty decent food (definitely not like my mom, but surely better than the hostel messes). Cooking was pretty fun, not to mention annoying people (which some of my friends would attest to :P) as well as shocking them (especially family members) via WhatsApp status updates.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Before coming to the US, I was told that being a vegetarian would be difficult to get by. It turns out there is a large Indian and Asian contingent at CMU (around 70-80% during the summer), and so, Indian and vegetarian options were available much more frequently than expected. Another nice feature of most of the regular food places was the option to customize or build your meal (like a Subway, but for Italian, Mexican, Indian, Burgers, and whatnot).
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
The American culture is very different, with trust and openness very important virtues. People thank the bus driver, apologize for obstructing your way, are open and blunt with their views. The most shocking thing for me was paying with my credit card without any authentication, except for inserting the card, and a signature at some bigger places. That’s the level of trust there.
|
||||
|
||||
## Sightseeing and Activities:
|
||||
|
||||
Pittsburgh is much cheaper compared to some of the other cities in the US, and your CMU ID card gives you access to all the sports facilities and library of CMU, and even free rides on the public transport. The summers arrive pretty late in the US compared to India (around July), and it rains pretty spontaneously in Pittsburgh. The weather is still pretty pleasant during May and June, getting a bit hot during July, although it’s nothing compared to the scorching 40 C back in India. There are many places to go around in Pittsburgh, and I never left an opportunity to spend my weekends in sightseeing along with my roommate. There were some really memorable experiences, like the casino (coming back from -$1 to earn $70), go-karting at 60 kph, going on a sight-seeing cruise, frantically searching and figuring out clues to get out of an escape room just in time, watching a baseball game with enthusiastic home fans or riding up the Duquesne Incline to see the city of Pittsburgh from above at dusk. But the most unique experience for me would have to be axe throwing. You read that right. Literally, throw axes at targets (flashback to Jason Mamoa throwing axes with a beer cup in the other hand). I got to admit, it was pretty scary at first, despite it being completely safe. Slowly the nerves eased out and became pretty fun in the end. If anyone of you have an opportunity to try it out, I recommend doing it.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
I was also fortunate to be able to visit Chicago, Washington DC, New York City, St. Louis, San Jose, San Francisco, and Los Angeles (I know, it’s a LOT of traveling for a 2-month internship). But the best part of all of these places was the people I got to interact and connect with. There was an orientation session held for SN Bose Scholars (and Khorana, a similar program) in Chicago, and that was where I got to interact with a lot of students from various colleges and disciplines in India. You definitely won’t get a better chance to network with so many people, and will even find some people to accompany you for later trips.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing Up
|
||||
|
||||
The major takeaway for me was that research isn’t always as sugar-coated and straight-forward as it was in my previous summer with ETS Montreal, that you have got to stumble and explore a lot before you make some progress, especially when you don’t know how to proceed. Having clarity and a record of explored directions helps a lot in these situations.
|
||||
But if you ask me now, if opting out of the internship season, if waiting for 8 months with my hope rising from each email notification just to see it crushed by a reject or unrelated matter, if I would go through it all again to experience what I did during the summers, I would say definitely, because hey,
|
||||
|
||||
1. interacting with so many people and making new friends
|
||||
2. getting to know a new culture
|
||||
3. sightseeing
|
||||
4. achieving a more complete sense of what research entails
|
||||
was worth every single moment.
|
||||
|
||||
So don’t be afraid to take that risk and go after what you want to do! Internships are for exploring your options after college, and unless you don’t put yourself out of your comfort zone, you’ll be robbing yourself of that chance to find what motivates you and what your limits are. Mind you, this doesn’t mean that you apply without any experience or work to show. :P
|
||||
|
||||
Cheers!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,67 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries:Redseer Consulting Ltd"
|
||||
image: "dhruv1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Dhruv Singh"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'Redseer Consulting Ltd is a boutique firm in the field of research based management and strategy consulting.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Redseer Consulting Ltd is a boutique firm in the field of research based management and strategy consulting.A boutique is a classification of the firms based on their scale of operations, as they focus on a limited number of services. Unlike major consulting firms, boutique firms are highly specialized rather than offering general consulting services.
|
||||
The firm sits neatly between two worlds, research and consulting. In some ways, it is like IMRB, a market research survey firm. In other ways, it is like a McKinsey or a Bain & Co, where it consults startups on entry strategy into new markets, new business verticals, growth strategy, cost reduction and the evergreen bestseller—generic trends.
|
||||
|
||||
## Making it there:
|
||||
|
||||
As a fresher, I always knew I was never going to find interest in Chemical core subjects and I knew I always had a thing for business.**I have always believed that you don’t have to do something because the rest of the world is doing it, that will make you quit in some time, you only do something once you know you have the curiosity and zeal to do the thing for the next fifteen years**. I did try my hand at web development, design and data analytics in my freshman year but I could never find the perfect blend of things that I knew I loved to do. That curiosity led me into joining E-Cell and that’s where I got to learn more about the various facets of the startup and business ecosystem. I got to know about roles with a mixture of various conventional roles.
|
||||
|
||||
My first internship was at a startup named Wheelstreet. I was a “Business Development Intern”, and worked towards making new expansion strategies and designing marketing campaigns for them. It was here that I knew that business and strategy was my thing. I liked data analytics as well, so my second internship was that of an “Operations Analyst” at a startup named 1mg in the medical e-commerce space. Here I worked on optimising the processes involved in the supply chain and logistics of medicines by working on sets of data and implementing the strategies. My target was to significantly reduce the error percentage and the Turn Around Time(TAT) of delivery. I really loved that I was able to take data driven steps to improve their business and make an impact. I met a lot of alumni throughout both of my internships and got to realise that my interests align with the world of consultancy. I met a consultant from Bain and he explained to me what kind of work consultants do and what is expected from a consultant in big corporates. That is when I thought it might be a perfect idea to try a hand at consulting.
|
||||
|
||||
When my third year started, I was inclined towards Consulting, Business Analytics & Product Management and I was also aware of the need to apply off campus for the same, as a majority of the companies visiting campus for internship don’t offer roles with these profiles. Having networked with a lot of alumni and startups since I was part of the campus groups that majorly dealt with them, I began reaching out to people on LinkedIn and my personal connections and sought guidance so that I could further filter down on the aforementioned fields. People are usually more helpful on LinkedIn if you ask for general career advice. An alumnus who has been through the same phase is more likely to help, than the conventional method of mass messaging for referrals opted by students. This way you can easily connect personally with the person and the chances that he might refer you somewhere increase multifold.
|
||||
|
||||
I started preparing in November(conventionally, you can safely start applying by February-March) and finalised my CV/Resume and Cover Letter by the end of November. Now, the first step was building a well-rounded and attractive LinkedIn profile. After building one, I started connecting to a lot of 2nd degree connections who are currently pursuing the fields I was interested in. For those who are new to LinkedIn, 2nd degree connections are people who are connected to your 1st degree connections. You'll see a 2nd degree icon next to their name in search results and on their profile. I used to send a template message to each one of them. For example, if I’m reaching out to someone in a consulting firm, my message went like this-“Hello Sir/Ma’am, I’m currently a 3rd-year undergrad at IIT Roorkee. I have a deep interest in management consulting and strategy oriented roles. Your mentorship could be vital for me to pursue my interests. Could you please guide me in the right direction? It would be great to connect over call sometime.” My conversion rate was significantly higher than what people get when they blatantly ask someone for a referral.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
So, after talking to a lot of people, I narrowed down to Strategy & Consulting roles as an optimal career choice for me to pursue for the Summers of 2019. I had made an excel sheet of the companies I was targeting and in a couple of weeks, I had connected to a lot of alumni, HRs and executives of those companies.
|
||||
|
||||
This approach got me interviews with a handful of companies and startups with a variable tradeoff between quality of work & the quality of firm. I ended up choosing Redseer since I knew a couple of alumni here and that gave me added assurance of quality of work. My interview process involved a lot of emphasis on guesstimates and case studies.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Work
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
The office is based out of Bengaluru. My internship was that of a “Business Analyst”, wherein I worked directly under an Associate Consultant and one of the Directors was assigned to me as my mentor throughout the internship. I was lucky enough to work on multiple projects throughout my internship. I’ll be explaining each one of the projects and my involvement and responsibilities in the same. Redseer has a vertical work structure with a lot of emphasis on the entrepreneurial environment of work and a lot depends on your sense of ownership in any project. There are a lot of people from Tier-1 colleges on every level and that really helped me in mixing up with people and led me towards building strong professional and personal connections. The work hours were typically 9:30AM to 6:30PM but most of the times people used to stretch because of the demanding nature of work.
|
||||
|
||||
I was initially assigned to two projects, the first was an internal project. Our goal was to build a portal where Redseer clients & employees can login and view business metrics, consumer data etc. for industries which are tracked on a monthly basis. The user shall have the liberty to set customized search criterion for convenience, comparison and better visualization of specific e-commerce industries. I had to record the statistics of major e-tailing players on a set of 17 key parameters employing benchmarking techniques to understand current outlook of e-tailing industry for 2 years. My work also involved basics of Product Management and SQL. I had Amit Anand, another intern from IIT Roorkee with me who worked on the end to end development part.
|
||||
|
||||
The second project was for a fund which was looking to evaluate a certain target firm in the B2B E-commerce space for potential assessment. So, we were supposed to do Commercial Due Diligence(CDD) for the same. For those of you who are not familiar with it, Commercial Due Diligence is the process a corporation or private equity firm undertakes to gauge a company's commercial attractiveness. Unlike financial due diligence, which focuses solely on the financial health of the company, commercial due diligence provides a full overview of the target's internal and external environment. I had to assess the B2B E-commerce market landscape of India, analysing the online penetration with focus on Industrial supplies, assessing the competitive landscape in the B2B E-commerce market and business model of key players. I had to perform performance benchmarking of the ‘target firm’ in terms of business model, unit economics and key metrics. Along with this, we had to perform a future assessment of the ecosystem and emerging business models. This project was an overall test of my abilities and it was an enriching experience to get to work on a CDD as an intern and understanding the whole B2B E-commerce market scenario. One of the best bits of work you could get as an intern in consulting.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
After completing work on one of the projects, I was staffed on an international project for one of the largest global investment companies which was looking for companies in the Indonesian E-commerce space to include in its portfolio. So we had to assess the whole B2C E-commerce landscape in Indonesia. Understanding consumer sentiment, logistical issues, growth drivers & unit economics in Indonesia were some of the key challenges in the project. So, a few of the employees flew to Indonesia to take IDIs(In-Depth Interviews). After conducting consumer and seller surveys on a large scale, we managed to understand the market structure and segmentation and estimated the total addressable market along with the future scope in the E-Tailing, digital goods and B2B market in Indonesia. This project gave me an end-to-end in depth overview of the Indonesian E-commerce market and also added a new perspective as to how international projects are carried out at such a scale.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Now, for the final phase of my internship, I was inducted as a member of the Redseer advisory team for leading Private Equity firms/Venture Capitalists.
|
||||
The team was responsible for demystifying the E-commerce, logistics(3PL & Captive) & Digital Payments landscape in India. This helped me understand the roots of the logistics space in India and realise what the growth drivers are and geometrical segmentation is by conducting competitive benchmarking of the 7 major players in logistics. It helped me understand what the growth drivers are while analysing the performances of the various horizontals, verticals and super verticals in the ecosystem. Also, breaking down the E-commerce market helped me realise who the market leaders are and where the future of E-Tailing in India is headed.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing up and key takeaways:
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
The learnings were many be it interacting with clients, getting exposure to the industry, going on the ground or being within close doors and thinking about structuring the problem at hand. But some that particularly left me spellbound were:
|
||||
|
||||
**Story-lining**: I learnt the art of conveying a presentation in the form of a story, highlighting key takeaways for each slide. This ensured I had the attention of my audience and conveyed my point in a crisp and precise way.
|
||||
|
||||
**Elevator Pitch**: I understood the importance of having an answer ready at all times. Whether it was an update I had to give in a case team meeting or an explanation when the client questioned my hypothesis, I ensured I was well prepared and had an answer at hand. It was greatly valued and reflected my confidence and hard work.
|
||||
|
||||
**Over-communication**: It was always better to communicate the minutest detail which I felt could be important to the team. It was a trade-off to being precise but it ensured the team didn’t get any surprises at a later stage.
|
||||
|
||||
**Deliverable-Oriented Approach**: A good consultant always prefers to be “accurate enough” than to be “precisely accurate”. As a consultant, you’ll make decisions like this frequently, which is why interviewers screen out candidates who are uncomfortable with “accurate enough” since you cannot take a prolonged time going for preciseness when you could have saved a ton of money and time with an accurate enough answer that would work for the client.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Over the almost three months, I worked at Redseer, the amount of learning and experience I gained was tremendous. I worked with a lot of people and on a lot of exciting projects where I was able to find out my weaknesses and strong points and work towards being a better professional. Most of all, *one should always be able to make a concrete decision around his/her career path after an internship* and I was able to derive one for me.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,80 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: ITC Limited"
|
||||
image: "aneja1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Mohit Aneja"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'I was allotted a project in the Paperboards and Speciality Papers (PSPD) division of ITC. The projects given to the KITES interns are quite versatile, from highly technical projects related to your branch to research work in a completely different domain.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## Where & What: What I worked on during the intern?
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
I was allotted a project in the Paperboards and Speciality Papers (PSPD) division of ITC. The projects given to the KITES interns are quite versatile, from highly technical projects related to your branch to research work in a completely different domain. One of my co-interns from Mechanical Engineering was given a project on safety. My project was more on the technical side - based on heat and mass transfer, and performance assessment of cooling towers and heat exchangers. The objectives of the project were:
|
||||
|
||||
**i)** To assess the performance of cooling towers and heat exchangers in Utilities and Soda Recovery Section and to increase the efficiency of heat exchangers by 5%.<br>
|
||||
|
||||
**ii)** To reduce the freshwater consumption as makeup water by 20%.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
The scope of the project was a total of 6 cooling towers and 6 heat exchangers inside the plant. I had to visit all the cooling towers and observe any visual flaws during the operation and compare it with the benchmark practices. My work included talking to a lot of people to understand the operation of the cooling towers and corresponding condensers, research work to look for new technologies, analyzing the data obtained, thinking and brainstorming on new ideas to save water and increase efficiency. I was given enough freedom to take my project in whatever direction I wanted to - which I used to explore new technology in the field. I got an experimental set-up fabricated based off of a research paper with the help of engineers in the plant. The plant engineers are highly eager to implement any good idea in order to improve the operations in the plant.
|
||||
Before applying: Where/how did you get the idea of interning there?
|
||||
ITC is one of the first companies to visit the campus but I did not have any plans to seriously sit for the process. I had a decent CGPA so I thought of giving it a shot. I had an altogether different view of the interview process (assuming it to be one of the toughest technical interviews on campus) but this myth was busted only in my own interview!
|
||||
|
||||
## Making it there:
|
||||
The process starts with a lengthy ‘Mind Over Matter’ form consisting of around 6-7 essay type questions focusing on your personality, followed by resume shortlisting. Generally, people with higher CGPA are given preference while shortlisting. Not only this, having something unique on your resume will help you getting shortlisted. It doesn’t matter if the previous work done isn’t related to what ITC does. My previous internships were based on Python development in Options trading, and basic level research work in alternative finance.
|
||||
After this, a psychometric test is conducted to check if the values of the candidate align with that of the company. The psychometric test consists of about 35 questions, with 20 unique questions and the rest being a repetition, but in a different form/language. They want to test your consistency in answering the questions about yourself. There is no right answer to those questions. Just be consistent with your answers throughout the test.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Group Discussion:
|
||||
|
||||
This is followed by a GD round - with groups of 9-10 people each. You are handed a case study written on a paper and given 20 minutes to discuss and arrive at a conclusion. The time limit is strict and they will ask you to leave immediately after the time is over, whether or not your group arrived at a conclusion or not. Try to make logical arguments in this round. Don’t speak just to speak. It may backfire if someone counters your statement with a good argument. Don’t keep mum during the whole round either, which will surely remove you from the process. Listen carefully when others are speaking and find the right time to speak and agree to / counter the points that other people make. It will show that you are a good listener and you’re not just waiting to blabber your own points. Initiating the discussion by quickly reading the case study is always a plus. Only 2-3 people make it to the interview rounds after the group discussion.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Technical round + HR:
|
||||
|
||||
At last, two PI rounds are conducted. The first one is a lengthy round - with discussion on your favorite subject, fundamental questions on that subject. After this, you are asked a few questions based on your answers to questions in the Mind Over Matter form. Basic HR questions are also asked in this round. If you make it to the final round - which is mostly taken by people from the HR team of some division of ITC, you will be asked questions as to why you prefer ITC over other companies, your motive for joining and other HR questions. I was asked one technical question on heat exchangers in this round as well.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Turns out, the whole procedure is not about how technically sound you are when it comes to your branch subjects but it is more about aligning with the values of the company, and your seriousness in the previous internships/projects. Basically, the company doesn’t expect you to know anything beforehand because the projects are so diverse in nature that it will require you to study the subject from scratch during the internship. Hence they want someone who can grasp things quickly, can get things done - by convincing others and by taking the lead.
|
||||
Tip: A lot of questions are asked based on your resume, so be very precise and clear about what you’re writing in your resume. It would be good if you can prepare one subject of your choice before the interviews (just be very clear with the fundamentals - don’t dive into the technicalities of the subject). Also, prepare a 30 second and 1 minute summary of yourself for the “Tell me about yourself” question thrown at you as soon as you enter the interview room.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## About the Place:
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
The PSPD division has 4 plants - Bhadrachalam, Kovai, Tribeni and Bollaram. Interns are generally sent to the Bhadrachalam since it is the biggest unit in terms of the size of operations. It is a remote town in Telangana, 6 hours from Hyderabad city via train. The factory consists of 7 humongous paper machines having lengths of about 300-400 metres each. This adds to the walking that you’d need to do to move from one part of the plant to the other.
|
||||
|
||||
## Project Description:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
The aim of the project was to assess the performance of cooling towers and to increase the efficiency of heat exchangers, and to save freshwater in the cooling towers - so work was to be done in a lot of different domains. The project required a fair bit of knowledge of heat and mass transfer principles, site visits, data analysis on Excel, chemistry of corrosion and scaling, research work to look for new technologies in the field, and management in terms of following up with a lot of people simultaneously (for data collection, process understanding, lab tests, machine visits, meetings).
|
||||
It would be good if you’re well familiar with Excel and PowerPoint. You may have to use Minitab and Statistical Quality Control techniques depending on the type of project. Learning the basics beforehand will help, although a formal workshop is conducted during the orientation session, before the internship, in the month of April.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Work Environment:
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
The work hours, officially, are 8:30 AM-5:30 PM but the interns rarely adhere to the schedule. Most of the times, we went to the plant during the office hours only since we had to meet a lot of people in the plant. At some point during the intern, when my work was only restricted to researching for new methods, I worked from my room. On an average you’d work 8-10 hours per day, but it extends depending on the proximity of the reviews with your guide and mentor. (as is the case with MTEs and ETEs in college). The sad part is that you have to work 6 days a week. The one day break is not sufficient to travel to any good places nearby. Most of the Sundays were underutilized by either sleeping the whole day or by visits to the local market. This was not the case for all the divisions, though- some other interns got a lot of chances to travel to beautiful places around their locations (especially the Bangalore peeps).
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
The people in the company (and the mill) are amazing to talk to, very supportive. Since a lot of help is required from the plant engineers related to your project, their supportive attitude makes them easily approachable. You may face a language barrier while communicating with some of the operators in the plant but even they know enough English for you to get your message across.
|
||||
You are allotted a guide and a mentor for the project. Both of them have some knowledge in the domain of the project and will help you to the best possible extent. You can easily approach your guide for any help on a daily basis and the mentor every week. Building a good rapport with both of them will help you tremendously.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
The interns are well taken care of. The company provides for the accommodation and the food during the whole stay. The accommodation is in a decent guest house, with a dining hall which serves majorly South Indian food, although you can get custom dishes prepared, apart from the regular menu. The weather is something to hate about the place. It is extremely humid (owing to Godavari River nearby and steam releases in the plant) and hot during the months of May and June with temperatures reaching 48 degrees.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing up and Key Takeaways:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Overall, the two months of internship at ITC were the best two months in terms of learning. It added immensely to my pool of knowledge by enhancing my people skills, technical skills and management skills. The work culture at the company will definitely add professionalism to your work ethics. It is astonishing to see that even the simplest of decisions are taken with a lot of brainstorming, since each and every decision ultimately impacts the company’s profits. Not only the internship, the KITES orientation session in Bangalore is one of the best experiences one can have. The stay, the food and the level at which the interactions happen at the orientation is surely going to leave you spellbound.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Basically, the company expects the intern to look at the operations from a different perspective and suggest new and innovative solutions to the existing problems. The experience of KITES interns can vary significantly depending on which division they were allotted. The project work may be overwhelming at times but talking to your guide and mentor will surely give you a definite direction. Practicing for GDs with your batchmates will help you do better in the actual GDs. Read about the different divisions of ITC and the overall hierarchy before going to the interviews. All the best!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,86 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: HSBC "
|
||||
image: anant1.png
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Anant Tayal"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'The beginning is the most important part of the work. Let’s start with something depressing and end on a happier note.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
'The beginning is the most important part of the work. Let’s start with something depressing and end on a happier note.'<br>
|
||||
I think the above lines well summarize my hunt for what you call a ‘good’ internship. By the end of the summer of my second year, like any other sophomore student of the Department of Chemical Engineering, I was all set and excited to sit for ITC, RB, AmEx, and Schlumberger in the internship season. Who knew that things were just about to take a turn?
|
||||
|
||||
I had a good time at the Centre for Analytical Finance at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad (My 2nd year summer internship). I enjoyed my work over there on trading strategies, building valuation models, and studying Corporate Finance. It was a pleasant experience, indeed. How did I land there? So, for the first two years of my college life, I was majorly involved in fest and event organization, what you call good for management profiles. I was part of the core teams of Cognizance and TEDxIITRoorkee. It is something that I’m really proud of, but I had started getting the feeling that I also need to learn something, gain some skills and acquire technical knowledge. Mathematics and numbers have always fascinated me. I had some exposure to Economics because of the elective course offered in the second year. So, I started dropping emails to professors at IIMs and ISB, who were working in this domain. Luckily, I got acceptances from both, and chose the latter one, because of the project there being more related to analytics, something I ardently wished to get a good hands-on experience on!
|
||||
|
||||
By the time my ISB internship was over, I started to ponder if this was the field I wanted to explore more, provided my deep interest in Mathematics. To be honest, I was really confused. From the first year, we have grown up seeing examples of “machau” seniors getting placed at ITC, Schlumberger, Goldman Sachs etc, and with the ever-increasing coding culture of IITR, I had three-spiked fork in front of me - Prepare for core companies (I felt I had a good chance with a decent CGPA and profile), start competitive coding and sit for software roles, or choose the path I recently started liking by learning more of Finance.
|
||||
|
||||
By the time I returned to the campus, most of my friends were into competitive coding, and here I was, all directionless, thinking what to start with. So I started talking to my seniors, friends, and family members I trust, and believe to be my well-wishers. Some of them said things like: Anant kaha ye sab karega, coding kar, August tak on-campus intern lagegi, meri guarantee. Some said, Anant, try kr skta hai, boht time hai, nahi hua to kuch na kuch to kr h lenge. I spent nearly 10 sleepless nights, thinking about what to do, alongside preparing for core, doing a bit of competitive coding, and general aptitude puzzles. I knew then that it could not go ahead the same way and crossing the fork had become the need of the hour. That’s when I met one of the seniors in our library, motivating me, pushing me hard to study finance and explore the field without taking unnecessary pressure. Certainly Lord ‘Ram’ for this ‘Hanuman’. I still remember his words “Tu padh, teri acchi intern me lagvaunga”. I feel myself lucky to have such seniors, friends and family members who were always there for me. After sitting half-heartedly for some companies, I finally decided to study Finance seriously, and go for it in full throttle. I dropped any hope of getting an on-campus internship for the role I was looking for. That was when HSBC came, the first time to recruit interns from IITs. With prior experience of work at ISB, I knew this was a golden opportunity for me.
|
||||
|
||||
## How did I prepare?
|
||||
|
||||
HSBC came in the first week of September, and roughly I had about 10-12 days for the preparation.
|
||||
|
||||
In the job description, it was mentioned that they were looking for someone with good analytical skills, strong mathematical background (Probability & Statistics), and basic programming skills (C++ or Python).
|
||||
|
||||
I made sure that I’m well prepared with the concepts of Probability and Statistics (Expectation, Random Variables, Bayes Theorem, Conditional Probability, Different type of Distributions (Normal, Poisson, Lognormal etc), Central Limit Theorem and Hypothesis Testing).
|
||||
For Quant roles in firms like HSBC, JPMC, GS I feel one should also be thorough with the concepts of Engineering Mathematics- Calculus (Taylor series, Beta-Gamma functions, Line Integral, Solving PDEs), Matrices (Eigenvalues, Eigen Vectors, Rank of a Matrix), and Vector Calculus. So I revised the content of MAN-001 & 002 courses taught in the first year, and also went through Permutation and Combination from JEE syllabus.
|
||||
|
||||
I feel Probability, Statistics, P&C, Calculus, Matrices and general aptitude puzzles (from GeeksforGeeks and InterviewBit ) are the ones which will help you ace the interview. Apart from this, they are looking for basic programming skills in C++ and Python (Basic Data Structures-- Array, Linked list). So make sure you are well prepared on these fronts.
|
||||
|
||||
For all those who are afraid of coding, or don’t want to code like me until 2nd year, let me share my experience with you: I learnt it during my ISB intern, when I was asked to code in Python, that it’s just a tool to express what you think or strategise, just like a poet expressing his emotions by writing. It’s inevitable. When you are doing complex, lengthy calculations you have to use it. You can’t do it manually. You have to code your algorithm or what you call ‘strategy’. So it is better to start off with writing basic codes. It’ll help you in the long run. Maybe it’s like Inorganic Chemistry of the JEE Syllabus. You have to study, to excel at some point.
|
||||
|
||||
Last but not the least about the preparation part, you should be well aware of every word you write in your resume. Be well prepared with the projects you have done in the past because you will be grilled on them.
|
||||
|
||||
Preparation strategy can be unique to every individual, I feel. I think what helps is taking the ball in your court, and playing on your strengths alongside what company is looking for. This is the trick always.
|
||||
|
||||
## Procedure:
|
||||
|
||||
We didn’t have a screening test (procedural variations may be expected). There was a resume shortlisting round, followed by 2-3 rounds of interview. The resume shortlisting made it pretty clear that they were looking for students who have an interest in Mathematics, Data-Science, Data-Analysis and Business Problem solving (students who have demonstrated the same through an intern or project).
|
||||
|
||||
So a CGPA above 7, a decent profile, justifying your interest in any of the above field should get you through the resume-shortlisting. 25 students were shortlisted from our batch for the interviews.
|
||||
|
||||
First-round was what we call the ‘Technical-Round’, and was about questions from the topics I mentioned above to prepare (along with puzzles), and about how well you have understood your previous projects. 10 students were shortlisted after this round.
|
||||
|
||||
The second-round was Technical + HR. It consisted of questions on my project at ISB, how would I improvise on that project, and then the questions on my campus life. “What have you done in the past two years?” and routine HR questions- “Tell us something about yourself”, “Where do you see yourself 5 years down the line?”, “You are from Chemical Engineering Department, why do you want to work for our bank?”. The fact that the panel made me comfortable, from the very beginning, I feel, is the reason that I was able to answer those questions fluently. Prepare these basic questions well. You don’t want to spoil all your hard work by approaching these questions in a wrong way, right!
|
||||
|
||||
After all the grilling, three students were finally selected. We were also given a CHAPO at The Rustic House. It all ended on a happier note, isn’t it!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## HSBC and My Experience Over There:
|
||||
|
||||
## About HSBC:
|
||||
|
||||
I was excited. Yes, I was going to work for a multinational bank, which has a glorious history of over 150 years, and is the largest in terms of market value in Europe (by 2018).
|
||||
|
||||
Little did I know, that the first ATM in India was set up by HSBC. Also the fact that you need to have an astonishing minimum balance of INR 1.5 Lakh, to open a bank account with HSBC. With all these facts, perks of a healthy stipend and free accommodation for 14 days in a lavish hotel, I was all set for the summers.
|
||||
|
||||
HSBC is organised within four business groups namely, Commercial Banking, Global Banking & Markets, Retail Banking & Wealth Management, and Global Private Banking. I worked for Global Banking and Markets Front Office, Bangalore.
|
||||
|
||||
## Work and Learning:
|
||||
|
||||
We were a total of 14 interns from 4 different IITs and were assigned projects divided broadly into 3 asset classes: Equities, Fixed Income (FI), and Foreign Exchange (FX). I was a part of the FX-Overlay team. HSBC is one of the biggest interbank players and market makers in the USD/INR market. I was assigned a project directly from the London office. In fact, all of us were assigned projects from different global hubs: London, New York, and Hong Kong.
|
||||
|
||||
For all you should know, FX-Overlay desk deals with hedging the currency risk of a portfolio, which a global investor holds, with the assets denominated in the foreign currency. I was engaged in a mix of analytical work and coding/prototyping. I developed a backtesting tool for the hedging strategy that HSBC uses for its clients. I’m bound by the compliance issues that HSBC takes very seriously, not to disclose anything about the project, but I can definitely say that the project I worked on was intellectually challenging & exciting. Initially, it was a bit difficult to grasp the concepts, but it all ended on a happier note when I finally developed the backtesting tool in Python.
|
||||
|
||||
## Fun:
|
||||
|
||||
Coming to the fun part, Bangalore's nightlife is happening and LIT, I must say. All the interns were invited for a “Cocktail Dinner” at one of the most sumptuous cafes in Bangalore. There, we could ask for anything, as much as we wanted to. (I meant snacks of course :P)
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:90%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Culture:
|
||||
|
||||
On the first day, my mentor said: Dekh hum 2.5 logo k team hai. 2 me, 0.5 tu. The journey from this to introducing me to one of his colleagues as his deputy boss (on a lighter note, of course), I think we connected really well. I had a fantastic learning experience, and will always cherish the time I spent with my team, mentor and co-interns. HSBC has a policy of open-desk culture, no cabins. You can easily reach out to anyone, and ask for guidance. I was in touch with people having worked for HSBC for more than 25 years and were at senior most positions in the organization.
|
||||
|
||||
We all talk about organizations being loyal, caring to their employees, and a healthy work culture. Just once incident, that I’ll preserve with me for a lifetime. So, I went to the office on one of the weekends. (Nobody asked me to :p). AC of the floor was shut down because no one was there. I asked the staff team if they could do something about it. A guy brought a table fan, from the first floor to the fifth floor for me.
|
||||
|
||||
HSBC, you have been special in many ways. From taking care of me to boosting my confidence that I can do anything. I’ll always be thankful to you :)
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## One Final Advice:
|
||||
|
||||
I know that the internship season can be stressful, too much, sometimes. The two main reasons behind that, which I feel, are lack of patience & awareness and The Peer Pressure. If you can get yourself on terms with these two, you are already halfway down, I feel. Please don’t panic, if you don’t land somewhere in the first week or month maybe. There are enough opportunities for all of us. Just be aware of what you are expecting out of this internship season, prepare in one direction sincerely, be focused, have patience, don’t get influenced by what others are doing. Have confidence and faith in yourself and you will come off with flying colours :)
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,74 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: ITC Limited"
|
||||
image: "shivani1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Shivani Singh"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'I spent my Summer’19 interning with ITC Ltd., a multi-business Indian enterprise. Having tried my hands on fields of research in chemical engineering at IISc Bangalore and management at IIM Ahmedabad, I was pretty sure that research was not something which could keep up my interest for a long enough time to pursue it as a career option.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
I spent my Summer’19 interning with ITC Ltd., a multi-business Indian enterprise. Having tried my hands on fields of research in chemical engineering at IISc Bangalore and management at IIM Ahmedabad, I was pretty sure that research was not something which could keep up my interest for a long enough time to pursue it as a career option.I wanted something which could be more tangible in terms of results of my efforts. Led by this motivation, I was very clear during the internship season of the companies I was going to apply for, consequently landing an internship in ITC Ltd.
|
||||
|
||||
## Making it there:
|
||||
|
||||
## About the program:
|
||||
I was selected under ITC’s Summer Internship Programme- “Knowledge, Initiative & Talent Excellence Series” popularly known as KITES. The programme is specifically designed to provide the interns with a platform to learn, experience and manage real life business situations. The interns are recruited from the premier technical institutes of the country for a period of 8 weeks where their novel perspective to a business problem is utilised for extracting the best from them.
|
||||
|
||||
## Application Process:
|
||||
The application process started in early August when ITC came on campus through TPO for hiring summer interns. Last year the branches eligible were Chemical, Electrical, ECE, Mechanical and Production & Industrial. The complete process is summarized as under:
|
||||
|
||||
**1. Online Application**: Interested students are required to apply through an online portal where a form is required to be filled. The form essentially requires details from your resume and some essay type questions to be answered mentioning your goals and motivation to join ITC.
|
||||
|
||||
**2. Shortlisting**: Based on the form filled, a shortlist is issued for the psychometric test. The information that you fill in this form is reassessed at various stages from your personality test to the point then you actually join one of the divisions of ITC and serves as a medium for the company (and especially your guides and mentors) to know you.
|
||||
|
||||
**3. Psychometric Test**: This test is designed to evaluate your intelligence, personality and decision making skills through some situational questions. The aim is to check if you are a good fit for the company’s work environment or not. The rejection rate at this stage is negligible and you will pass through unless you decide to deliberately screw it up.
|
||||
|
||||
**4. Group Discussion**: The students selected from the psychometric test are divided in groups of 7-8 for the group discussion round. This stage of the selection procedure is designed to judge your people handling and convincing skills. The discussion revolves around solving a case which is given to you in hardcopy after you enter the room. The reading time given to you is about 5 minutes, hence, you need to be really quick in grasping the essence of the problem and coming up with logical arguments. The problems may range from discussing upcoming business strategy for a product or simply just discussing the best course of action after an accident. These case problems do not require any prior preparation but you are expected to be logically sound in your arguments and be able to convince your audience for the same. The number of students selected from a GD is not fixed and may range from 1-4 per GD.
|
||||
|
||||
**5. Personal Interview**: From around 68 students who participated in GD rounds last year, 20 students were selected for the final personal interview round. This is the last stage of the selection procedure and in my opinion the most interesting one, the reason you’ll get to know in the following paragraphs:
|
||||
|
||||
**a. Technical Round:** This round is aimed to test your technical competency with respect to your engineering knowledge but does not strictly sticks to the plan, it happens often that the HR would pop up a question related to your goals and plans, so be ready to keep jumping between these two domains in your mind. It starts with the interviewers asking you questions from your favourite subjects which you are asked to mention. Hence, it is advisable to prepare at least 2 subjects from your curriculum. The questions are from the very basics of the subject, so don’t worry if you are not a master in it. I prepared for Heat Transfer and was asked to derive the formula for ‘Log Mean Temperature Difference’, those who have studied must know this concept is fairly easy. The interviewer can also go into the details of your projects or internships mentioned in the resume, so do give a read to any reports that you might have made or in general the work that you might have done. Though this round is named as the technical round but the decision of you getting the internship or not is more or less finalised here only.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
**b. HR Round:** This round is basically an interaction between the student and some senior officials from the company who are interested in knowing your interest in working with them. Again, don’t just expect HR questions in the interview. If the person is intrigued by some specific point in your resume, you can be taken into the technical realms of the business from this very moment which was the case with me. I was asked about the temperature profile of tobacco in processing and its importance in terms of the product quality. You are not expected to know everything when such questions may be thrown at you, what is important is the approach you take to understand and arrive at a solution.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Mind Over Matter Orientation Program
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Before getting us to work in some of the harsh places in the country, ITC treated us well with a 2 days 5-star stay in its luxury collection hotel ITC Windsor in Bangalore. This orientation program was a stepping stone for us to transition from theoretical knowledge to a mindset for real business problems and technical tools to handle them. These 2 days had rigorous sessions scheduled to equip us with all the skills required for pursuing and emerging successful from the upcoming 2 months long internship. The orientation also gave us the opportunity to meet the interns selected from other institutes of the country and break the ice as this 2-day long event concluded with a cocktail party hosted by ITC for all the incoming interns.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Work
|
||||
With a diversified portfolio in FMCG, Paperboards, Hotels, Packaging, Agri-business and Information Technology, ITC offers a wide range of opportunities for the interns. The allotment procedure where the interns are selected to intern in one of the divisions of ITC is purely based on our past experience, internships and projects, and unfortunately we do not have a choice here. Surely, the KITES summer internship program is a platform to learn and experience working in a corporate environment but the projects allotted to the interns have serious business significance and hence, each intern is considered as an integral part of their company during this period. This is how KITES differs from any of the projects or internships that you might have done earlier (at least in my case).
|
||||
|
||||
The project brief was received around a month prior to the commencement of the internship. It was a detailed explanation of my project, the objectives, the deliverables expected and prior readings required. Guides and mentors were also allotted at this stage.
|
||||
My project was based on process optimisation and standardisation of encapsulated flavour used in cigarettes. It majorly involved risk assessment of product defects, analysis based on feasibility of solutions and identification of scope for improvements in the process in terms of time and money while maintaining product integrity. I was also required to design a tech-enabled traceability system for capsule manufacturing.
|
||||
The projects can be from any domains of production, engineering, process excellence and environment, health & safety. One can even expect project in the area of machine learning and artificial intelligence depending upon the requirements in the divisions.
|
||||
|
||||
The work culture at ITC was very different than what I had experienced in my past interns. Here I had the liberty to experiment anything new to solve the problems and deliver results. While I had the factory workers to help me throughout the project, I also had to take care that the production line is not getting affected in any way.
|
||||
It has been a characteristic of the KITES projects that they are a bit vague in their definition for the sake that the intern can find his/her own way forward without getting affected by the opinions or the work that has already been done in the area. This makes it challenging and interesting at the same time. The entire internship period was a bit bumpy for me where I had my lows when I was completely aimless as to where should I proceed, and my highs where I validated solutions and got results. This was also complemented with the pressure to complete the deliverables within the stipulated 8 weeks. Since, ITC has factories at various locations in India, you may also be required to travel to different plants to get insights from various technologies used there. In entirety, KITES internship is drafted to evaluate the intern in terms of his/her approach to solve a problem, technical intellect, people handling skills, professionalism and the extent to which the person is ready to go for getting resources relevant to your project. Though it may get frustrating at times, but the experience is truly worth it.
|
||||
|
||||
The locations that ITC offers are not quite pleasant, one can expect locations like Munger, Bhadrachalam, Kapurthala (which even I wasn’t aware of) where the only human interaction you have is with the people in the plant. Fortunately, my location was ITD (Indian Tobacco Division) Bangalore. Though, the factory was around 30 km from the main city (Koramangala to be precise) but I was able to spend my weekends in the city. The accommodation provided to us compensated the stress we brought back from work. It was a beautiful villa with a canopy of shady trees and serene open space.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing it up
|
||||
KITES summer internship is all about extracting the best from the best! Your hard work, innovative viewpoint and unique technical solutions to business problems are the factors deciding your success in this endeavor. To say the least, you are groomed to become industry ready in these 2 months with all sorts of challenges thrown at you, be it dealing with vendors for negotiations or a particular technical glitch in the machine.
|
||||
Important to mention, if you are expecting a 9-5 desk job with no jerks and jolts, ITC is not a place for you. For the students aiming for ITC:
|
||||
|
||||
**1.** Be clear about your motivation to join ITC, this is what matters the most.<br>
|
||||
**2.** Glance through your core subjects a bit to prepare for the technical round.<br>
|
||||
**3.** Though not strictly required,but you can go through some problems asked in case interviews just to create a pace for solving them. (Do this only if you have time)<br>
|
||||
**4.** It’s better to read about some initiatives of ITC for the HR round, it’s always appreciable if you can back your motivation with some examples.<br>
|
||||
**5.** Through each and every stage of the selection procedure, be extremely confident!
|
||||
|
||||
That’s all you require to go through :)
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,52 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: ITC Limited"
|
||||
image: "bagla1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Anirudh Bagla"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'The best thing about ITC is that you work on a real problem faced by the company, you suggest changes and they are implemented immediately and you are given freedom to explore the problem as much as you can'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## FEW TIPS FOR ITC
|
||||
* ITC repeats its GD problems, don’t be overconfident, do practice this with your friends
|
||||
* Have a good and interesting introduction prepared
|
||||
* Know how to explain at least 2 projects in your resume and be aware of the slightest technical thing that is involved in those projects. And if you make it technical enough, you might get rid of questions from your course. By this you become the person driving the conversation.
|
||||
* Make sure that you have a convincing reason to join ITC even after the intern
|
||||
|
||||
## LOCATION AND DIVISION
|
||||
|
||||
ITC has around 100+ factories spread over 60 locations in India. Sadly these locations are not something one admires to work at. They are mostly tier 3 cities and if not they are located in the outskirts of big cities. If you are lucky enough you can find non factory locations in head offices, but I personally believe if you want to make the most from this intern, work in a factory.
|
||||
|
||||
I was allotted FBD (Foods Business Division) and to be very clear each division at ITC works differently, it's like working in a different company all together. As far as FBD is concerned it is still in expansion phase and has new factories coming almost every year. In foods my location was at the dairy plant of munger district of Bihar.
|
||||
|
||||
Before you feel pity for me I visited Patna, Kolkata, Bangalore (twice) and even travelled in Business class and no matter how poor the infrastructure of the city is ITC makes sure that you have stay of life in that city. My stay was arranged at ITC park and it had all the facilities from swimming pool to club and as far as Dry state is concerned there is nothing stopping an IITian (wink wink)
|
||||
|
||||
## PROJECT
|
||||
|
||||
The best thing about ITC is that you work on a real problem faced by the company, you suggest changes and they are implemented immediately and you are given freedom to explore the problem as much as you can (I will come to this one later).
|
||||
|
||||
Around 2 months prior to joining in May, ITC arranges a 3 days program to help us with how to approach and work during the internship. They teach us basic data analysis tools and all the non- technical stuff we might need during our project. Apart from this we are not expected to know any software or other things, but we might have to learn it during the internship (not in detail but to the point you can understand someone else's work on it).
|
||||
|
||||
Coming to my project, ITC entered in pouch milk packing last year only. My project was to reduce market complaints in pouch milk packets. This included improving machine’s performance, inspection techniques and even out of the box ideas of how to prevent fake complaints. I was given this project about a week before joining and it was made very clear that the only criteria of success is actual reduction in complaints (since this data goes directly
|
||||
to head office, tempering results was also not possible). Currently there was about 0.2% complaints which i had to reduce further.
|
||||
|
||||
## WORK CULTURE
|
||||
|
||||
I was given individual project (this means I had absolute freedom on how I want to proceed) and assigned a guide who was my contact point during the internship and a buddy (for any informal help, mostly newly joined managers from IITs). It is a 24/7 running factory and working hours are 9am to 6pm, 6 days a week (so i got one day to enjoy the astonishing night life at munger). But since I was on a project this timeline didn’t matter at all, in fact after the first week, I hardly worked according to this. Sometimes I had to go to at night shift to observe/implement changes, sometimes early morning and sometimes on Sundays as well. To compensate i took leaves during weekdays whenever i found workload was less.
|
||||
|
||||
My guide was the production manager of the factory, and he was responsible for any help that I need for my project. Most interns found their guides to be their boss and have limited interaction with them, but mine case was a bit different. He used to call me for dinner (He’s a great chef), organized parties at his home and even at the office. At the same time he gave me free hand on whatever I wanted to implement (considering the risks though). Since he was the production manager he was quite busy and sometimes wasn’t able to give time to my project, in such situations we met post work and discuss (benefits of small town).
|
||||
|
||||
Since I didn't have any knowledge of the dairy industry and the technology used, I requested to visit other factories of ITC and even managed to arrange a visit factories of some more established players in the market. This is the freedom that I mentioned earlier. I just had to give a valid reason and ITC arranges rest. Whether it is visiting a vendor in Kolkata, or visit the original manufacturers of the machine in Pune.
|
||||
|
||||
Since they provide you with such facilities they expect work from you, to check the progress I had a mid review separately with Divisional Head and the CEO. Finally in the end my progress was reviewed by each level for which I had to make a presentation and one only get a chance to present further if he gets recommended. I got the recommendation to present in front of DMC (Decision Making Committee) at the Bangalore Head Office.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## SUMMING UP
|
||||
|
||||
You will have friends who go to wonderful places for interns and you are stuck in a tier 3 city of a dry state. Frankly this makes it a bit difficult. But this is an experience of life, most of us will end up working in a corporate and for me it was too big a gamble to make this decision without having a taste of life here.
|
||||
|
||||
At the same time this project not only tested my technical skills but almost everything I learnt in my life. I dealt with people from Blue collar workers (aasan nhi tha) to Factory manager, I followed a truck secretly to investigate drivers activity, I even worked till 5 in the morning and sometimes on Sundays as well. It was a hell of a task.
|
||||
All this plus the hefty stipend makes it worth interning at ITC !
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,51 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries:Deutsche Sport Hochschule"
|
||||
image: "muju1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Utkarsh Mujumdar"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'My summer internship was in the capacity of a research associate at the Department of Exercise Training, Computer Science & Informatics at the Deutsche Sporthochschule (German Sport University), Köln.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
My summer internship was in the capacity of a research associate at the Department of Exercise Training, Computer Science & Informatics at the Deutsche Sporthochschule (German Sport University), Köln. My main task was to assist a Ph.D. student with his main research project, but I was open to contributing my time towards any other project that I liked. I ended up working on two projects during my time at the university, one in football and the other in basketball.
|
||||
|
||||
## Getting There
|
||||
|
||||
I know it might sound a bit surprising as to how a metallurgy undergrad ended up at a sports research institute, so I feel that some background is necessary before I go into the specifics of getting there. I have been exploring the field of sports analytics for the past year now and it involves using statistical and computational techniques to make sense out of data collected in a sports context. The insights gained can be useful for performance analysis, monetization policies in the betting markets, marketing, and fan management. Being an avid football fan, the performance analysis side fascinated me the most and I was lucky enough to get two relevant opportunities gaining experience in the performance analysis of football using data prior to this internship.
|
||||
|
||||
After the completion of my second internship in the month of January of this year, I started applying to various universities and companies dealing with sports data. This included sports science departments, computer science/informatics departments with a sports focussed research group as well as sports-specific research universities like the German Sport University and Loughborough University. I went with the standard method of emailing professors with customized emails highlighting my experience and the kind of projects I could contribute to as part of the internship. Since I was looking for a very specific interdisciplinary branch of research, I could only find about 30-odd opportunities to apply for. I was lucky enough to get a response from the German Sport University in March. I had received no replies from other places that I had applied to which is usually the case when you are applying for a foreign internship. Luck plays its part in such scenarios. One has to keep in mind that professors and research labs receive a lot of emails around this time period, so you have to keep your patience and keep trying.
|
||||
|
||||
The project that was offered to me seemed really exciting and was way better than what I had expected while applying. But the University let me know from the start that the internship will be unpaid as they had a policy of only paying Master’s/Ph.D. students. I was left with a tough choice because despite the considerable finances involved in a self-funded intern, working on such a project was probably going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity. Fortunately, my parents agreed to fund my stay in Germany and I was all set.
|
||||
|
||||
## Workplace & Culture
|
||||
|
||||
The working hours were very relaxed with people coming in around 10 in the morning and leaving around 4. As everyone is working on long-term projects with no stress of short term deadlines, one is allowed the freedom to work at their own pace. Everyone at the department joins for lunch in the day and the culture is very warm and inclusive for new people. Due to the presence of a fair number of international students at the department, the operative language is English which worked out well for me.
|
||||
|
||||
## The University
|
||||
|
||||
Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln is the only sport-specific university in Germany. They have various educational offerings at the bachelors and masters level. But the most important aspect is the research that is done in the 9 different ‘Institutes’ or departments at the University, ranging from physiology, psychology to biomechanics and informatics in sports. The University has a plethora of training areas covering a range of sports. There are special training grounds intended for the collection of training data for research studies as well. There are highly sophisticated technical pieces of equipment being used to record data, which was really interesting to see.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## The Work
|
||||
|
||||
As mentioned before, I was designated to help a Ph.D. student with their research work. The main aim of the research project was to quantify exploratory behavior in football players to determine the tactical creativity being exhibited by them. I was tasked with the handling of spatio-temporal tracking data obtained from training matches and then modeling the data based on a known equation from previous literature. So my first week comprised of going through the literature and understanding the different theoretical aspects of the research question at hand. After two weeks, I found myself intrigued by another project which was based on the aspect of free-throw accuracy in professional basketball. A co-intern of mine came up with the idea of the project and we started working on it together. The results from preliminary tests seemed to be very promising and after reporting them to the head of the department, we were told to start working on a manuscript describing our findings. This was the first time that I was involved in the process of writing a paper, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. By the end of my internship, we had the final manuscript sent for review to a reputed Sports Science Journal and the review process is ongoing right now. All aspects of my work presented themselves with different kinds of exposure. I ended up working with big data, helped conduct a data collection session in football, learned how to write a research paper and a lot more. Although my internship lasted only 8 weeks, I believe I learned a lot more than what I expected in this short time.
|
||||
|
||||
## The City
|
||||
|
||||
Located in the west of Germany in the North Rhine-Westphalia state, Köln is the fourth most populous city in the country. The Rhine river flows through the heart of the city with the Köln Dom Cathedral overlooking it. I spent a lot of evenings watching the sunset by the river, with the area being lively and happening during summer evenings. One has to try the bread at the local bakeries, locally brewed Kölsch and döner kebabs while in Köln. The weather during my stay was really pleasant apart from a few days when there was a heatwave going through Europe. The city is bustling with students because of the presence of the biggest university in the whole country, along with multiple other colleges. The location of the city helps in the fact that many prominent tourist locations in Western Europe are just an overnight bus ride away. I ended up visiting multiple cities in and around the area including Paris, Amsterdam, and Rome.
|
||||
|
||||
## Accommodation
|
||||
|
||||
Many universities in Germany don’t have their own hostels as there are in our college. All students have to look for their own place to stay. I was lucky enough to get a room at one of the government-operated student hostels in the city. This helped me save a significant amount of money and also put me in touch with some of the students who helped me with any problems I faced during my stay. Getting to the University was a convenient 20 mins tram ride for me, with the tram station being 5 mins away from my hostel.
|
||||
|
||||
## Summary
|
||||
|
||||
A foreign internship presents you with the opportunity of delving into a different culture and experiencing life in a different country, apart from the whole academic/professional experience. My professional experience was thoroughly fruitful and I gained good exposure, as this was my first foray into the world of applied research. It also provided me the opportunity of traveling around and seeing places that I had only seen in movies or read about in books, in many ways an exhilarating experience. For all these reasons, I would strongly recommend anyone to try out a foreign internship because of the added element of cultural exposure.
|
||||
|
||||
I would also suggest people use internships as opportunities to explore new avenues and not put too much onus on the trivial aspects of stipend and monetary benefits. It is the perfect way to gauge your likings or dislikings towards a certain profession or field of work. Utilizing these chances judiciously might help you with the bigger decisions to be made in your final years and even further ahead.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,64 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Sorbonne University- Paris"
|
||||
image: "gupta1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Tryaksh Gupta"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'First of all, don’t worry if you don’t get an intern from the campus.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
First of all, don’t worry if you don’t get an intern from the campus. Yes! I am among those who got rejected from every company for which I applied in Campus. This article summaries my stay for 10 weeks at Sorbonne University-Paris during my Summer Research Internship. Ofcourse! I had a great time and will try to share my experience in the best way I can and I hope that you take something away from this.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Before August 2018
|
||||
|
||||
I had no as such research experience before this internship. Before the internship season started, I had been working for 1 year in Team KNOx, IIT Roorkee where I had gained knowledge in Computational Solid Mechanics( specifically Finite Element Modelling). I had a complete report prepared for all the stuff that I did during my 2nd Year( I seriously urge you to do so!). By the end of my 2nd year, I was sure of one thing in my mind- No coding! Hence, I was looking for an intern in the core of mechanical engineering.
|
||||
|
||||
## Making it There
|
||||
|
||||
With no research papers and previous research experience, I opted to sit for the campus internship session 2018. So here’s my journey!
|
||||
|
||||
I applied for almost all the core companies for my branch (Mechanical) that visited our campus - ITC, Robert Bosch, Tata Steel,Jindal Steel and JSW. To be frank, I was able to make through the resume shortlist and online test of the most of the companies, but I faced difficulty in getting through GD(Group Discussion) and interview round because of my inability to speak fluently and confidently in English.
|
||||
|
||||
Also, there are few companies that visit the campus for the core subject. Hence, the opportunities were limited. I didn't lose my hopes and kept searching for options in my field of interest. I searched for the options in Research Field. I didn’t try for DAAD (because it demands high CGPA). I applied for MITACS(Canada) and NTHU-Taiwan. In mitacs,I got my application under consideration which gave me some positive hopes of being selected. But I didn’t have any luck here either. I was left only with the option of Charpak Scholarship(France). With the series of hard luck, I tried my final call here. I talked to my senior who had an internship in France in the same field(Computational Solid Mechanics) that I was interested in. I emailed 4 professors working in this field and got a positive reply from 2 of them(Trust me, I didn’t expect that luck). One of them was not ready to fund me but he provided me with the acceptance letter that I needed for my application in Charpak Lab Scholarship. Unfortunately, I was not able to get through it( Not only a high CGPA but also serious research background matters for Charpak!). The other professor (from Sorbonne University) was ready to fund me after the Skype interview. I had an interview with the latter for almost 1 hour ending with the happiest lines by him I could ever listen to “ It would be pride for us if you join our research group” . The funding from the university was sufficient to cover my all expenses during my stay and travel in Paris,France. I pursued my interests and didn’t lose my hopes even though there were few opportunities. I shall expect the same from everyone who reads this.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Adding to this, If you are aiming for DAAD, you will have to start pretty soon - I think around August-September should be good. For Charpak, you can start mailing professors by November-December. There is no limit to the number of emails you can send. I have known friends who have sent more than a hundred before getting a positive response. Care must be taken to not spam each and every professor you find out about with the same mail. Take some time to select a professor and write him a personalised mail in coherence with your interests.
|
||||
The generally accepted format for your mail is something like this - your cover letter (the mail you write), and with it attached your resume (with a detailed description of your projects), a report on the project(s) you have done (Trust me,this really increases your chances), and a letter of recommendation (optional). No need to use your IITR resume. You can easily create a personalised Resume on LaTeX.
|
||||
|
||||
## Project and Lab
|
||||
|
||||
My internship lasted for about 10 weeks in CNRS lab-Institut Jean Le Rond D’Alembert at Sorbonne University-Paris. I was offered a project in the field of Finite Element Method in Computational Fracture Mechanics(Very coherent to my interest and previous work). My professor had a very good experience in the past with the Indian Students(particularly from IITs). So he had great expectations from me. He provided me the project of his most important client from Nuclear Industry (Framatome) to analyse the sample from a nuclear reactor that was failing during its usage in the Nuclear Plant(Quite Critical though!). Well! It’s the nuclear industry and they demanded rigorous analysis report on the cause of the failure. I was not alone in this project. I had a guide( very kind hearted personality!) who took care of all the experimental data and letting me to focus on the computational Finite Element Analysis. I was asked to predict the fracture resistance( Measure for the toughness of Metallic Alloy) using Cohesive Zone Modelling from the data I had from Experiments.
|
||||
The people at the lab are very helping and kind hearted. Timings are flexible and were usually from 10am to 7pm(depending on the work!) .Thanks to my professor who helped me a lot to go through the Visa process after one rejection from the French Embassy and also being very receptive during my entire internship.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Major Learnings
|
||||
|
||||
The most important thing I learnt in my internship is the importance of pursuing your passion without fearing the scope in general. This helped me to sit all day long in the lab seriously focused into my work. The project demanded the input of almost all of my previous knowledge in Finite Element Analysis and a lot of calculations. Also, I learnt the importance of having the knowledge of at least one Coding language( preferably Matlab or Python) to avoid tedious Excel calculations. Besides these, I was given my personal Cluster with a RAM of 256 GB( Yes! You read it Correct- 256Gb) with which I was able to carry out my calculations precisely on the scale of microns without wastage of time. I also learnt various fancy machines used in the research of Fracture Mechanics, namely- Profilometer and UTM. This research experience also helped me to strengthen my intentions to pursue higher studies abroad in the same field.
|
||||
|
||||
## The City and Culture
|
||||
|
||||
‘The City of Lights’, ‘The City of Romance’, ‘The Culinary capital of the world’, ‘The fashion City’, all these are just names Paris, France is known by. Paris is one of the most amazing places you will ever visit. There are so many phenomenal things to see and do you’ll never get bored. Eiffel Tower- The most important Landmark has always amazed me and the night view is even stunning. I was lucky enough to be present at the Eiffel Tower on the French National Day( Bastille Day). It was probably the best night of my life as the entire sky around the Eiffel tower was filled with fireworks and heavenly joy.
|
||||
|
||||
The Arc De Triomphe and Versailles are some of Paris’ other famous landmarks. The Arc De Triomphe is a 164 ft. arch. It honors all the soldiers who have fought for France, particularly during Napoleon Bonaparte’s reign. There are tons of museums in Paris, Louvre being the best. Outside this museum is a substantial glass pyramid. Inside there are heaps exhibits including artifacts from Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci is also displayed there. Remember! Weekends at Paris are Lit and every weekend night is like a festival for Parisians because they are partying and lazy in work(True Observation!)
|
||||
|
||||
Being a Photographer, Europe is ideal for the shutterbug in me. France gives amazing benefits to students - reduced fares for every attraction, free entry at museums, a part of your travel expenses are covered, and much more. It is very easy to visit nearby countries (one Visa works for almost all countries in the EU) and there are plenty of deals you get for Bus/Train journeys. I chose Flixbus for my travel within Europe. Since I lost my passport 20 days after my arrival into France, I was able to make through only 3 countries apart from France- namely Netherlands(Amsterdam), Belgium( Brussels, Bruges) and Monaco( Tiny but Amazing!). Besides these, there are a lot of cities within France that I visited and were worth the money- namely Nice, Lyon, Marseille.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Takeaways!
|
||||
|
||||
Apart from all the massive technical knowledge I imbibed, I learned how to survive through the toughest times and be careful with my things while traveling because I was robbed of my bag(with Passport, Camera gear and Mobile Phone). Now I feel more bold and confident in my decisions with enhanced communication skills. I guarantee that you will definitely learn a lot and also get good recommendations if you wish to apply for Masters. Keeping aside the immense amount of knowledge you will gain from the experience, how often does one get to live for 2 months in Europe, that too off of someone else’s money?
|
||||
For any queries or additional information regarding how to apply, feel free to contact me! All the Best!!!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
P.S. (Important) : CGPA does matters even if you have a good research background, so please take care of it!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,48 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: WORLDQUANT"
|
||||
image: "shandilya1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Ishan Shandilya"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'It has been almost a year since I read Aditya Chaturvedi’s summer intern diary on his experience with Edelweiss, and that turned out to be my first footsteps in the intriguing world of Finance.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
It has been almost a year since I read Aditya Chaturvedi’s summer intern diary on his experience with Edelweiss, and that turned out to be my first footsteps in the intriguing world of Finance. So, I would suggest the readers to go through his blog from last year’s collection of diaries before you proceed, you may extract some really invaluable gyan about the world of finance and… probably about life as well :D
|
||||
|
||||
## My Story
|
||||
|
||||
Before going into the specifics about my internship or “quantitative finance” I would like to take you through the story of digging out my area of interest from the deep cave of diverse opportunities that are available in this pious campus of ours!
|
||||
|
||||
I entered my second year with a zeal to find my interest, a deteriorating enthusiasm for my majors Chemical Engineering and with a guilt of spending my summers with a controller in hand and celebrating goals I scored ( in FIFA :p ) more proudly than Cristiano Ronaldo himself ( well, I am still proud of it! ). So, I asked some of my seniors and started doing some standard courses in the field of Machine Learning. I liked reading Watch Out’s summer intern diaries a lot and one day I came across Aditya’s blog. He was talking about “quantitative finance” and I read the wikipedia page which mentioned: Mathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance and financial mathematics, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with mathematical modeling of financial markets. I had always loved the “intuitive yet so counter-intuitive” world of mathematics but had no particular interest in the complex and boring (yes that was me then!) financial markets. I pinged him on Facebook and got a reply a fortnight later, talked about his internship and Finance in general, he suggested me some courses and websites to get an overview about the financial markets, to which I was very reluctant as all I cared about was “MATHS”! Still, I read some blogs and saw some videos and to my surprise I found them really interesting. Then, blogs from top Football journalists got replaced with those Finance literatures in my google news feed and in those days you could find me glued into my cell phone throughout the lectures, asking Investopedia the meaning of terms like “Debt”, “Equity”, “Arbitrage” and what not. It was the first time that I got a feeling of doing something just because I really liked it and without being influenced by the crowd around me. So, I decided to shift my complete focus towards Finance to explore it further. Aditya helped me a lot with everything, every small doubt which I had, I ran to his doorstep, and he never turned me down. He kept on motivating me to read more and his passion about learning finance was second to none. The thing which still gives me goosebumps is the fact that he invested hours in me helping with my silly doubts and giving me some gyan from his book of life experiences just like a responsible elder brother in his final year while all of his batch mates were busy preparing for the placement season.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Overview of “Quant Finance”
|
||||
|
||||
By now you might have got an idea about the prerequisites of working in this industry: An undying curiosity about Financial Markets and a stronghold on Mathematics. To clear a very common misconception, Probability and Statistics is not the only field of maths which plays a strong role but if
|
||||
you come to areas such as derivative pricing, calculus can literally rip you off! As an engineering student it is difficult to get into a finance role but there are certain online platforms (Websim and Quantopian are the most popular ones) which can help you check if your interest lies in this area and if that is the case, you can build a very strong skill set. If you are interested in doing some courses which are relevant, you can always feel free to ping me!
|
||||
|
||||
## Process of Selection
|
||||
|
||||
WorldQuant recruits on-campus interns only from IIT Bombay, Delhi and Kanpur for pre-final year students. I was still in my second year and my selection was through an off-campus drive which I have described below.
|
||||
I came across the Research Consultant Program of WorldQuant LLC, a US-based hedge fund. I will give you a brief introduction about their program before I proceed further. WorldQuant’s business model is trading “Long-Short Equity Models” called alphas, back tested on historical data (don’t worry if you didn’t understand what I just said, you are not even expected to, try to google it out if you need some insights about it, not a specific requirement for this blog though!). They have created “Websim” which is a very user-friendly platform where begineers like you and me can test our own ideas and see if they work in the equity market. I got really intrigued at this prospect and started exploring their platform further. WorldQuant was soon about to host the IIT Roorkee Alphathon ( think of it as a marathon of making alphas as the name suggests ) and there were cash prizes and internship opportunities for the top scorers. I took part in the contest which was 20 day long and ended on the 31st of December. These alphathons were conducted in other IITs and BITS as well. I had a decent score in the alphathon and got a call for the interview. There were two rounds, the first one was a technical interview, taken by one of the researchers at WorldQuant, where I was asked some technical questions related to the platform, a few standard puzzles and was also asked to explain some of my trading strategies. The interview was fairly good and I got a call for the final HR round. I had received my offer letter a week after the interview and then there was a background check process which took almost a month.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## The Internship Experience
|
||||
|
||||
Coming to the internship experience, I can’t really go into the project details specifically as WorldQuant has some strict rules and regulations for the same. The fact which amazed me completely was that WorldQuant never really made me feel that I was an intern which is very rare among firms of such stature. I had one to one interactions with each and every member of the firm, at least in my division, throughout the vertical hierarchy system and across the globe. As far as the technical skills are concerned, I got hands on experience with the most cutting-edge technology which is currently used in the world of Quantitative Research and I worked on projects which were meant to be implemented globally by the firm. Another key highlight was the chance to showcase my creativity and ideas with complete independence, this was possible because of the individualistic yet so supportive work environment of the firm. I wasn’t supposed to follow some formal dress code or a strict working hour system, I had access to all the tools 24/7 and my work was all that mattered. Most importantly, WorldQuant provided me a very supportive environment where I could discuss all my problems without any hesitation, which indeed helped me perform well and learn better!
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing up and Key Takeaways
|
||||
|
||||
I had a different selection process as most firms take off-campus interns through Linkedin. If you want to know the most efficient procedure of landing an internship in the quantitative finance industry using Linkedin, please go through Aditya Chaturvedi’s blog on his internship with Edelweiss from last year’s collection of intern diaries about which I mentioned in the beginning, you can also have a look at Ram Bansal’s blog from last year’s set of diaries to learn about targeting internships through Linkedin, in general.
|
||||
|
||||
The internship made me realize that with quantitative finance it is the hands-on experience with the practical world which matters more than the literature we read and study as far as the process of learning and gaining knowledge is concerned. All the informal chats with seniors across the firm provided me with a clearer vision of the industry. This also helped me realize that I still have a lot to learn before entering the competitive world of quantitative finance, and this was my most important takeaway from the internship.
|
||||
|
||||
I paid a special emphasis on the “story” part to showcase the importance of knowing your interest and having the courage of believing in it. I also want to highlight that through this whole process starting from fighting for a top place in the college alphathon to successfully finishing my internship at WorldQuant, I have learnt the importance of positive team work more than anything else. I always had seniors to provide me support on all aspects be it technical doubts or some personal problem, friends with whom I could discuss the working of financial markets and … well various other things :p. When you sit down and tinker for a while keeping all the rush of our daily lives aside, you will realize that these are the things which matter the most!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,92 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries:Australian National University"
|
||||
image: "jat1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Akash Jat"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'Hello everyone! I am Akash Kharita , A 3rd year undergraduate in geophysical technology , Earth Sciences ,IIT Roorkee. I spent my summers working at the Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University. It was a once in a lifetime experience and I have a lot to share about this memorable journey.'
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Hello everyone! I am Akash Kharita , A 3rd year undergraduate in geophysical technology , Earth Sciences ,IIT Roorkee. I spent my summers working at the Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University. It was a once in a lifetime experience and I have a lot to share about this memorable journey.
|
||||
|
||||
## Making It There
|
||||
It all started last year, being a motivated student I really wanted to do something in the planetary geosciences field. I had worked on a project in summers in my department, So I started shooting mails to professors around November - December, I emailed to around 100 professors, out of which I received a reply from 5-6 professors. Even their replies said that they didn’t have enough funding or time. Although demotivating, I kept trying and still got no result. One day while I was searching through the opportunities that Australian National University provides, I found out that there is a scheme known as ‘Future Research Talent Travel Awards’ for Indian students which seeks excellent students from India and provides funding. But it is a very tedious job to apply to the aforementioned scheme .
|
||||
There are two methods to apply for this scheme, either you have to be nominated by your department (there are only two nominations per department ) or you can mail the corresponding professor, discuss your research proposal and interests with them and if they agree, have an interview with them and then get accepted by their Head of Department. Since I was just in second year at that time and already two students were nominated by my department, I choose the latter path. I searched the staff directory of ANU, found the professor, whose research interests matched mine and mailed him about my interests and also sent him a research proposal. He enquired about me with my professor here and asked me to send me my resume, then he took an interview. He was impressed by my credentials and made a request to his HOD for accepting me.
|
||||
|
||||
The HOD accepted me and I got mail from their manager that I have become a FRT Scholar. That’s how it all started.
|
||||
A contingent of 50 Scholars were selected from India under this scheme for doing research in various departments in ANU . There were a lot of fun programs scheduled for us as a part of this scheme.
|
||||
So in December I was all set for attending ANU in summers and started preparing meticulously to align myself to the latest research in the field.
|
||||
In the meantime, I had to apply for a passport, which took me a month, thanks to Indian bureaucracy.
|
||||
And then I applied for a visa. To procure a visa, you need to show various support letters and funding letters, all of which were provided at the time by our manager at ANU. I finally got visa after 21 days of online applications and booked my tickets for Canberra in March.
|
||||
|
||||
## Getting There
|
||||
I booked tickets with Singapore airlines, I was very excited as well as equally nervous, as I had never travelled on a flight before. So basically everything was a first for me, my first air travel, first Singapore airlines flight,and my first time working under a foreign professor. So I boarded the flight from Delhi to Singapore. When I landed in Singapore, I was amazed by the charm and vastness of the airport. As I had a 2 hour layover there, I explored all around the airport and was thrilled to see the kind of decorations they had. After that I boarded the flight to Sydney, I had a bus transfer to another terminal at Sydney airport (yeah ,time to upload instagram stories :) ), the bus was really amazing, climate controlled and even had a toilet! The weather at Sydney was fairly sunny, which was obvious due to its closeness to sea. Then I took a domestic flight to Canberra and reached the Canberra Airport around 11 in the night. The weather in Canberra was very cold for which I was prepared as I knew it was winter there in southern hemisphere and I was advised to bring a lot of woolen clothes by our manager. So the moment I stepped out of plane , I was thrilled and decided that I will make the most of this internship .
|
||||
By that time, my phone had discharged and I needed to contact my roommates who had arrived earlier. I took a taxi, the taxi driver was Indian and he helped me to contact them. I finally reached my room which was on the 10th floor of my apartment.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## About My Accommodation
|
||||
There was a Whatsapp group consisting of all the members of this contingent and our Manager and some previous year scholars. Thanks to them for providing continuous guidance about everything from visa application to accommodation. Everyone began to search for accommodation in early April. I found a group of 3 scholars searching for 4th person to share their accommodation, I prefer to live in a group because it is safe and cheaper option as well.
|
||||
In this way a group of 4 formed and we began to search and discuss various accommodations from Airbnb and fortunately we found a very nice and luxurious apartment suitable to our budget. We immediately booked it for two months.
|
||||
The benefits of this accommodation were the following -
|
||||
|
||||
**1.** It was reasonably priced
|
||||
|
||||
**2.** Very close to the city centre
|
||||
|
||||
**3.** About 1.5 km walk to my department
|
||||
|
||||
**4.** Scenic view of Parliament ,Mount Ainslie and Lake Burley Griffin from the balcony
|
||||
|
||||
**5.** Free cleaning service,wifi,swimming pool, gym
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## The Work
|
||||
I met my Professor the next day and received a very warm welcome from my department. I was given an ID card, office room, access to all stationary items and a lot of chocolates. Then he showed me around the labs while discussing what work we had to do.
|
||||
I was amazed by the amount of new instrumentation they had. I began my work on the next day on analyzing Lunar Sample brought during Apollo 16 mission. I was thrilled to touch the rock sample that was once brought by astronauts from the moon.
|
||||
My work involved some image processing, i.e. to smoothen the previous image and make its resolution better, I used MATLAB for that. Then I performed a series of instrumentation on the sample to analyze it in every way possible, our main goal was to understand the origin, the thermodynamic conditions under which our sample crystallised using mineralogical and petrological data. I learnt the operation of many instruments like EPMA , SEM and most importantly SHRIMP. All my lab expenses were covered by my supervisor. I was very enthusiastic at work, I always had a target to complete my work without any delay. I attended a lot of seminars on planetary sciences and got myself acquainted with the very thriving research environment developing there. My supervisor Dr. Marc Norman guided me through every stage of internship and we had a discussion on coffee table about the latest developments in planetary sciences.
|
||||
At the end, I submitted my report and am expecting my paper to get published by next year.
|
||||
I was awarded FRT certificate from Nobel Laureate and Vice Chancellor of ANU, Dr. Brian Schmidt , it was like a dream come true to talk to him and receiving an award from him.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
.
|
||||
## The Fun Part
|
||||
I travelled a lot around Canberra and Sydney, which was a 3 hour bus ride from Canberra. In Canberra, I visited the National Parliament, National War Memorial, National Museum of Australia, Australian Botanical Gardens, Mount Ainslie, Zoological Park and Telstra Tower.
|
||||
Each place had a different blend of information and excitement. Night View from the Telstra Tower was breathtaking.
|
||||
I made a lot of Australian friends who were very friendly. I remember walking 10s of kilometers to explore the city at night and just asking someone for was sufficient to get back to my apartment.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
Lake Burley Griffin, artificially prepared lake was one of the best places to hangout on weekend.
|
||||
The best part was to spot the kangaroos randomly hopping out of nowhere from the side gardens.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
Sydney: The Emerald City
|
||||
We had planned a 3 day tour to Sydney. When we reached there, our first point of observation was Watson Bay, I was awestruck by it’s beauty and the view from there.
|
||||
We did a lot of photography there and then went to the Harbour bridge where I was completely awestruck by how amazing that was. There was a vivid Sydney festival going on, for which the city was fully decorated with pink lights due to which the night view of the city was out of this world. The most beautiful thing was to catch a ferry from circular quay and enjoy the view of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House in one frame. The next day we bought a city pass to explore four tourist sites -Sea life Aquarium, Sydney Tower , Madame Tussauds Museum and The Zoological Park.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
The Sea Life Aquarium was the best aquarium I had seen, I saw a wide variety of fish, turtles ,octopuses. I saw the penguins which were kept in an artificially cooled seperate hall. I saw dangerous sharks swimming above my head, (yes by this time we reached the deepest point ) While returning we saw many sea rocks and plants that were found in different parts of the world.
|
||||
Later we went to Sydney Tower and the view of the whole city was mesmerizing.
|
||||
|
||||
On the third and last day we went to Manly Beach, Bondi Beach and the world famous Bondi- Coogee Walk. Beaches were very beautiful, we played around, ventured a few metres into the sea and then sunbathed. I wished time to freeze at that moment.
|
||||
Overall it was very amazing and a once in a lifetime experience.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Advice to Fellow students
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
Never stop trying, I got a C.G.P.A of 6.5 in my 1st Sem, but by the end of 3rd Sem, I converted it into 8.8. CGPA although not the only criteria, plays an important role in securing research internship.
|
||||
Discover your passion.
|
||||
Many students just want to go abroad and spend their summers there without caring about their passion,this should not be the case. For you, the priority should be your work and your desire to learn, then come other things.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,61 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: GIST,South Korea"
|
||||
image: "kps1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Kunal Pratap Singh"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'This summers I interned at the Computer Vision Lab, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. Given my GPA(marginally above 7) getting a research internship in a specific field(Deep Learning in my case) can get tricky but believe me, it’s worth giving a shot.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
This summers I interned at the Computer Vision Lab, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. Given my GPA(marginally above 7) getting a research internship in a specific field(Deep Learning in my case) can get tricky but believe me, it’s worth giving a shot. My interest in Deep Learning was partly inspired by the Deep Learning Book discussion sessions which were organized by Paper Discussion Group(now known as Vision & Language Group/VLG) a group that was initiated by some of my department’s seniors. It was through their advice that I ended up not sitting for campus internships and go all out for a research internship. This proved to be one of the best decisions I took in my college life and all I can say is I’m utterly thankful to them for suggesting me to do so. Although I stopped attending those meetings after my seniors graduated but for juniors who are interested in trying out Machine Learning should definitely consider joining VLG sessions.
|
||||
|
||||
## Making it there
|
||||
|
||||
The usual ways of getting a research internship are either you get into an already existing research program (MITACS, DAAD, SURF-Caltech, NTU India Connect) or contacting professors directly. These programs usually have a GPA criteria which is near about 8 so I wasn’t eligible for any of them. I went through with emailing professors and also contacting PhDs and postdoctoral researchers through LinkedIn about possible internship positions. The latter helps because PhDs, postdocs and even some professors are active on LinkedIn and can give honest feedback if one’s profile is well suited for the lab and also inform about any such openings available at the first place. This in turn hastens up the process of shortlisting labs and professors to target.
|
||||
|
||||
From August to November I emailed a bunch of professors, but didn’t find any success. Parallel to this, in order to strengthen my profile I took up a winter research internship at the Video Analytics Lab, IISc Bangalore and ended up publishing a research paper in a renowned conference through that project. In January, I started applying again, and the research paper seemed to do the trick. I got an offer from Rapid Object Search Lab, Nanyang Technological University(NTU), Singapore. In the interview I was just asked to give a presentation about my previous work and was grilled some very basic machine learning questions. I had another offer from University at Buffalo, State University of New York(UB), the selection process to this involved preparing a presentation on the professor’s research paper that I had mentioned in my email and suggest ways to improve that.
|
||||
|
||||
My last offer which I eventually took was from GIST, South Korea. I came in touch with the professor in August on LinkedIn, and had decided to work on a remote collaboration, but I couldn’t keep up with my courses, so I had to drop that. But I kept in touch with the professor discussing research ideas and somewhere around March I inquired about a summer internship opportunity and he agreed to offer me one. The reason for choosing GIST over bigger and better renowned institutions as NTU and UB was that the research topic aligned the most with my interests and the familiarity with the professor.
|
||||
|
||||
## Work
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
GIST is part of the government funded tech institutions system in South Korea, it is somewhat similar to what we have in India for IITs. So most of the research funding comes from the government and but also has strong ties with the industry. My lab is part of the Institute of Integrated Technology and the EECS Department.
|
||||
|
||||
My project is in the field of Deep Learning and Computer Vision. Specifically I’m working on the intersection of Neural Architecture Search and Binary Neural Networks. Neural Architecture Search is somewhat related to the term AutoML by Google where the goal is to have a single algorithm for finding architectures according to the accuracy and memory requirements for a given task(say image classification). Binary Neural Networks are a class of networks which have weights and activations as binary bits instead of floating point numbers. The project is still ongoing and I’m going to continue it as a foreign BTP here at GIST itself.
|
||||
|
||||
I’m working on this project with a South Korean undergrad. The aim of the internship is to publish our work in a top tier conference and also design a directly deployable version of the algorithm for the government institution funding the project. Work hours at the lab are flexible, and a GIST ID card can be used to access the lab and other places anytime of the day. As long as the work is being done, there were no defined hours or compulsions about coming to the lab on weekdays, let alone weekends. I prefer working in the lab, where you can actively discuss ideas with other students as well as the professor which helps you get a better understanding of the field.
|
||||
The other labmates, who are mostly Masters or PhD students, are very nice and helpful and the same goes for the professor. All the projects including mine are personally mentored by the Professor and we have weekly meetings to discuss the progress and further plan of action. Other than discussions the professor likes having frequent chats which can range from very random chatter like how much he liked 3 Idiots to giving a perspective on academic and industry oriented research, pros and cons of a PhD and similar stuff. All in all, the work environment is relaxed and yet so productive at the same time.
|
||||
|
||||
## What’s to love about the place?
|
||||
|
||||
One thing that struck me the most was the niceness of people towards foreigners. Most South Korean people don’t hesitate much before going out of their way to help a stranger despite the language barrier. Other than that if you’re a fried chicken lover, South Korea is the place to be. As per my fellow labmate, Korea has more fried chicken places than the no of McDonald’s in the entire world. The weather is pleasant, neither too hot nor too cold. My institute is in Gwangju, but I also had the chance to visit Seoul for a conference.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Key Takeaways:
|
||||
|
||||
I had done a research internship in the past but this internship helped me build a project from scratch and not just coding things for my mentor, which helped me gauge my interest towards independent research. This internship helped me solidify my interest in Deep Learning and gave me a broader perspective towards future options. Also the entire experience of leaving campus internships and exploring a lot of off campus possibilities gave me a sense of confidence that leaving campus opportunities for something that would be more beneficial for me in the long run isn’t that career threatening as some of my peers made it sound and the experience was worth giving a try.
|
||||
|
||||
Also I’ve opted for extending this internship as a foreign BTP, which is one of the many academic reforms that were introduced last year. I’ll be shifting the two PECs that I was supposed to take in my 4-1 to my 4-2, and pursue the course BTP-1 in a foreign institute(ie. GIST in my case). I would be evaluated based on my research output and my BTP reports that I would submit to my advisor at the end of the semester. Anyone who is planning to pursue higher studies after college should consider making use of this reform, it would be immensely helpful for your application. For the exact administrative procedures, consider contacting the academic section.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Tips:
|
||||
|
||||
In my not so humble opinion, barely seeing the GPA when the department’s curriculum is not at all related to the research topic is utter foolishness but I guess that’s how most of the academic institutions work and it isn’t changing anytime soon. Although, I strongly recommend to maintain a decent CGPA, but just in case you couldn’t, you can expect a question in almost all your interviews that why do you have bad grades and the best way is to prove that you’ve put your time in developing some skillset which would aid your research.
|
||||
|
||||
For freshers’ and sophomores who would be currently wondering of what field of interest they would like to pursue, don’t rule out research with the myth that it has something to do with being good at academics.
|
||||
|
||||
Make sure you interact and connect with as many people as you can during your internship, it gives you a broader perspective of options available beyond what you might already know through your IITR seniors or peers.
|
||||
|
||||
Getting a research internship is a bit testing, but the experience is definitely worth giving a try. During your hunt for one, be patient and trying weighing more on realistic opportunities and give
|
||||
them your best shot instead of random shots in the dark at anything and everything.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Good luck and hope you make the most out of your summers!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,72 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "HPAIR"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Atharva Shukla"
|
||||
category: career
|
||||
image: hpair1.png
|
||||
excerpt: 'HPAIR, (The Harvard College Project for Asian and International Relations) is a non-profit organization founded to create a forum for exchange of knowledge between students and young professionals.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## HPAIR
|
||||
|
||||
HPAIR, (The Harvard College Project for Asian and International Relations) is a non-profit organization founded to create a forum for exchange of knowledge between students and young professionals, and to facilitate discussion about the most important economic, political and social issues faced by Asia. Established in 1991 it places special focus on promoting long-term relationships among future leaders and connects them with current leaders in the world.
|
||||
|
||||
HPAIR provides the delegates with different tracks to choose from; this years’ tracks include : art, media and culture, energy and environment stability, entrepreneurship and technology, global markets and economy, governance and geopolitics, social policy and justice.
|
||||
|
||||
The crux of this conference lies embedded in its Impact Challenges. These are case- study styled competitions formulated in partnership with leading organizations. The delegates are encouraged to brainstorm together and come up with solutions for some of the biggest issues currently plaguing Asia. This has, in the past, helped spark the formation of start-ups, and led to the students landing exciting internships in the above mentioned fields, with organizations such as Deloitte. The attendees try to understand problems and discuss possible solutions through various plenary sessions, panels, and informative seminars. These seminars are delivered by eminent personalities from various fields, invited to foster mentorship, networking, and guidance opportunities for delegates, some of whom include Kevin Rudd, the former Prime Minister of Australia; Ban Ki-moon, the former Secretary General of the United Nations and Frank Friedman, current COO of Deloitte Global.
|
||||
|
||||
A great learning curve is what awaits any student attending the conference but this is made difficult by the steep registration prices and the high costs incurred. A partial or a full scholarship is awarded to students in order to lessen this financial burden but the number of these are limited to 50. The conference quality in exchange for the amount of money being invested might not be appreciated by everyone who is a part of it.
|
||||
|
||||
## OPPORTUNITIES
|
||||
|
||||
This conference provides one with a unique and rare opportunity to grace the lawns of a university better than our own , an alternative if you despise a 4 hour road trip to Delhi.
|
||||
|
||||
It is the perfect opportunity of increasing the reach of your network by making new connections. It will help you meet people from different geographies and cultures and understand the roots of their academic and professional brilliance in addition to having the opportunity to interact with eminent speakers. This interaction provides you with the opportunity to often realise how a method being applied by someone in their own problems can be modified for yours. Opportunities to be a part of projects already being done by people or leveraging the expertise of people in various fields for your own projects are some of the most important reasons to be a part of such a conference.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
HPAIR currently holds two annual conferences that bring together international students and eminent individuals in the fields of academia, politics and business - the Harvard Conference and the Asia Conference.
|
||||
|
||||
<u>The Harvard Conference</u> was started in 2008 and is held within the confines of the Harvard University Campus where around 300 students and professionals convene to explore the pertinent issues surrounding the Asian region.
|
||||
|
||||
<u>The Asian Conference</u> was started in 1992 and is a 5 day program held more fittingly in an Asian city. It looks to integrate the contents of the academic and business world, hence benefitting the enthusiastic delegates by helping them gain a broader perspective on issues spanning multiple areas.
|
||||
|
||||
The Harvard conference is said to be more coveted. The Asian conference is longer, but both the conferences don't differ by much.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Eligibility
|
||||
|
||||
Current undergraduate students, graduate students, and young professionals are eligible to apply as delegates. In addition, recent college graduates who obtained an undergraduate or graduate degree in the past 5 years, are eligible to apply for HPAIR conferences.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## APPLICATION PROCEDURE
|
||||
|
||||
**1. Delegate Application:**
|
||||
Fill out and submit the Delegate Application at [https://my.hpair.org](https://my.hpair.org){: style="text-decoration:underline"} before the appropriate deadline. The application is made up of -
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
**1)** Questions whose answers should reflect how your solutions make a difference and should highlight what you will bring to the conference and help in finding better solutions to the already existing problems. Connecting it to the world around you will give you an edge.
|
||||
|
||||
**2)** A resume with special emphasis on your interpersonal skills, highlighting your community projects if any.
|
||||
|
||||
**3)** A short 400 word essay.
|
||||
|
||||
Applicants hear 4-6 days after the deadline of their application round whether they have been selected for an interview.
|
||||
|
||||
**2. Interview-**
|
||||
|
||||
Delegates who make it past the first stage of the application are offered a 15-20 minute interview with an HPAIR staff member. The interview is taken over skype or some other video calling platform. It will focus on the applicant’s reasons for attending the conference, their academic and/or professional experiences and their critical thinking ability. The questions revolve around the things already written by the delegate in the application, it is more on the tracks of a conversation rather than an interview.
|
||||
|
||||
The most important takeaway from any such conference is undoubtedly the interaction and networking opportunities. HPAIR takes good care of this with the help of small panel sizes, and giving delegates enough time to ask the speakers questions, and interact with other delegates. The conference staff might come off as a little hostile but organizing an event of this scale and pulling it off remains commendable nonetheless. The interaction is focused more towards other delegates rather than with cooperates (World Business Dialogue has a more professional feel to it.)
|
||||
|
||||
HPAIR has the name of a prestigious university associated with it which helps in attracting the most talented people from different walks of life across the world. A truly remarkable experience lies ahead for those who seek to learn.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,85 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: HONDA Y-E-S"
|
||||
image: "honda1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Alok Gupta"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'At the beginning of internship season, I was very sure that I had to get an internship in core sector. So I started applying to companies like ITC, Bajaj, KPIT but unfortunately couldn’t get through the final interviews.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
At the beginning of internship season, I was very sure that I had to get an internship in core sector. So I started applying to companies like ITC, Bajaj, KPIT but unfortunately couldn’t get through the final interviews. Now when I look back I feel that it happened for my own good, as later, I got to know about the HONDA Y-E-S award through TPO and applied for it. After a 3 month long selection process, I was able to receive this prestigious award which helped me bag an internship at Kyoto University, Japan. With my experience of internship drive, I would say getting a desired internship is a matter of luck, but you can definitely boost up your chances by being organized & consistent in mailing and being aware of what all opportunities that you have. Luck favours the brave!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## About Honda Y-E-S award
|
||||
|
||||
Honda Young Engineer and Scientist’s a.k.a. Y-E-S award is an initiative of Honda Foundation to give recognition and to encourage Engineers from developing countries to pursue research in the field of eco-technology. Under this program, Honda Cars India Ltd. conducts the selection process in India by visiting 6 major IITs to choose 14 students currently in their third year of B.Tech/IDD. The beginning of application process will be notified by TPO so stay updated with the notifications.
|
||||
|
||||
## Selection Process
|
||||
|
||||
There are three stages apart from initial shortlisting based on eligibility criteria of minimum CGPA.
|
||||
In the FIRST stage, you will be asked to write an essay on a topic which will be disclosed during the test. It’ll be somewhat related to eco-tech so you can brush up a bit by skimming certain current affairs or reading articles related to the same. This stage will test your general awareness about the importance and applications of eco-technology. Try to be creative and factual in your essay rather than focusing on how many words you can put into it.
|
||||
In the SECOND stage, it is highly likely that you will be invited to Honda Cars India Ltd. Head office in Greater Noida for first round of interview. In this round, apart from basic resume based questions, you will be asked to propose innovative solutions to ongoing or upcoming problems related to environment and eco-technology.
|
||||
The candidates who successfully clear this stage will be given a biography of Soichiro Honda San, founder of Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
|
||||
After this, there will be a FINAL round of interview which will be taken by an eminent scientist. In our case it was Mr. Shirish S Garud, Director of TERI. During this interview, you will grilled on the basis of your resume and there will be extended discussions on various applications of technology and how your work relates with eco-tech. He also asked a generic question based on the biography so do give it a read.
|
||||
|
||||
After this in January, the results are announced and the winners are felicitated at a grand event along with and were awarded with a lavish monetary prize. You will be motivated to opt for Y-E-S Plus scholarship. Under Y-E-S Plus program, you will be provided substantial financial support if you manage to get an acceptance to an internship in a recognized Japanese University or Industry. You can also avail the Y-E-S Plus scholarship by going for masters instead of internship.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Luckily I was able to get through all these stages and eventually after a month long of mailing and a couple of rejections, I got an acceptance from Matsuno Mechatronics Lab at Kyoto University. I would like to thank our super senior Sonali Srijan, as her insights were really helpful at every stage of the selection process. Regarding mailing, I recommend to make your cover letter as personalized as possible w.r.t. the lab and try to sync timings with the targeted country because senior professors receive 100s of email every day! Make sure that your application must convey that you are interested to learn and that you have properly researched about the lab rather than just glorifying your achievements.
|
||||
|
||||
**Skype Interview:**- Sometimes Sensei might ask you for an interview before offering the internship like my Sensei did, but that is always advantageous for the student as you can become familiar with ongoing research work related to your area of interest. This will help you to bag a suitable project and to even prepare beforehand. in certain cases when the professor does not seem inclined to provide you an internship, you might actually convince him/her by an open personal discussion. So I will suggest, do propose the possibility of a skype interaction in your cover letter.
|
||||
|
||||
## About the Project
|
||||
|
||||
I never had any research experience before, so for me it was like entering into an altogether new arena. Honestly speaking, I was a bit nervous about the work culture in my lab due to the myths regarding Japanese work culture being ridiculously hectic :p. But as soon as I started working, everything turned out to be just fine. The work hours were flexible and all that mattered was my learning and progress.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
My project was to design, simulate and manufacture a robot (a quadruped robot leg) to conduct experiments and implement several bounding gait algorithms in order to validate my mentor’s latest research work. I was solely responsible for design and simulations so it was an intense yet exciting experience as I had to present my ideas in front of all lab members during weekly lab seminars. Everyone was very supportive and I received constructive suggestions which eventually helped me to hone my skills.
|
||||
Regular Lab seminars really helped me to capture the diversity in the field of robotics as researchers working in different verticals presented and discussed their work.
|
||||
|
||||
## About the Place
|
||||
|
||||
Japan is an outstandingly organized county. I did a lot of travelling covering the major cities like Tokyo, Nara, Osaka and Kyoto, where I stayed for 10 weeks. Kyoto is extremely beautiful and it beholds the essence of Imperial Japanese culture. There are numerous world heritage sites and at such close proximity that you can easily take a bike and cover most of the attractions. Not just Kyoto, infact every city in Japan boasts a sophisticated and exceptionally punctual transportation system. This made travelling very convenient and of course then you have the mighty Shinkansen!
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
One of the major best part of my internship was the amount of cultural exposure I got by interacting with people from diverse ethnic backgrounds and nationalities. I was amazed by Japanese etiquette and the way they communicate even with strangers.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Foooood! I absolutely loved it! Can’t really disclose what all I ate but definitely it was a roller coaster ride every time I tried anything new ;p. Which reminds me of Osaka and Tokyo and their gigantic entertainment parks!
|
||||
I also received great amount of help and support by Hardik Parwana, a IITK Alum who is pursuing MS in the same laboratory.
|
||||
|
||||
During the internship, Honda Foundation also organizes a Get-Together event where every Y-E-S awardee from all the countries present in Japan are invited. The event is held in Tokyo and numerous networking and fun activities are conducted so as to make you familiar with other members of Y-E-S community.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Advice to people gunning for it
|
||||
|
||||
The theme of the selection process revolves around eco-technology, so my advice to the potential candidates will be to be well aware of the pertaining challenges that we are facing/going to face and how we can implement eco-tech to provide a feasible alternative. Also ensure that if you have already been a part of a project/activity that was somewhat related to eco-tech, it must not go unnoticed. You will have to convince the interviewers at both the stages that you are research oriented and try not to boast or be unreal about your previous work.
|
||||
A crisp resume, smart preparation and some luck is all that is required to be a Y-E-S awardee.
|
||||
|
||||
## Key takeaways
|
||||
|
||||
Like any other foreign internship you will get to experience the lifestyle in a developed country but it will be significantly different from any western nation. Though you will definitely make friends with different nationalities and you will gain the vibes of being a cosmopolitan.
|
||||
Apart from that, you become a part of Global Y-E-S committee and you can even participate in various future global seminars that are conducted by Honda Foundation(HOF).
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
There are certain setbacks one of which is the language barrier because Japanese people are not well equipped with English. But this can be overcome by learning basic communication skills before-hand and of course Google Translate Zindabad! You just have to be curious enough.
|
||||
To sum up, I would say it was an amazing experience and HOF will support you in every stage right from getting an internship to arranging your accommodation. You might even get a recommendation from Sensei for continuing masters under MEXT scholarship if you perform productively.
|
||||
|
||||
Best of luck!
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:70%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,87 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Ashoka; Innovators for the Public"
|
||||
image: uday1.png
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Uday Singhal"
|
||||
excerpt: "Disclaimer: Ashoka and Ashoka University are two completely unrelated organisations. I was a part of Ashoka during summers. Don’t sweat it out, I’ll tell you what Ashoka is, and maybe a bit more. No, it's not a long read."
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
---
|
||||
**Disclaimer:** Ashoka and Ashoka University are two completely unrelated organisations. I was a part of Ashoka during summers. Don’t sweat it out, I’ll tell you what Ashoka is, and maybe a bit more. No, it's not a long read.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
*“I want to work on a whole bunch of other things: Sustainability, Education, Healthcare and what not. Why should I keep on working for the LGBTQI rights?”*
|
||||
— Akkai Padmashali
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Akkai is empowering members of minority groups, such as sexual minorities (LGBTQI community) to become leaders; thereby creating a domain for discussions on issues of national importance to become more convergent.
|
||||
I was stirred with emotions when I heard it. The vision - that the cause for which she’s working should no longer remain a cause; the cause for which she’s working should no longer exploit anyone else; the cause for which she’s working should no longer demand any work; the norm
|
||||
around that cause shall change. Everyday at Ashoka, you’re exposed to dozens of such ideas that are nothing but strong, passionate and systems changing.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## But what is Ashoka?
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Bill Drayton founded Ashoka in 1980 based on the idea that we need to look at the impact sector through a completely different lens: Just donating money to beneficiaries is not sustainable; we need to start looking at the beneficiaries as clients and hence, became the first person to coin the term - ‘Social Entrepreneurship’.
|
||||
Since 1980, Ashoka started identifying and supporting the world’s leading social entrepreneurs who have ideas for far-reaching social change. It started by first distilling their unique qualities and pioneering a rigorous global system for vetting and electing them to the Ashoka Fellowship. This is handled by the Venture Team; after electing these social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows, the Fellowship Team engages with these fellows to strategically drive them towards maximising Social Impact. Other than this, Ashoka also engages with young people across the world with the belief that ‘Every child should practice Empathy’ and hence, enable ‘Everyone a Changemaker Movement’. Currently, Ashoka is the world’s largest network of Social Entrepreneurs and 6th largest Not-Profit organisation in the world.
|
||||
|
||||
The team in India Office is a small one but comprises of a very diverse set of people. There are individuals who have had experiences ranging from Journalism and Public Policy to Corporate Houses and Startups. There’s a lot of diversity in terms of Nationality as well; there were at least 7 interns who were from the USA, Germany and Egypt. It results in a really healthy workplace environment involving a lot of cultural exchange as well.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## How did I end up at Ashoka?
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
I’ll be fairly honest with why I applied to work at Ashoka, or impact sector for that matter. Since, my second year I was really drawn towards Consulting but we all know how easy it is to get a job at either of Mckinsey, BCG or Bain at IIT Roorkee.
|
||||
In the next couple of lines, I want to break some myths about consulting and how it is really different from any other roles (in terms of preparing yourself for getting a job). Let’s say, someone is really into UI-UX designing. Most obvious thing for him/ her to do is start preparing for it, intern as a designer at a couple of firms and get a job. Now, let’s say, someone really wants to be a Consultant. Interning at boutique consulting firms to prepare your profile doesn’t work; what works is, showing consistency in anything; differentiating yourself from all the other applicants.
|
||||
I spoke to a couple of alumni who were working as consultants in reputed firms. After, going through my resume they suggested me to start looking for socio-economic interns because there was a similar pattern in my resume. Plus, when I was working at a CSR Consultancy firm last summers, I really loved the immense feeling of gratitude I got by working. There was this emotion making me push that, “Come on Uday! You’re work is going to help 100s of women micro-entrepreneurs in Mumbai”
|
||||
|
||||
With these two thoughts, I started looking for an internship in the Impact Sector. <br>
|
||||
|
||||
*“How?”<br>
|
||||
“LinkedIn!”*
|
||||
<br>
|
||||
Networking is a lost art in Roorkee, majority of the people underestimate the power of social capital. First things first - update your LinkedIn profile; add a professional formal picture, update your experiences and start following people relevant to your field of interest. It’s much more than just sending connection request, increasing your connections and sending cold messages to everyone in your circle. Leverage the power of a very strong network that Roorkee has to offer, in the best manner possible. Honestly, it demands time; it’s boring and even frustrating at times; but, there is no alternative.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
I reached out to someone at Ashoka India office on LinkedIn, highlighting my interest in working there along with my resume and the relevance it had with my past experiences (Internships, Inter-IITs, Competitions, Projects). He was kind enough to reciprocate to my message pretty fast and scheduled an interview. I had three rounds of interviews before I was finally offered a chance to work at Ashoka. The interview process wasn’t really difficult; it primarily revolved around three sections:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
**1.** Who are you as an Individual?
|
||||
|
||||
**2.** Why did you choose to work in the Impact Sector?
|
||||
|
||||
**3.** Skillset requirement depending upon the team and project you’re being interviewed for
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## What did I do at Ashoka?
|
||||
|
||||
Ashoka is an extremely fluid organisation with a completely flat hierarchy (not just for the sake of it; as an intern you get to attend all the meetings, meet partners, funders and fellows); you get almost the similar kind of work and ownership as a Consultant who’s working there. There is no age discrimination at all, you’re actually pushed to do more and more.
|
||||
I was hired to work for the Partnership and Fundraising team where my job was to design a Product which was supposed to teach school students ‘Empathy’ through experiential learning while attaching a Fundraising aspect to it. I was given complete autonomy by my Manager to complete the project in however ways I want to. After the completion of Product Designing, I was also allowed to reach out to schools and sign a contract with them to launch it.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Other than this, I actively worked with the Venture team. It was one of the most exciting parts of my internship where the team’s role was to engage with the nominated candidates and assess if they qualify as potential ‘Ashoka Fellows’. During the process you engage with a candidate for approximately 60-80 hours; if the team finds the candidacy strong enough to take them to further processes, you get to go on a field visit where you do on ground Impact Assessment of the candidate’s work (while I’m writing this blog, I’m booking my flights to visit a candidate’s organisation in Orissa who’s working with the Adivasi Communities there). To sum it up, the work is around Impact Evaluation of leading social enterprises in different domains.
|
||||
After a month at Ashoka (first week of July), I was offered to be appointed as a Consultant to work an Ecosystem Mapping study in the field of Sustainable Livelihood for an external global partner. After our mapping, this partner is supposed to invest their money to maximise impact in the mentioned field. This project gave me an actual experience, of what Consulting is and also, provided me with an opportunity to interact with a lot of Ashoka Fellows in India and Bangladesh.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
At Ashoka, it’s all about how you want to position yourself and how much work you can take. I positioned myself to get an exposure of Consulting, Impact Evaluation, Entrepreneurship and Product Designing.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Is it even completed without some catchy Concluding Remarks?
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
*“What motivates you to wake up in the morning and go to work?”* <br>
|
||||
*“What excites you to do what you do? “*
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
If the answer to the questions above is ‘money’, you probably have some thinking to do. If the answer to the questions above is, ‘I don’t know!’, it’s completely fine. ‘Internship’, I believe is the best opportunity to help you find answers to these questions. And trust me they are much more important than just having your ‘Summers Sorted’.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Things to do in Bangalore?
|
||||
**1.** Appreciating really good weather everyday <br>
|
||||
**2.** Whining about traffic ~~twice a day~~, every moment you step out<br>
|
||||
**3.** Good Beer<br>
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,70 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: HSBC; A Roller Coaster Ride"
|
||||
image: gaurav1.png
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Gaurav Singhal"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: '"Getting a good internship is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."'
|
||||
---
|
||||
*'Getting a good internship is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning'*<br>
|
||||
|
||||
-- My own version of Churchill’s saying aptly describes the approach everyone should keep in their mind while applying for internships in their career. I would be sharing the story of my internship, how I prepared, tried, failed, and finally got selected for HSBC as well as Mitacs Research Internship.
|
||||
|
||||
Before I begin, I would like to explicitly advise readers to take this as a source of motivation and use their individualistic approach for getting an internship. There is no predefined recipe for success and your hard work and skill-set is the only thing that is going to always stand by you. There are people who are good with technical knowledge, and some who are good at the ‘Indian Jugaad’, but the people who find a balance between the two are the ones who lead the race.
|
||||
|
||||
At the beginning of my penultimate year, my profile was Techno-managerial one. Technical - because I had worked on a diverse range of technical projects, did a research internship in SPARK, got an offer of a research internship in CFD from ETH Zurich and managerial because I was a part of the students' body of Tinkering Lab, member of the Organising Committee of Thomso and several other projects.
|
||||
|
||||
With these things in my portfolio, I was more inclined towards getting a Research Internship with DAAD or Mitacs. So, I started writing to a few German Professors, which is the preliminary step in applying for a DAAD Internship. For people interested in DAAD and Mitacs, my two cents would be to start applying as early as you can. It certainly gives a boost to your application because finding the right project under the right professor is one of the hurdles you are bound to cross. I started writing to professors by the end of July’18 and fortunately, got a reply from TU Berlin. For the e-mail part, make sure that your cover letter is unique and not copied directly from ‘Google baba’. Moreover, keep your research interests well aligned with those of the host professor. There is a lot of fish in the sea but only the golden one attracts the attention of the beholder and your cover letter certainly provides the required glitter in your application.
|
||||
|
||||
The Internship season started as soon as we came back to Roorkee in July’18. Swayed by the charm of those high stipend notices, I also applied to giant coding firms and banks— Goldman Sachs, ITC, Nutanix, but couldn’t get through. I was disheartened, for a moment, but had a firm belief that my hard work won’t go vain. A point worth keeping in mind is that one should always learn from their failures. Learn to figure out what went wrong during an interview or where exactly were you lacking in knowledge. What measures should be taken so that you don’t repeat those mistakes?
|
||||
|
||||
## How did I prepare?
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
In the job description of HSBC, they needed students with excellent analytical skills, strong mathematical background (Probability & Statistics), and necessary programming skills (C++ or Python).
|
||||
These topics are vast, and you can never be 100% confident that you’ll be able to dodge every question that the interviewer shoots at you. It’s not unusual to have lows during such time, but working and learning constantly is definitely going to pull you through. For every sun that sets, there is a sun that rises.
|
||||
For Probability, I solved problems from Michael Baron and did a course of statistics from Coursera. For C++, I solved questions of InterviewBit and Geeks for Geeks. I revised the Numerical Methods course. N.M is one of my all-time favourite courses, and I’d advise all of you to review its notes for quant-based company interviews.
|
||||
Lastly, you should be thorough with every word you mention in your resume. Be it internships, projects or PORs. The interviewer will try to grill you on prospects of the work you have achieved in your internships or your projects to get an idea whether you actually worked on those or mentioned them just to fill up your resume.
|
||||
|
||||
## Selection Procedure
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
First-round was Resume-shortlisting, and when the list came out, I was delighted to see my name on the top. I believe they give equal weightage to your projects and internships and are looking for a mathematical and analytical mind. The second round was a technical one. It went on for about 50 minutes. They asked me questions regarding my internships, projects general problems on probability, puzzles, market opportunity questions, guesstimation and Complex Integration. They try to check how you hold up under stress, so try to be calm and give your best. Ten students were shortlisted after this round.
|
||||
Third-round was based on coding. They asked me about problems related to Data Structures and Algorithms. All they were concerned about was the approach you use in solving those problems. For an in-view, I would advise you to be loud and clear about whatever you are thinking. Let the interviewer experience the journey you took to reach the end of the problem from ground zero. This way, even if you get stuck somewhere, the interviewer can help you by pointing in the right direction.
|
||||
The fourth round was HR. Common HR-based questions like "Why do you want to join HSBC?", “Why should we hire you?”, "What differentiates you from other students?" "What are your Future Goals?" etc were the show stoppers. Be honest and try to have sample answers ready
|
||||
since mostly, the intent of HR questions of every company remains the same— they want to see your dedication to work and honest attitude while answering and obviously, excellent communication skills.
|
||||
Finally, three students were selected, and we were all given a ‘chapo’ at the Rustic House.
|
||||
|
||||
## Work Experience
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
"HSBC is a dream company for all those who want to pursue a career in quantitative research". Before going there, this was only a statement for me, but now, after completing the internship there, I can say this is the reality. In India, there are not many firms which can provide the opportunities that HSBC is offering. Initially, we were given a training programme of 7 days, which taught us different Financial terms and Asset Classes. Senior leaders of HSBC GBM gave all the lectures. It was a great learning experience, and we enjoyed the sessions. A sum total of 14 Interns from Top 6 IITs were selected and all were given independent projects to work upon, which were challenging and required an in-depth knowledge of Finance, Coding and Quantitative skills. All the projects were real-life live problems which needed to be solved in order to optimize Pricing algorithms and strategies enforced by the bank. Different interns were allocated different asset classes, which broadly can be classified into 3 types: Equities, Fixed Income (FI), and Foreign Exchange (FX). I was assigned a project from the London office and had a team of E-Risk Spot Foreign Exchange.
|
||||
To give you a general idea, FX E-Risk Foreign Exchange team of HSBC deals with electronic hedging of foreign exchange currency pairs and provides insights to Quant Traders like MTM PNLs, strategies caveats, pricing analytics etc. My project was a research-based one in which I needed to devise a Technical Indicator first and then code it in Python. So, It was a mixture of Finance, Coding and Quant. I can't disclose details regarding the project because of the compliance issues of HSBC, but it was an interesting project and I learnt immensely.
|
||||
|
||||
## Environment and Work Culture:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
One of the best things about HSBC is that people there are very approachable. You can talk to the Senior Most Management whenever you feel like and they have a pool of knowledge with a work experience of about 20 years. As my project was a complex one, I took guidance and help from my mentor, Pratyush and his whole team. All of them were ready to help whenever I faced a problem. In finance firms, there are times when you have to give in 12+ hours of work, but in HSBC there was never a compulsion from anyone in the team. People working for such long durations without fatigue shows the dedication that the HSBC team works with.
|
||||
Working hours were flexible, but we were expected to wear formals from Mon-Thu. For Friday, casuals were allowed. There was a big cafeteria and a co-working space in which you could relax. HSBC provides for one of the best learning platforms and culture, which anyone interested in finance can think of.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:70%;height:50%;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## MITACS:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
The application forms for MITACS Internship are to be filled by September, generally. I had filled the form much before the application deadline, and also before HSBC came for an internship. A month after the results of HSBC came, I was selected for the Mitacs Research Internship at the University of Toronto. I consulted my seniors, parents and well-wishers to decide which path to choose. Since I already had research intern experience from sophomore year, I decided to gain corporate exposure in Finance so finally resolved the dilemma and chose HSBC for the summers.
|
||||
|
||||
**Points to be noted for MITACS:** Take your time to fill out the application form. The timeline provided by MITACS is broad enough to get your application reviewed by seniors/mentors in the field. Get in touch with the seniors who were selected in Mitacs and learn from their experiences. You will get a general idea of what the Canadian professors expect you to write in it.
|
||||
|
||||
## Concluding Points:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Interning at HSBC was once in a lifetime experience for me. We played various sports with our co-interns as well as the team during weekends. Bangalore is a city, which I feel is ideal for enjoyment. I went to almost every club in Bangalore. We even planned a trip to Ooty, which is like heaven on earth. On a finishing note, I can say that I made friends and memories for life.
|
||||
As I said in the beginning, you should take an internship as only the end of the beginning. Fight for it but never feel disheartened by the course of rejections which will come in your path because after all these failures, hard work will surely pay off and you will come out with flying colours.<br>
|
||||
|
||||
All the very best.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,69 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Microsoft "
|
||||
image: lakshya1.png
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Lakshya Kumawat"
|
||||
excerpt: 'So around March, most of my friends were having a blast with their on-campus interns while pre-final year designers like me struggled for opportunities.But that day my struggle came to an end. This is Lakshya Kumawat and I spent my third year summers interning as a UX Designer at Microsoft.'
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
So around March, most of my friends were having a blast with their on-campus interns while pre-final year designers like me struggled for opportunities.
|
||||
|
||||
But that day my struggle came to an end. This is Lakshya Kumawat and I spent my third year summers interning as a UX Designer at Microsoft.
|
||||
|
||||
## How I chose the company I wanted to dedicate my summers to:
|
||||
|
||||
My journey as a designer revved up once I entered my second year. Learning and practicing were the key motives of my life. And after my second year intern in a mid-level startup, I had made up my mind to apply to a big startup or a corporate, offering exposure and learning opportunities I wouldn't get working with small firms. Me and my friends started listing out good companies and collecting contact information so that we could apply in the future.
|
||||
|
||||
## How I applied:
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:60%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
For an off campus intern, the only way to apply is by mail or LinkedIn. There is no constraint on when to apply, but the sooner the better. In my experience, the end of January through the first week of February is the best time to send in applications.
|
||||
|
||||
It's important to have connections. More often than not, an offer won't simply be handed to you. Opportunities need to be worked out by oneself. An active social and social-media life sure helps. Stay active on LinkedIn, connect to the people in your respective field, especially those working with the firms you're interested in.
|
||||
|
||||
In my case I got to know of the intern hiring going on at Microsoft from my seniors. I applied, mailed my resume to HR and a couple of weeks later, they wrote back saying they liked my work and scheduled a skype interview.
|
||||
|
||||
I had 3 technical interviews in 3 days and a basic HR round (not a typical HR round but some conversation on mail). In about a week, I had a confirmation mail with me. In all of this, perhaps the most important takeaway is that your work should be clear and well documented. I maintained a basic portfolio website (lakshya1297.github.io) which had well documented accounts of all my major work. This makes it easier for the interviewer to go through your work properly without missing anything as they usually only have so much time to go through each individual candidate's portfolio.
|
||||
|
||||
## What I worked on:
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:50%;"}
|
||||
*Foundry Interns with mentors*
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
*Intern Inauguration Day*
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
The program I was interning under was called “FOUNDRY”. Nine designers from all over India had been selected as summer interns. In this program there is a team of 4-5 people, of which one is a UX Designer, and then you have 3-4 Developers. Their aim is to understand the project and work together to finish the product in the two month time period. The projects were all pretty
|
||||
amazing but given the short deadline, it was important to plan out our timeline effectively and work as efficiently as possible .
|
||||
|
||||
My Project was under “Microsoft Teams”, which is a collaboration platform used by various big organisations. As a UX designer, my work was to understand the platform and leverage its functionalities to achieve the aim of the project. Doing research, converting it into valuable outcome and designing the screens was the main work I did there as a part of my Internship.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
*The Workspace*
|
||||
|
||||
I was assigned a mentor. So your internship mentor is supposed to be your best buddy cum manager for the duration of your stay there. They look after your daily work and any doubts you may have regarding the same
|
||||
. Then there's the manager, who is a senior designer in charge of evaluating your work and keeps track of your weekly or monthly updates. In my case, both were very supportive and it was awesome working with them.
|
||||
|
||||
Working hours weren't really rigid and we were free to even stay at the office if we felt like it. It was open 24 hours. Also there were “Nap Rooms” for catching up on rest and occasionally, quick naps. Also the cafeteria and lunch hall were the center of attraction for a foodie person like me. Fun and games like Xbox, TT, Cricket nets, Futsal, Foosball, Air Hockey, Pool etc. made my time there much more enjoyable.
|
||||
|
||||
Adding to all this fun we were provided with 5 star accommodations for the entirety of the internship period. For food we were given 200 rupees in our “Hungerbox” account which we can use to eat breakfast, lunch & dinner at Microsoft Office only.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
*The cafeteria*
|
||||
|
||||
The work culture at Microsoft is the best I have ever seen or heard of. Everyone around you is very nice and the folks there love to help in any way possible. There is a vertical hierarchy in the organization but it isn't really that prominent. PMs used to go out with us, and we had a lot of fun with the technical team. There was also this one time we boogie-woogied with the Director of Design, India. Looking back, the two months I spent at Microsoft feel like an ecstatically blissful album, with each page merrier than the last.
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing up and Key learnings
|
||||
|
||||
These were undisputedly the best summers I've ever had. All the friends I made, all the connections I made, all the fun I had. My plan worked out pretty well and also I completed my project which was very satisfying. I suggest everyone to plan things out in advance to grab big opportunities like this.
|
||||
|
||||
You never know when a little effort on your part could land you somewhere you never imagined.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:60%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
*The 9 UX designers*
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,53 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: CAFRAL"
|
||||
image: "muskan-gupta-1.jpg"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Muskan Gupta"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'A robust legal system promotes the smooth functioning of credit markets and subsequent economic growth. This insight was one of the main motivations behind the promulgation of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), 2016, a comprehensive law seeking to streamline, simplify and accelerate the process of bankruptcy resolution in India.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
A robust legal system promotes the smooth functioning of credit markets and subsequent economic growth. This insight was one of the main motivations behind the promulgation of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), 2016, a comprehensive law seeking to streamline, simplify and accelerate the process of bankruptcy resolution in India. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has played its role in the implementation of the IBC by initially referring several large corporate defaulters through the bankruptcy process and subsequently, through a circular dated February 12, 2018, harmonizing its framework for the resolution of distressed assets with the provisions of the IBC. With the goal of transforming the bank-borrower relationship in India, the circular emphasized the immediate recognition of default and swift action to resolve stressed assets.
|
||||
|
||||
My project was to study how these significant changes in the regulatory environment have affected the functioning of credit markets in India. Under this broad research programme, I worked on understanding the bank and borrower behaviour. In addition to the direct effect, I also worked on understanding the spillover effects of the bankruptcy reform on other segments of the credit markets. I also worked on understanding the stock market reaction when the Feb 12 circular was implemented using the capital asset pricing model.
|
||||
|
||||
## Getting There
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
After having explored the startup world in my first year-internship at ZestMoney, I wanted to try my hand at research and thus decided to go for internships at some renowned universities, think-tanks or Research divisions of Corporates. I started listing out where I would get such projects and then landed at the page of Centre for Advanced Financial Research and Learning(CAFRAL), Research Centre promoted by Reserve Bank of India, which had intern opening at the time.
|
||||
|
||||
CAFRAL keeps posting on its website whenever they have a requirement of interns. You will definitely find the internship portal open during the month of January-February which has a deadline of March, hiring interns for the months of May-June-July. You have to complete and submit a form before March which is available on their website for internships. The form requires you to submit your SOP, cover, past experience, technical skills, courses are taken and some other relevant details. Following the form submission, the shortlisted candidates are interviewed. I had two rounds of interview and a code submission to make followed by which I was granted the internship. I had also mailed the Research Directors directly, followed by follow-up emails which I believe helped in shortlisting of my resume.
|
||||
|
||||
I started following the Economic Times from my second semester and would look for financial jargons to learn more about them. This helped me gain some understanding of the sector. I further took some online courses and certifications to have strong foundations before actually entering the Financial world. It is better to have some coding experience as all my interviews asked me of my ability to code (mostly in python). Sound knowledge of Probability Statistics is also important to understand the concepts of Econometrics. So, along with theoretical knowledge, having technical knowledge is also very important.
|
||||
|
||||
I had started mailing and searching for opportunities from December (though I was a little late for some of the programs). It’s better to start compiling details of whoever you want to work under by mid-November, keep your resume ready and start mailing from early December (for India). It is the time when professors are making their summer plans and looking for interns to work on their projects. Keep sending follow-up emails. They actually help a lot as professors receive a huge number of mails so they tend to neglect or sometimes miss out on mails. Sending follow-up mails also shows that you are actually keen to work under them. Always keep in mind to send personalised emails to each and every professor you are mailing to, with a reference to their work(mentioning the reason why you wish to work under them, some personal reference helps.). This will make your application stand apart from hundreds of bulk mails they receive.
|
||||
|
||||
I had done some online courses and had taken two certifications from NISM which I believed would have boosted my resume. My prior experience with ZestMoney, a fin-tech startup also gave me an edge showing my interest and dedication to work in the industry.
|
||||
|
||||
Choosing between a project at ISB, Hyderabad and CAFRAL, RBI was quite difficult as both the opportunities had quite interesting projects and were paying equally. I consulted and discussed with a lot of my seniors, and also with people who had interned at both the places, and finally decided to go for CAFRAL, because of its corporate work environment and an opportunity to make excellent connections with people who are actually, directly involved in the world of Banking.
|
||||
|
||||
I personally made a lot of mistakes while mailing and application. I had sent the application for CAFRAL on the second-last day, that too on Sunday. This led to neglection of my application for a long time and only after many follow-ups was it brought into consideration. So always keep in mind to send out mailers on weekdays (avoid Fridays also) and at least 7-8 days prior to the deadline. Secondly, initially, I sent generalised emails to everyone which led to no response. I resent personalised emails then from a different Mail ID which garnered some response.
|
||||
|
||||
## Work
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
The Centre for Advanced Financial Research and Learning (CAFRAL) is an independent body set up by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in the backdrop of India’s evolving role in the global economy, in the financial services sector and its position in various international fora, and to develop into a world class global institution for research and learning in banking and finance.
|
||||
|
||||
CAFRAL’s research focus is on the areas of banking and finance. My project was at the intersecting domains of Banking, Macroeconomics, Public Policy and Financial Markets.
|
||||
|
||||
The work culture at CAFRAL was quite friendly. You can go anytime to any of the Research Director’s office and they will guide you with utmost importance. They will take you out for lunch along with Research Associates and would celebrate the farewells of people alongside everyone. Research Associates are your colleagues and show a very welcoming nature. They consider you to be a part of their family and you will soon find hanging out with them for lunch and parties. They will always be ready to help you and guide you in case you have stuck anywhere on your project. But CAFRAL requires you to be punctual in office in proper formals, and work for minimum of 8 hours for 5-days a week. Only in case of severe cases(like rains in Mumbai which are actually torturous as they leave you with no means of communication) are you allowed to be late for office or otherwise they will cut pay for the leave.
|
||||
|
||||
CAFRAL is a small family of RDs and RAs working together undertaking research useful to central banks, regulators and financial sector, conducting seminars, conferences and other learning programs that serve as a platform for exchange of high-level policy dialogues and collaborate with other institutions within the country and outside to promote research in areas of interest to the Centre.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Place
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
There are reasons to love and hate the city of dreams yet its loveable factors outweigh everything. Starting with the weather the rains bring along with them beautiful weather but also halted trains, crowded roads, and clogged roads. From amazing ‘Khao Galis’ to best night clubs Mumbai has everything to suit your needs as well as pockets. Spend some time at the famous beaches on weekends and sit alongside Marine Drive at night to enjoy a beautiful view of Mumbai City, they will make you forget every stress of your life.
|
||||
|
||||
I used to live with my cousin in Lower Parel so it was not a big issue for me, but it is actually very difficult to find a good PG at affordable prices, especially in South Bombay.
|
||||
@ -1,82 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: TOKYO GAS CO. LTD"
|
||||
image: "tokyo1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Ashish Kumar"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'Since the very beginning of my sophomore year, I had a dream of interning abroad but neither did I have a superb 9+ CGPA( In fact far below than that :P) nor did I have any interest towards research profile. Noticing the latest boom in the field of Machine Learning, I dived deep into this field and thus found my interest.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Since the very beginning of my sophomore year, I had a dream of interning abroad but neither did I have a superb 9+ CGPA( In fact far below than that :P) nor did I have any interest towards research profile. Noticing the latest boom in the field of Machine Learning, I dived deep into this field and thus found my interest. During the summer of 2018, I interned at Stockroom followed by the internship at Tokyo Gas in summer’19. Interning abroad has undeniable benefits. Work experience in an international setting stands out on your resume and gives you a definite boost in the job market. An internship abroad is also a great way to meet locals, immerse yourself in the culture, and can be an entry point for eventually working abroad.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Learning Data science and Machine Learning
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
I started to learn data science at the end of my 3rd Semester. I started with Machine learning by Andrew NG on coursera. This course dealt with all the mathematical and theoretical aspects of machine learning. Parallelly I also learned the basics of coding in python. Once I was done with these two, I started reading blogs and solving some famous datasets on Kaggle. Even after these I felt that I was weak in the implementation part and thus moved to Machine Learning A to Z course on Udemy. Then I brushed my skills on dozens of datasets which boosted my confidence. To strengthen my statistics, I went through the Stats 110x course on edX. To study deep learning, I switched to Deep learning specialization on coursera which is set of 5 courses. It was simply the best. I continued reading blogs on deep learning and discussing tech projects with my friends. Blog reading and discussion played a crucial role in increasing my understanding of the subjects.
|
||||
|
||||
## Making it there
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
I got my internship at Tokyo Gas through a HR agency named Webstaff that visited IIT Roorkee campus for hiring in September 2018. Webstaff outsources our resumes to Japanese companies who are willing to hire tech interns generally in the field of Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Software Development.
|
||||
The application and selection process is generally a long one and requires a lot of patience. The CGPA cutoff was 7 for all branches except CSE followed by resume shortlisting. The selection process had 4 rounds.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
**1.Coding Round-** Generally 2 coding questions and a few MCQs on Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Competitive programming, Web Development and SQL are asked. This, according to me, is the most important round. Even if you are applying for Machine learning profiles, sound knowledge of data structures and algorithm is a must. Keep in touch with your friends from other IITs so that you can get an insight into the types of questions being asked.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
**2.Group Discussion-**The main aim of this round is to check how nicely you will be able to communicate in a foreign-land. The topic of the GD is very basic. In my case, it was related to freedom of speech on social media. It should be a cakewalk for someone who is able to put his views calmly and confidently.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
**3.HR Interview-** In this round the interviewer checks how eager the candidate is to work in Japan. Basic HR interview preparation should be enough and knowledge of Japanese culture will be a bonus.
|
||||
After you clear all the above rounds, you are made to fill an online portal where you can update your skillset and projects along with your video resume. On the basis of your skills and projects, you are further shortlisted by the Japanese companies for a final interview.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
**4.Final Interview-** I was shortlisted by Tokyo Gas. My interview was 20% tech and 80% HR. This percentage may vary on the company for which one has been shortlisted. Good resume know-how and the ability to explain projects clearly is a must.
|
||||
The biggest blunder that I made was focussing only on Machine Learning and not studying competitive programming. Most of the companies that visit our campus for Data Science and Machine Learning have competitive programming in their tests. Getting an on-campus internship offer solely on the basis of knowledge of Data science and Machine Learning is very tough.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:60%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Work
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
Tokyo Gas is the largest natural gas utility in Japan and was founded in year 1885. Their business mainly deals with supply of city gas and electricity in the capital and neighbourhood areas. With a total of 17,000 employees, it is one of the gigantic companies of Japan. Here, I worked on 3 major projects. In my first project I had to predict LNG consumption of consumer companies for near future using machine learning techniques. This project was the first step towards the overall optimization of the filling process. In my second project, I had to predict energy trading prices in the energy sale market. Tokyo gas is involved in trading of electricity and the basic idea is similar to stock market trading. In my third project, I was given GPS, gas usage, water usage, electricity usage and air quality data of different customers and I had to analyse and give insights to the company regarding the daily activities and point out the trend and seasonality.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
My work there started at 9:00 and ended at 5:45 and the environment was very relaxed. It was so good that even working till 8 didn’t feel like a burden to me(Thanks to unlimited coffee supply). People in the office were very polite and helping. My data analytics team had the best Japanese brains with degrees even from MIT and Stanford.
|
||||
The people there were very helping. Once I was down with cold and took a day leave. My colleagues sent Indian food and sweets for me at my doorstep to recover. Such small incidences had a deep impact on me. Language was a major issue there. My team and HR planned a lot of events for me like Saake party, Barbeque party and Cruise trips so that I didn't feel left out.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## About the place
|
||||
|
||||
Most of my childhood was spent watching Shinchan, Doraemon and other Japanese anime. So, interning in Japan was like a dream come true for me. My office and apartment were located in a very posh area of Tokyo. Generally, the weekdays were busy but during weekends every second felt worth enjoying. Never in my life will I forget the gadget shops at Akihabara, beaches at Enoshima, dazzling lights from Tokyo skytree, clubbing at Roppongi, Cruise trip around the Tokyo Bay, Guinness record holder rides at FujiQ Highland and the heart throbbing view of Mount Fuji (Of course there were some sleepy weekends too).
|
||||
I tried a lot of Japanese dishes including Ramen, Soba noodles, Udon noodles, yakitori and of course sushi. They have a taste of their own and for sea food lovers, it’s a paradise.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
Tokyo’s weather is very pleasant. The temperature during May and June varied generally from 15 to 30 degrees. One day, one of my Japanese colleagues almost had a heart attack when he googled the temperature of my hometown and it turned out to be 47 degrees.
|
||||
|
||||
## Accommodation
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
The accommodation I got was the best you can expect. I was provided a rented riverside apartment with great services like spa and lounge. The view from my room was mesmerizing.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing up
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Foreign industrial experience is very rare and the exposure teaches you a lot. Working with highly diligent people always motivates me to strive harder for better results. At multinational cities like Tokyo, you get to meet people from different parts of the world and learn from them. Working for a company like Tokyo-gas with a latge customer base and building product that can potentially influence millions was a life time experience for me.
|
||||
To all the juniors who are targeting foreign internship through Webstaff, I would suggest them to brush up their coding skills and pitch some good technical projects at the interview. Good Luck!
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,64 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Queen’s University, Canada (MITACS)"
|
||||
image: "harsh-patel-1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Harsh Patel"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'I have tried to summarize my 12 week-long research experience at Queen’s University, Canada in which I explain the MITACS application procedure in detail and my major takeaways and experiences from my internship at Canada.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
I have tried to summarize my 12 week-long research experience at Queen’s University, Canada in which I explain the MITACS application procedure in detail and my major takeaways and experiences from my internship at Canada.
|
||||
|
||||
## Getting there
|
||||
|
||||
It all started back in my second year summers at IIT Gandhinagar, where I had interned in the field of Image Forensics (Computer Vision) which instigated my interest in the field and I considered choosing research as an option. After that internship, I got a basic understanding of what goes into research but still wanted to try my hands on a proper research internship. Of course, I wasn’t completely sure because I didn’t want to miss out on-campus internships as focusing only on getting a research internship is a huge risk if you opt-out of the campus internship process. Considering the fact that a very limited number of deep learning-based companies/startups visit the campus, the chances for me were less. Eventually, I got selected for Robert Bosch’s Deep learning division during Mid September.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Along with my on-campus preparations, I was constantly applying for Research Programs. I applied to a lot of programs including DAAD, SN Bose, Viterbi, MITACS and a few others. I got the invitation from a german professor but due to DAAD’s strict CGPA cut-off, I could not get the scholarship. These programs generally have their deadlines during the autumn semester. After 2-3 interviews, I got my selection mail from MITACS in the first week of January.
|
||||
|
||||
## About the program
|
||||
|
||||
MITACS Globalink is a Research Internship Program funded by MITACS Canada which invites undergraduate students from all around the globe to pursue research for 12 weeks in a Canadian university. It is open for the 3rd year and above students in India with a minimum CGPA of 7.5 (80 %). The amount of funding you receive is the highest among all the other programs (~ 8000 CAD). So, you can easily visit a lot of places in Canada and still save money. One of the major advantages of this program in comparison to other programs is that you can get a MITACS Graduate fellowship (~15000 CAD) for doing masters/PhD in Canada.
|
||||
|
||||
## Application procedure
|
||||
|
||||
The application portal of MITACS is simple where they ask your basic details. Then, you have to write your research rational (SOP), previous research internship experience, and a general description of your skillset in about 100 words each. Yes, you have to write your SOP in about 100 words only. So, be as precise as possible. You also have to submit 2 letters of recommendation from your professors/supervisors whom you have worked with along with your CV and transcripts. Lastly, you have to give 7 preferences of project/professor you want to work with, in your preference order. Seriously, that was the most difficult part. You are given a list of around 2500 projects from which you have to select only 7 and all 7 projects combined should be in at least 3 different Canadian provinces (states). The applications generally open in early August and the deadline is around mid-September.
|
||||
|
||||
The selection process is carried out in two phases. The applications of the students selected in the first phase are sent to the respective professors. During that time Phase-2 students are waitlisted and have to wait till the phase-1 process is over and then their profiles are sent. MITACS doesn’t reveal how they separate students, but based on previous interns and my experience, they shortlist you on the basis of overlap between your interests and the projects which you have chosen along with many other factors such as CGPA. Being waitlisted in the first stage is a big disadvantage as it might be possible that the professor of your choice has already selected someone else during phase-1. So, try to fill the projects with relevance to your previous work/experience so that you get selected in the first phase. After that, your profiles are sent to your respective professors. It solely depends on the professor to have an interview for selection or not. I had many friends who directly got the offer without a single interview and some who had as many as 5-7 interviews. I had 3 interviews for my different projects. Luckily, I got selected by the professor on my 1st preference. The interviews are easy and revolve around your previous projects/ internships from your resume along with a short discussion about the current project. Also, do show your interest for higher studies, professors prefer students who can extend their project in their masters/ PhD and work with them for a longer duration. The procedure after you receive the offer is straightforward and most of the cases students get their visa approved in 15-20 days due to the funding from MITACS.
|
||||
|
||||
## Queen's University
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
Kingston is a small city on Lake Ontario located in the province of Ontario. A city far from the hustling life in large cities like Toronto and Montreal, it gives you a small-town vibe. There aren’t many exciting things to do in Kingston but it is a 3-hour ride to both Toronto and Montreal and 2-hour ride to the capital city (Ottawa). The Queen’s University was found in the mid 19th century, hence you can find a glimpse of the 19th-century British architecture in many departments. In fact, very few people know that Kingston was the first official capital of Canada.
|
||||
|
||||
Queen’s University has a quiet and relaxed atmosphere. Consider it a perfect place to spend your summers. Due to the small area and limited population, there won't be anything bustling around but instead, you can experience a countryside vibe far from the hectic and fast-paced life. You can spend your evenings in the Lake Ontario Park reading your favourite book and take a walk along the lake.
|
||||
|
||||
## Accomodation and Food
|
||||
|
||||
I stayed in a large house close to the downtown area with my friends. We got the entire house (6 bedrooms) to ourselves as houses are generally available on lease during the summers. I searched for accommodation through the Queen’s off-campus housing facebook group. Kijiji is also a good website to find accommodation in Canada.
|
||||
|
||||
The people in Canada are considered to be one of the nicest and most polite across the globe. It is very common to find people greeting you on the streets and engaging in conversations. There are a lot of places to eat out but believe me, after a few weeks, I was exhausted and decided to cook on my own. I had never made a dish on my own before. But eventually, I got better at it and I can say that now I can make a decent meal for myself. So, do carry some basic spices and utensils and learn some basic cooking techniques. For recipes, youtube is always there to the rescue!
|
||||
|
||||
## My project and Lab culture
|
||||
|
||||
The project which I was assigned was in the field of Computer Vision where I had to develop various models for the task of skeleton-based Human Action Recognition. As evident from the name, out of a given video involving a person doing some kind of activity, the task was to accurately predict real-time action. This type of work has its applications in security surveillance (identifying robbery, attack etc) and elderly homes/hospitals (for patient monitoring).
|
||||
|
||||
There were no fixed timings to work as long as you deliver/update with the progress of the project. My lab was primarily focussed towards Data Mining and Analytics but was shifting its focus towards modern deep learning applications. We had weekly group meetings every Wednesday where we had to present our progress or anything interesting paper/tech that you have read. My first month was focused on reading the state of the art papers in the field of Activity Recognition and preparing proper literature review which is further useful for final reports. Then in the subsequent months, I was involved in preprocessing the data. Believe me, most of the time you are involved in preprocessing and removing errors from your code, the actual time where you do the hyped deep learning stuff is actually very less. Further, I developed and tested two different LSTM and CNN based models for the task. As there is no physical experimentation required, each of us had a GPU enabled server, which we could use it from any place.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Roaming around
|
||||
|
||||
Considering the location of Kingston, you can easily have weekend plans to Toronto, Montreal and neighbouring cities. I mainly visited Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Niagara Falls and a Mountain trail near Kingston. The best of all the places were definitely Toronto and Niagara falls as I went there during the Canada Day Weekend. We were lucky enough to witness the Canada Day fireworks from the Niagara Falls on the boat. Canada Day celebrations in the centre of Toronto city (Eaton Square) gives you the vibe of an Indian Mela. Every person wearing Red and holding Canadian flags in their hand. One thing which I noticed is that people in Canada are a lot more patriotic towards their country, you can easily find big Canadian flags in their houses and public places. Of course, the cities in Ontario don’t offer the natural scenic beauty compared to Alberta and British Columbia but still, it is a great experience. One place which I do recommend visiting if you have time is Banff, Alberta and some parts of British Columbia where you will find the most scenic places on earth.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:60%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:60%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing up
|
||||
|
||||
A 12-week long research internship in a foreign land not only gives you a proper head start to your research career but also makes you realize the true meaning of living independently. Compared to our college lives, where most of the things are taken care of, you will have to manage most of the things including grocery, food, house along with your work on your own. One of my major takeaways from this internship is that you get out of your comfort zone and push yourselves to unknown territories. Believe me, it’s very difficult to get out of your comfort zone and break your normal flow of life but it makes you a much more independent person where you meet a lot of new people, roam around in an unknown country, cook your own food.
|
||||
|
||||
One of the NITs had 45 students selected this year for the program, compared to around 5-6 from our institute. So, I would encourage people to at least give it a try and apply for the MITACS program as it is definitely worth it in the end. Do give it a try!
|
||||
@ -1,72 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Grofers"
|
||||
image: "sourab-kumar-1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Sourab Kumar"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'Find a potential problem, go out there an extra mile and rectify it for best user experience.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
> “Find a potential problem, go out there an extra mile and rectify it for best user experience.”
|
||||
|
||||
Being someone who has been into Product Management for about six to seven months now, I prefer going step-by-step. So, let’s start from the very beginning.
|
||||
|
||||
### What is Product Management and how did I think of pursuing it?
|
||||
|
||||
By now, most of you must have Googled the term “Product Management” online and I think all of you will agree that different links pertaining to the topic provide different perspectives. The way I define it, might give you another perspective of the profile.
|
||||
|
||||
For me, Product Management is all about understanding the sentiment of the users, whether they are your customers or employees from different teams, and come up with a solution to every problem in a way that benefits all the concerned stakeholders.
|
||||
|
||||
After exploring almost half-a-dozen different work profiles during my sophomore year, I landed up with an intern at Udaan.com. While concluding it, I thought of working in a strategic role in an intersection of business, technology and design. I can say that was probably the time when I opened myself up to Product Management.
|
||||
|
||||
### The Application Phase
|
||||
|
||||
> “Whatsoever be the scenario, we always have a possibility to improve.”
|
||||
|
||||
As it turned out, I had an opportunity to improve exponentially. So, instead of testing my luck with the crowd-popular on-campus internship opportunities, I preferred to improve myself, through online courses and different books. With almost everyone in your peer group going for competitive coding, it isn’t easy not to get influenced and stick with what you want to do. But trust me, if you really enjoy something, you will find ways to get into that and improve.
|
||||
|
||||
I started my internship hunt in the last week of January. Not only my resume and cover letter but also the LinkedIn profile. The first month went completely into making my professional presence flawless to the very finest of details.
|
||||
|
||||
Tension is a common human emotion, right? Yeah, I was tense that I was really starting with my intern hunting now when most of the people around me were done with it. Yes, I committed a few mistakes. I applied for Jindal Stainless (Hisar) Limited(JHSL) and Reliance Industries Limited(RIL), even when I had no interest in the core sector. Against my expectations, I was selected for the interview round of the former in the beginning of February and for the latter at the end of March.
|
||||
|
||||
But by the time of the first on-campus interview, I had dropped 100 to 150 emails. Luckily, I got a Product Intern offer from Yatra.com. To add onto it, the interviewer of JSHL was my freshman year SMP Mentor. Making sure that I am not selected for the industry wasn’t a big deal after that point.
|
||||
|
||||
Things seem to be pretty chilled out, don’t they? But life had different plans for me in the magical bag of tricks.
|
||||
|
||||
In the first week of March(just a week after the mid-semester examinations), news of Yatra.com being acquired by Ebix Inc. was all over the internet. And one week down the line, I had an offer letter in my hand but it was clear that I will have to join the Operations Team instead of the Product Team. With this, I was down to square one again.
|
||||
|
||||
I was tagged to 10 to 15 LinkedIn posts daily. I received almost an equal number of mail IDs to apply to daily. Even most random branch alumni whom I never met came up to help with just a single LinkedIn message. It was actually then when I understood the importance of peers who kept motivating me during those days.
|
||||
|
||||
### The Selection Days
|
||||
|
||||
Receiving a call from the HR at Grofers after almost three weeks of applying was pretty much unexpected. But, I knew that this was it. This was the opportunity to make the months of hard work count.
|
||||
|
||||
An application form specially designed for understanding the Product perspective, and two rounds of interviews by PMs actually tested my product thinking and problem-solving abilities. Instead of calling them as interviews, I prefer calling them Buddy Sessions. I got a chance to improve even during the 20-25 minute interviews and yes, they were the people who preferred giving on-spot feedbacks instead of making an HR do it.
|
||||
|
||||
## The Intern Time
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
### Team and Location
|
||||
|
||||
Being the only Product Intern in the Bangalore office was pretty much unexpected. I landed working under the Supply Chain Product Team for the PO/VMS Segment. The team primarily worked towards managing the vendor side of the organization.
|
||||
|
||||
### Aim of the Internship
|
||||
|
||||
On the very first day, sitting next to the Senior Director, Product Management, I got some advice from him, “PM is like a game of cricket. Sitting outside, everyone feels it's easy to slam off a six. But you will know the actual difficulty when you walk to the center.”
|
||||
During that time, I worked on three projects. Whether it was about making a process, or it was about bringing different teams on-board or setting up deadlines, I was completely owning those projects. In a nutshell, I can say that I was completely spending times in the boots of a Product Manager.
|
||||
|
||||
My projects involved sanitizing the existing vendor-level values present in the system which directly improved the item availability. So as to strengthen our stand against the competitors, we worked upon automating the Purchase Order(PO) process to speed-up the involved process. During the same time, the PM team conceptualized the method of Cluster Delivery and eventual effects on the Business value.
|
||||
|
||||
## Work Culture
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
Grofers Bangalore office has a Technology team of almost 100 people. And Grofers is definitely an awesome team to learn and grow. Working in a startup, we had no worries of timings. But being a part of such a team, we were pushed ahead of our limits to iterate and improve.
|
||||
|
||||
With Grofers, it was a perfect blend of work and enjoyment. At times, the teams stayed back till late night hours our of interest. Teams went out for lunch every second week. Unexpected outings were planned during weekends. To conclude it all, a designer used to call me “Roorkee” instead of my name.
|
||||
|
||||
## Final piece of advice
|
||||
|
||||
By now, you all would have understood that the internship days are pretty hectic. In my case, quite a few of my friends received offers from some big names of the corporate world. I know it gives a mixed feeling. Considering my case, I was quite happy for them but tensed at the same point-in-time. Based on the experience, I can only suggest you all to stay practical and understand both ends of the spectrum. Just stay focused on what you are aiming for.
|
||||
@ -1,77 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Edelweiss"
|
||||
image: "agrim1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Agrim Patodia"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'The Third-year, first semester marks the beginning of the internship season at IITR. Most of us have very little actual work exposure till that time and are hence unsure about what kind of work we would eventually like to do. I, too, was unsure about the exact kind of work I wanted to do after graduating, but I had narrowed it down to 2 major fields'
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The Third-year, first semester marks the beginning of the internship season at IITR. Most of us have very little actual work exposure till that time and are hence unsure about what kind of work we would eventually like to do. I, too, was unsure about the exact kind of work I wanted to do after graduating, but I had narrowed it down to 2 major fields - FMCG product management (as a chemical engineering major, this would require both my core knowledge as well as managerial skills), and finance (an interest I had developed in my second year). After unsuccessful interviews and applications with the 2 major FMCG companies that came to our campus, RB and ITC, I decided to completely devote my time to improving my finance knowledge and eventually applying for a trading related internship in well known firms off-campus.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Applying and acceptance
|
||||
|
||||
Applying to companies off-campus is not an exact science. I, personally, just used LinkedIn. The major steps I’d recommend following are:
|
||||
|
||||
**1.** Shortlist companies that have divisions whose work pertains to the profile you are interested in. For me, it was quantitative finance/ algorithmic trading. (at least 15-20 companies)
|
||||
|
||||
**2.** Find HR employees working in THAT DIVISION (Important, since HRs probably receive a lot of requests daily, and most of them won’t bother forwarding your resume to the respective division.)
|
||||
<br> *or*<br>
|
||||
|
||||
Find alumni that are currently working in that company. BE SPECIFIC, so that they know exactly who within the company will be able to help you the best. Usually, they forward your request to the exact team. It's even better if you find an alum in your specific division of interest.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
**3.** After steps 1 & 2, keep taking weekly/ fortnightly follow-ups, and wait until someone from the respective team contacts you for an interview. Or a rejection.
|
||||
|
||||
***Divisions/ hierarchies become important only in large, well established companies that work in many diverse businesses. One can probably ignore those for smaller-scale companies and startups.<br>
|
||||
**Making an excel sheet to keep track of the above helps.*
|
||||
|
||||
In my specific profile, the things which I knew, which eventually helped me in my interview are:
|
||||
|
||||
* Knowledge of basic market dynamics and financial instruments.<br>
|
||||
* Basic statistics. <br>
|
||||
* Intermediate level programming knowledge in python. (Most hedge funds work in C++ or python)<br>
|
||||
* Basic Machine Learning techniques.<br>
|
||||
|
||||
I started applying towards the end of January, and ended up receiving internship offers from Reliance Securities and Edelweiss by the month of May. Since Edelweiss has one of India’s most sophisticated trading desks, I chose to go with the latter.
|
||||
|
||||
## Location
|
||||
|
||||
Edelweiss’ trading desk is located in its head office in Kalina, Mumbai.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:70%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## The Office Setup
|
||||
|
||||
The trading floor consists of a number of teams, each carrying out a different type of trading, such as Quant trading, High Frequency trading, Vega trading, etc, along with a Risk team and a HR team. Each team is headed by a few experienced traders and operates independently. Different teams may operate in different market segments, and they formulate strategies specific to their frequency of trading and areas of operation. The floor as numerous TVs continuously running news from different channels. Multiple Bloomberg terminals are placed at convenient spots. The floor has no cubicles, only desks and separate areas for different teams.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:60%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Work Culture
|
||||
|
||||
Most of the day’s work happens during trading hours, i.e. 9 AM- 4PM. Individual traders and teams monitor their existing strategies and beta test new strategies. They keep a close eye on the news as well, which helps them gauge the existing market scenario so that they employ the most profitable strategies for that particular day. Everyone is extremely busy during these hours and the office remains silent during this time. After the market closes, the work for the day is mostly done, unless the team is brainstorming or researching a new strategy. A majority of the office leaves by around 5:30 - 6:00 PM.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:60%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## My Work
|
||||
|
||||
I worked in the High Frequency Trading (HFT) division. Over the course of my internship, I worked on 1 major project which involved constructing a profitable HFT strategy that operates using market microstructures. This was divided into 3 major stages:
|
||||
**1.** Creation of various tools for analysing the profitability and sustainability of any trading strategy using a variety of metrics and charts.
|
||||
**2.** Ideating a strategy by reading through different financial literature and taking inspiration from good research papers.
|
||||
**3.** Constructing the final strategy and tuning it to perform reliably in different market scenarios, as well as deciding a basket of similar stocks on which this strategy performs well.
|
||||
|
||||
I ended up creating an algorithm that trades in seconds across a number of stocks and takes advantage of volatile price movements.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing Up
|
||||
|
||||
Edelweiss does not believe in spoon-feeding. Help and support is offered to those who remain proactive. You will be expected to take ownership for both the good and bad work that you have done. Everyone is easily accessible, even the head of the trading division. I had personally met him twice during the course of my internship. A lot of the traders are IIT+IIM grads and are highly experienced, and won’t hesitate in giving you a lot of ‘gyaan’ on a variety of subjects. :p
|
||||
|
||||
Overall, my experience at Edelweiss gave me enough knowledge to make a well-educated decision about what I would like to do after my graduation and helped in cementing my desired career trajectory, at least for the foreseeable future.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,70 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Rephrase.ai"
|
||||
image: "rephrase-ai.png"
|
||||
author: "Joint Initiative of WatchOut! & E-Cell"
|
||||
tags: [wona, column]
|
||||
category: verbatim
|
||||
excerpt: 'Rephrase.ai is a tech start up of which Shivam Mangla, an alumnus of IIT Roorkee is a co-founder. It gives users the power of creating high-quality videos and animations of a person speaking with just text as input with the support of over 40 languages. E-cell, IIT Roorkee in collaboration with Watch Out!, had a conversation with Shivam, the excerpts of which are as follows.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Rephrase.ai is a tech start up of which Shivam Mangla, an alumnus of IIT Roorkee is a co-founder. It gives users the power of creating high-quality videos and animations of a person speaking with just text as input with the support of over 40 languages. (check out their website [https://rephrase.ai/](https://rephrase.ai/){: style="text-decoration:underline"}). E-cell, IIT Roorkee in collaboration with Watch Out!, had a conversation with Shivam, the excerpts of which are as follows.
|
||||
|
||||
**You had a perfectly secure and almost an ideal job at Facebook. So what motivated you to leave it and to come back to India?**
|
||||
|
||||
I belong to a family that has been doing business traditionally. This might’ve been a reason why I always wanted to have my own business. I’ve always loved scaling up the things I have worked on, which is not really possible after a certain extent in a salaried job, and hence I have always been reluctant to do it. And opposed to it, in a start-up, the sky's the limit. The harder you work, the more you achieve. And talking about homecoming, I think I’ve always wanted to work in India.
|
||||
|
||||
**What is your mantra of dealing with the fear of failure and the anxiety of difficult situations?**
|
||||
|
||||
While making a decision, I always imagine the worst-case scenario, and if I believe I can deal with it, then all is well. There is no ‘What if?’. I believe by staying positive, I can override of the obstacles. For me personally, the worst that can happen is my business failing completely, and still, I won’t have to worry about my financial security, because I believe I can return to my job anytime. So that’s one thing less to be anxious about.
|
||||
|
||||
**What are your greatest fears and how do you deal with them?**
|
||||
|
||||
I always try to stay optimistic and avoid thinking negative and so on a personal level, I don't have any substantial fear of anything. But as a professional, I do dread some situations like being unable to execute our plans or hiring the wrong people. At such times, my relations with my team helps, as we are always there for each other. Launching a startup is an extremely overwhelming task for an individual with its share of anxious moments. At such times, a strong team is required to cope up with all the inhibitions and fears.
|
||||
|
||||
**What was your initial Product?**
|
||||
|
||||
When we started working on our product, we had an idea that we can change the way Hollywood movies are dubbed into different languages. We wanted to improve the experience of lip-syncing so that it would look like the movie was shot in the dubbed language itself. Our experience at TechStars Accelerator helped us to develop the idea further and find cases where it is used in marketing and animation.
|
||||
|
||||
**What is your targeted customer segment?**
|
||||
We aim to help companies in promotions sector to help them send personalized videos instead of text in their emails using our tools and to create educational videos so that they are able to produce multimedia content by simply feeding written educational scripts to the digital platform.
|
||||
|
||||
**Does your company target individuals or is it mainly companies?**
|
||||
|
||||
We intend to target enterprises as providing this tool to an individual might lead to its misuse by them and lead to ethical and legal issues. This is in accordance with legal procedures that are needed to be followed.
|
||||
|
||||
**Where did you get in touch with your co-founders?**
|
||||
|
||||
I met Nisheeth in London, who was, at that time working for Google while I was working for Facebook. We had a lot of mutual friends, as some of my colleagues at Facebook knew Nisheeth from IIT Bombay.. Ashray was already Nisheeth’s friend from IIT Bombay. Nisheeth and Ashray were the cofounders of a startup named SoundRex as well. Thus, the team was formed
|
||||
|
||||
**What according to you is the ideal team size?**
|
||||
|
||||
I think that working alone is not so convenient and if there are five to six people making a decision gets too cumbersome. Hence two to four seems good, but then it is very subjective. For me, three works very well.
|
||||
|
||||
**How was your experience at Techstars?**
|
||||
|
||||
Techstars is a company with offices in the USA and London. Our initial idea was to match the lip movements of the actors with the dubbed speech which, I think, has a great scope in the film industry. Techstars has a concept of “mentor madness” which resembles to speed dating. Here we can meet a large number of mentors from around the globe for a certain amount of time. If they like your idea, you can connect with them later on. It was here that we realized that our idea could be taken to the next level. So, I think, experience at Techstars was quite rewarding.
|
||||
|
||||
**When do you think is the right time to launch a startup? Let us say I have an idea now, which is pretty much operation extensive. When should I start working on it, now or after graduation?**
|
||||
|
||||
NOW. As trite as it may sound, the right time is now. I believe, more often than not, you don’t stick with an idea throughout your life. So you will get to learn a lot if you start early. While working at Facebook, I got a poster that read ‘BEGIN ANYWHERE’. Initially, its meaning was lost to me, but eventually, I understood what it meant.
|
||||
|
||||
**How do you think one should promote a startup in college that is targeted towards college students?**
|
||||
|
||||
I think that it is pretty much dependent on what the idea is. Although as a start you can make a Facebook page and stick posters.
|
||||
|
||||
**Did you explore a lot of groups during your stay at the campus?**
|
||||
|
||||
I actually applied to almost every group. I was a designer at WatchOut! and I think I wasn't really good at it. I auditioned for Choreography Section twice and was meanly rejected in the interview round, and that too on my birthday (though I got selected in SDSlabs and MDG, which I guess makes up for this). So honestly speaking, for me, it was really fun out there, exploring things that is; and I would like to suggest that you should explore everything around you while you’re at the campus.
|
||||
|
||||
**What would you advice to students who want to pursue AI and Data Sciences? What path would you suggest to get familiar with the field?**
|
||||
|
||||
After graduating with an engineering degree, I know that it's not that easy to jump into AI/ML because companies ask for experience. A good hack is to look for good startups working in the field and gain some real-world experience. (Join Rephrase!). While in college, you can start learning things by reading stuff on the internet. The most important thing other than the right resources is the peer group you learn/work with, so choose carefully. Apart from that, there are tons of great resources available online - fast.ai, Coursera, deeplearning.ai, Et Cetra all these are great resources.
|
||||
|
||||
**What do you think is your biggest strength?**
|
||||
|
||||
Ashray was a convener of film club at IIT Bombay and has made short films in college; and has family and friends working in the industry, so he understands the pain points in the field and his business development experience from his previous startup directly helps here. Nisheeth is a genius, he visualizes mathematics like a wizard which is crucial for the kind of tech we are building. He has done his fair share of AI work previously at places like Samsung Korea. And I have experience of working in Computer Vision, AI. I’ve also built software at scale, both in college and at Facebook. The best thing I feel is that the strengths and experience of all three co-founders complement one another and all these pieces somehow just fit together beautifully for the company we're building.
|
||||
|
||||
**In your opinion, what are the critical skills a person should possess to launch a startup?**
|
||||
|
||||
Passion, as hackneyed it may sound is really necessary. If you are passionate about something, nothing’s gonna stop you. For being a good entrepreneur, you need to have the knack to spot opportunities around you and make full use of them. As a student, there are various courses you can get enrolled in to build up your business, one of them being the Startup School by Y-Combinator. There is always a wide repository that you can refer to, you just need to keep an eye open.
|
||||
@ -1,61 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: CeNSE (Center of Nanoscience and Engineering)"
|
||||
image: "naba-intern-1.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Nabasindhu Das"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'The CeNSE (Center of Nanoscience and Engineering) was established in 2010 at Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, to pursue interdisciplinary research across several disciplines with a focus on nanoscale systems.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## Work
|
||||
|
||||
### The Institute
|
||||
|
||||
The CeNSE ( Center of Nanoscience and Engineering ) was established in 2010 at Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, to pursue interdisciplinary research across several disciplines with a focus on nanoscale systems. Current research topics include, but are not limited to nanoelectronics, MEMS/NEMS, nanomaterials and devices, photonics, nano-biotechnology, solar cells and computational nano-engineering. The centre has been built around two central facilities: **National Nanofabrication Centre (NNfC)** and the **Micro and Nano Characterization facility (MNCF)**. Both are national user facilities, i.e. they are accessible to outside academic and industrial users that include scientists from other departments in IISc DRDO, ISRO and other such scientific establishments in the country.
|
||||
|
||||
Supporting the central facilities are the MEMS and IC Packaging lab, the Computational Nanoengineering (CoNe) laboratory, Systems Lab, and 14 other functionally distinct laboratories managed by various research groups headed by a faculty members coming from a diverse background.
|
||||
|
||||
### Before applying
|
||||
|
||||
I had worked on two interrelated projects on the campus. The first one was related to fabrication of perovskite quantum dots in the chemistry department, a new generation zero dimensional photoluminescent material that has immense potential to be used in the field of light emitting devices and solar cells. The second one was in the field of interface dynamics of heterojunction organic solar cells in the electronics and communications department. Fiddling with the field of alternative solar cells, I wanted to expand my breadth and learn the skills that were prerequisite in the field. Further, working in a year and a half in the campus. I came face to face with few shortcomings that are unfortunate for an undergraduate student, especially if you are an experimentalist. They are mainly centered around the availability of the material characterization and other facilities in Institute Instrumentation center and other labs all over the campus.
|
||||
|
||||
### Making it there
|
||||
|
||||
As explained by the multiple research intern diaries before, the most popular and effective way to land a research internship is by writing curated emails to professors, research groups and at times, even to the PhDs or postdocs working in the labs. And if you are in the second year, and have a fairly low CG like me ( < 6.5 ), this remains the only effective option, striking out the options of research programs. I was fairly pessimistic about my chances but anyways, looking at my peers doing the same, started emailing professors in India. There are a few things that one must take care while mailing which helps to increase the acceptance chances.
|
||||
|
||||
1. Try to focus on your strengths. If you are a student with a high C.G and comparatively research output, that can be a selling point.
|
||||
|
||||
1. Try to highlight the skills that you possess and can make you a useful addition to the group. This includes courses that you have took and the projects you have done under some professor or tech group on the campus.
|
||||
|
||||
1. This is the most important that the mail should be highly professor centric. One of the best time saving ways that you can follow if you are doing some research project under some professor is to make small notes of the research papers that you are anyways studying during the literature review. If the papers are relatively new, in the last 5 years or so, you can be fairly sure that the professor is still working in that field. Write an email to the professor or Ph.D. that includes your observations combined with the possibilities that can be done. Make sure that you don’t include your current work in that if you don’t want to face the wrath of the in-campus professor you are working in.
|
||||
|
||||
1. Keep emailing and mailing, and if the offers come, fair and good, if they don’t you are only in second year are in one of the premier institutions in the country where you can develop your skills or kickstart a long project that is more likely to yield you research papers than a 2 month long internship.
|
||||
|
||||
I started mailing after the winter vacations to professors from IISC, IITs, IISERs and a couple of other research-centric institutes like TIFR, CSIR. Initially, I was met with plain rejections, unreplied emails or professors redirecting me to their research programs. A couple of weeks before the endsems, I got lucky and got acceptance from two professors, one from CenSE, IISC Bangalore and other from CSIR-CGRI Kolkata. The former being one of my initial targets and better prospects, other than having friends from the campus in Bangalore and IISC, was my final choice. The last advice: If you have a low CG and want to get in research, increase it, and if you can’t make sure that you don’t give up, keep mailing and doing research.
|
||||
|
||||
### The Institute
|
||||
|
||||
Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is one of the oldest, and the most prestigious research and educational institutions in India with departments researching specific areas. The Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE) was established in 2010 to pursue interdisciplinary research across several disciplines with a focus on nanoscale systems like MEMS/NEMS, nanomaterials and devices, photonics, nano-biotechnology, solar cells, and computational nano-engineering. The center has been built around two central facilities – The National Nanofabrication Centre (NNfC) and the Micro and Nano Characterization facility (MNCF). Both are national user facilities, i.e. they are accessible to outside academic and industrial users. Supporting the central facilities are the MEMS and IC Packaging lab, the Computational Nanoengineering (CoNe) laboratory, Systems Lab, and 14 other functionally distinct laboratories managed by various research groups.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:60%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
### The project
|
||||
|
||||
My project was a part of a larger project that was funded by the Government of India (GOI) and focussed on fabrication of low-cost GaAs solar cells on a multifilm substrate consisting of Germanium and Silicon. The entire duration of the complete project is a few couples of years with multiple research groups collaborating on the different aspects of the project. To give you a basic idea, GaAs solar cells are highly efficient, but due to their high cost, they are only used in intergalactic space. If their cost can be reduced, this will mark an important milestone in the undergoing solar revolution, with the rural areas in our country benefiting the most.
|
||||
|
||||
### Work and Environment
|
||||
|
||||
Its a known fact that Bangalore’s weather is the best out of all the metros, and if you couple it with IISc’s lush green campus, you are in for a perfect getaway from the summer heat that has plagued me all these years. My contribution to the project could be branched out in three parts:
|
||||
|
||||
1. Analyzing the XRD patterns to determine the crystallinity of the laser annealed germanium over silicon. Crystallinity is extremely important to allow charge carrier transport and I guess this is where my material science background was specifically of help to my mentor.
|
||||
|
||||
1. Designing a LabVIEW virtual instrument. After carrying out initial experiments, we had to carry out zig-zag motion of laser beam on the specimens. For this, linear stages were procured and they needed to be programmed with the help of LabVIEW which further attaches them to the rest of the fabrication apparatus.
|
||||
|
||||
1. Literature Review: Laser annealing of semiconductors is a fairly old field since the 1970s and extensive knowledge of its existing literature had to be known if we were to explain all our results and the one which was to follow.
|
||||
|
||||
The work environment was pretty chill and we could come and leave anytime we wanted to as long as we could show considerable progress in our reports, submitted once a week during group meetings. IISc is a premier research institution where you can attend lectures, seminars, and conferences which are happening every day at some of the other department. Other than giving you a good idea of where the research in the world is heading to, its free lunch, and possible networking hub with like-minded people. I used to do most my work in the M.Tech lounge where the other interns also used to sit, chit-chatting with them on Bean Bags, playing a game of Counter-Strike, or strolling around the campus in on rented bicycles. Bangalore being a metro city is too crowded, but if you go in the outskirts, you can go for short night treks to the hills and the monoliths that border the city. Pondicherry as the french seaside town is just a night drive away. Apart from that, if you want to enjoy it that conventional way, you can go to beautiful bookstores, breweries, and cafes and can attend quizzes and concerts.
|
||||
|
||||
### Summing Up
|
||||
|
||||
A research internship, especially in IISc in the second year was an eye-opening exercise for me. You get exposure to people who have been in the field for decades and get to learn the essential skills. Away from the noisy confused background of IIT, and being so close to what it actually is, it definitely does help to answer one’s question, if one wants to continue doing research or not. The biggest takeaway for me was the availability of XRD, SEM, etc. which takes a month or two to avail in Roorkee, but a day or maximum half a week in here. Talking to professors, even possible disputed Nobel Laureate and students from all over the country coupled with roaming in a city that is littered with gardens, history, and perennially beautiful weather was one of the few wholesome experiences I have had in my life!
|
||||
@ -1,99 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Cure.fit"
|
||||
image: "komal-curefit-2.png"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Komal Maheshwari"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'I spent my summers at Cure.fit, bangalore as a product design intern. In this article I’ll try to summarise my experience of the same.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## Introduction
|
||||
|
||||
I spent my summers at Cure.fit, bangalore as a product design intern. In this article I’ll try to summarise my experience of the same.
|
||||
|
||||
## About the company
|
||||
|
||||
Cure.fit is a heath and fitness start-up. It was founded by Mukesh Bansal (ex-founder, Myntra) and Ankit Nagori (ex-chief business officer, Flipkart). Founded in 2016, it’s one of the fastest growing start-ups in the country today.
|
||||
|
||||
## Making it there
|
||||
|
||||
My story of making it to Cure.fit consists of two parts:
|
||||
|
||||
1. Deciding to apply
|
||||
|
||||
1. Applying
|
||||
|
||||
The second part was fairly straight forward. The first part, however, was tougher. Let's start with the simpler bit.
|
||||
|
||||
### Applying:
|
||||
|
||||
Most startups don’t have a formal internship programme. There are only two ways to apply to a startup – email your resume to them or send a LinkedIn message to someone in that company who is working in your field of interest.
|
||||
|
||||
A typical email would consist of a cover letter, your resume and a link to your blog/dribble/github/LinkedIn or any other platform you chose to use for the purpose of documenting your projects.
|
||||
|
||||
A typical LinkedIn message would be shorter, crisper and less formal. It’s contents would vary according to your purpose. You could ask about the availability of internship opportunities, or about how you should go about approaching the company (who you should contact, what medium you should use), you could directly send your portfolio if you feel that it’s relevant for the person you’re communicating with and you can even text them to ask for general career related guidance.
|
||||
|
||||
Coming back to the application process, I sent emails to around 30 start-ups in India. Cure.fit was the first company to respond.
|
||||
I had a telephone interview which lasted for about 40 mins during which I was tested in basic problem solving. Towards the end of the interview I was told that I had cleared it and they invited me over for an internship at their Bangalore HQ.
|
||||
|
||||
Side note: Different start-ups have different ways of assessing candidates. Some give you assignments to solve—some have multiple interview rounds. Even the same company assesses different candidates differently. What start-ups basically try to gauge while assessing you is whether or not you fit into their “criteria" and they continue to test you until they are convinced one way or the other. The criteria, again, varies from company to company and can include anything from skill set to personality traits. Therefore, don't take rejection personally. It's a good idea to talk to someone who’s already worked there, it really helps in getting into the groove and understanding what the culture of the company is like and what they stand for. Also, before appearing for an interview, you should have a fairly good idea about their product, and your reason for applying to their company.
|
||||
|
||||
**Tips for the interview:**
|
||||
|
||||
1. Think out loud. Don't just give them the final answer. They are way more interested in how you arrived at that answer.
|
||||
|
||||
1. Don't fake it. It's not a good idea for two reasons :
|
||||
|
||||
1. They usually see through it.
|
||||
|
||||
1. It's a bad deal for both you and the company because at the end of it they will be stuck with someone they did not sign up for and you will always have to try to conform to that fake image they hired.
|
||||
|
||||
1. Don't be afraid to accept that you're wrong and be eager to learn. They are well aware of the fact that as an internship applicant you don't have one-fifth the knowledge or experience that their regular employees have. It is, therefore, really important to them that you're not stubborn about your solutions, are willing to accept your mistakes and are eager to learn because that way it'll be easier for them to teach you and in turn easier to get an output out of you.
|
||||
|
||||
### Deciding to apply
|
||||
|
||||
Now, this is the tricky part. Squaring in on a field you wish to intern in is, in my opinion, one of the toughest things you have to do in college (So many options—very little time! ) But it’s also kinda fun, like a rollercoaster ride makes you very queasy in the gut sometimes but gives you an exhilaration like nothing else all the other times.
|
||||
I won’t get into the details of my story for two simple reasons:
|
||||
|
||||
1. It’s long, complicated and boring.
|
||||
|
||||
1. It’s irrelevant. No two journeys are the same. And that’s the way it should be.
|
||||
|
||||
I will, however, share with you things that helped me:
|
||||
|
||||
1. Reading. Medium blogs, books, anything and everything. The book that had the most important role in this journey was Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. It taught me, among a lot of other things, how important a good design was to build a great product and how a great product can create a huge, life altering impact on the world.
|
||||
|
||||
1. Talking to people. Anybody and everybody. Whoever you find interesting or whoever you feel can help you answer questions that are bothering you. It doesn’t matter if you know them or not. Just text them and ask them out for coffee (Please be polite, make your intentions clear and don’t creep people out) or ask a common friend to introduce you and then, have a conversation. Don’t attack them with your questions but don’t be scared or ashamed to ask wherever you have doubts. In fact, Roorkee is a little like Hogwarts. Help will always be provided to those who ask for it.
|
||||
|
||||
## The Work
|
||||
|
||||
I worked on two main projects – one pertaining to product design and another one pertaining to product management (I had taken up the second one voluntarily)
|
||||
|
||||
The first project involved improving the existing user experience for an EMR (Electronic Medical Record) system for doctors. This project involved Visual design, UX design, user research and basic usability testing.
|
||||
|
||||
The second project didn’t involve as much ‘management’ as it involved brainstorming and research.
|
||||
|
||||
For those of you who don’t know, a product develops in stages (for a strictly digital product the stages are broadly- conceptualization, design and development. Other stages come in when the product also has operational and other requirements) and a product manager is a part of all these stages. It’s a myth that product managers only boss people around or only need to manage people. A product manager does everything from people management to minute design iterations. He or she basically responds to the need of the product at any given stage and in any possible way.
|
||||
|
||||
My product was in its conceptualization stage. The company had a faint idea that there existed a particular market need (can’t delve into specifics because it’s still in the works) and that there existed a possibility that they could cater to it and expand their user base in the process but they weren’t quite sure how feasible the whole idea was. My job was to figure out what exactly this market need was and how acute it was and what we could do in order to cater to it. In order to do this I conducted user research (basically, identified the categories of users that needed to be spoken to in order to gain insights, drafted a questionnaire for each category and then called them up individually) and had multiple brainstorming sessions with my mentor. This was probably the most interesting project I’ve ever worked on.
|
||||
|
||||
## The Work Culture
|
||||
|
||||
Cure.fit takes immense pride in its flat organisational structure. There are no bosses. Everyone is free to speak out. Curiosity is encouraged and openness to feedback is highly appreciated.
|
||||
|
||||
As an intern, I think the most rewarding aspect of the culture there was that I could go and talk to anyone, about anything and ask as many questions as I wanted. The cherry on the cake was that they were only too happy to help me and never made me feel like my questions were dumb or that my opinions were not as important as those of the employee sitting next to me and mentoring me.
|
||||
|
||||
There were also a lot of fun days. Especially the cricket match days during the World Cup. Everyone would take their laptops to the terrace garden and watch the match together on a huge screen and cheer for India while gorging on unlimited beer and food.
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing up
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:100%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
*The design team. They’d almost become family to me by the time I left.*
|
||||
|
||||
This was my first ever internship and I didn't really know what to expect but to be honest, I don’t think it could’ve gotten better than this. One piece of advice to anybody out there, especially the first and second years:
|
||||
|
||||
A lot of you may feel overwhelmed, intimidated even, by the sheer number of cryptically named career options out there. I know I was and still am. It’s never completely clear which profession entails what kind of work and whether or not that work will interest you. One very effective way to get a better understanding of what different corporate job profiles entail and how they come together to actually make organisations work is to intern with a start-up. As early on in your journey as possible. Most start-ups have a very flexible work environment. You are given immense autonomy, a lot more than most established companies. You can go around absorbing as much information as you want and volunteering for projects in different departments. It’s an extremely enriching experience.
|
||||
|
||||
That's all from my side. Please feel free to contact me in case of any questions. You can also ping me for a random conversation. A good conversation is always fun.
|
||||
@ -1,67 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Summer Diaries: Rakshak Foundation"
|
||||
image: "roshan-kumar-1.jpg"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
author: "Roshan Kumar"
|
||||
category: summer2019
|
||||
excerpt: 'My Internship was in the field of Public policy research and I was working on the project “Happy Village (Mangal Gram)”. I got the opportunity to work with the Happiness Department, Govt of Madhya Pradesh which is the first of its kind in India.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## Brief description of my project
|
||||
|
||||
My Internship was in the field of Public policy research and I was working on the project “Happy Village (Mangal Gram)”. I got the opportunity to work with the Happiness Department, Govt of Madhya Pradesh which is the first of its kind in India.
|
||||
|
||||
## About the Rakshak Foundation program
|
||||
|
||||
Rakshak Foundation is an organization based in California which helps in channeling the desire in you to make a positive impact in the lives of countless others. These are people you might never get to know in your lifetime. Rakshak provides insight into high-level issues, their interconnection and long term effects on society. You have a choice to submit a project proposal to start on something you want to change, work with a project which is in progress, or help with research on public policy issues. The vision of this organization can be summarized with a quote from former US President Franklin D Roosevelt, ‘We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.’
|
||||
|
||||
This Internship gives ample opportunities to students coming from diverse educational backgrounds. From my experience, I can tell you that, as an engineer, you’ll come across numerous instances where your technical knowledge will be required to derive a solution to the problems you come across.
|
||||
|
||||
The number of choices you get, and the domain you want to spend your next two months in, are limitless. From improving quality of life-infrastructure, traffic, pollution, and basic necessities, to improving accountability, efficiency, and transparency of public offices and to developing mobile applications, software & web applications for creative social applications, there are no limits.
|
||||
|
||||
In the program, you’ll be mentored by an IAS Officer or a person with equivalent caliber. In the end, if your work is good enough, you will get an opportunity to publish a journal on it.
|
||||
|
||||
## Application process
|
||||
|
||||
The selection process involves resume shortlisting and then 1 Interview round. For the Resume shortlisting, highlighting your contribution to public issues and your engagement with social activities will help you in clearing the first round. Unnat Bharat Abhiyan(UBA), National Service Scheme(NSS), Child Right & You(CRY) or any of your technical projects through which you made an impact on society will help you through this round. The second round can be seen as a micro version of the Civil Services interview round. I’ll substantiate further. Since this organization comes for on-campus internship in the 1st week of February, you’ll have enough time to zero-in on probable career choices you are going to pursue. It is extremely important to be specific about what you want from this internship opportunity and how you will utilize this experience further in your life. Reason being, Public policy research is quite different from regular Internship opportunities available on the campus. If you feel that working under bureaucrats in Government institutions on any public issue will help you in the near future, you are ready to go into the less traveled path. For improving your chances of selection, stress more on the preparation of the Interview round. In the interview, you will be asked about your opinion on the contemporary issues of India. Make sure you know the pros and cons of major government initiatives. Keep yourself updated regarding current affairs either through the newspaper or other sources. This will help you in forming opinions there.
|
||||
|
||||
## How I made it to there
|
||||
|
||||
Initially, I applied to some core companies like ITC, Reliance, BAJAJ, but couldn’t make it there. By November, after deliberating on my career plan, I decided to go with the Internship at Rakshak Foundation or BHEL. In the resume shortlisting, my activities at Unnat Bharat Abhiyan made up most of my portfolios apart from my DRDO internship. In the Interview round, apart from some common interview questions, I was asked these 7 questions:
|
||||
|
||||
1. Explain any 5 Government Plan/Scheme.
|
||||
|
||||
2. Which plan do you think will not give desirable results and what are some corrective actions to make it work?
|
||||
|
||||
3. What are the major issues of your state and what steps should be taken to address them?
|
||||
|
||||
4. Elaborate Ayushman Bharat Yojana.
|
||||
|
||||
5. Five pros and five cons of E-learning.
|
||||
|
||||
6. Three benefits of Dowry systems.
|
||||
|
||||
7. What do you expect from Rakshak Foundation Internship program and how it’ll help you in the future?
|
||||
|
||||
If you get selected in the Internship program, you’ll be asked to choose a project and prepare an action plan for its execution. This is the most critical decision in this Internship so make it wisely by deliberating on your strengths and weaknesses. You need to choose a project which you can put your brain into and are not a novice at because of two reasons. First being that you cannot always expect your mentor to be around in case you are stuck. He is an IAS officer and has a tight schedule. He’ll not be available to take your calls sometimes for a week. You need to make it through yourself. The second reason is that you are designing a policy/framework and presenting it to a person who has more than two decades of experience in it. You’ll let slip 2 months of golden experience out of your hand if you choose a project in which you are not a pro. The Mentor can’t and will not help you in that case due to lack of time. Moreover, if you want to implement your policies and test its efficacy, you will have the support of someone responsible for a District. You can take the help of the whole District Administration and Machinery to implement it.
|
||||
|
||||
## My field of research
|
||||
|
||||
My area of research was on Public Policy that would be used to make a Happy Village (Mangal Gram). The idea was envisioned by my mentor, Mr. Manohar Dubey, Commissioner of Sagar, Government of Madhya Pradesh. The project was divided into four parts. First I had to do a detailed study of tools/techniques used by Happiness Department, Government of Madhya Pradesh. Then I had to improve on the techniques to make it more relevant to the village scenario. The second part was to guide and help the team comprised of trained village youths in sensitizing the village residents about the tools and techniques to bring happiness and inner development in them by organizing Gram Sabha type meeting. The third part was to develop a community feeling among villagers by resolving their conflicts. The fourth part was to use the volunteerism attitude thus developed due to community feeling for citizen-driven development. The twist in the story came out when I got to know that Caste discrimination and Purdah system was prevalent in the villages in which I was trying to implement the policy designed.
|
||||
|
||||
The working hours were flexible but the timing of engagement was according to the need of the project. I had to dedicate 6 hours almost every day. Moreover, I was provided with a Government vehicle for the field visit. I was provided accommodation at the Circuit House of Chhatarpur and my neighbor was an SDM! There were frequent Administrative meetings of the SDM, DM, and Commissioners. Attending those meetings gave me opportunities to observe governance closely. Every morning, I used to deliberate on various issues of the project I was working on and several other things apart from that.
|
||||
|
||||
The best part of the experience was the 8 hour long ride with my mentor at the very end of my Internship period. We visited the best tourist spots in Bhopal. That 8 hours one-to-one conversation gave me a great insight into the mindset of a person who is so important for the country.
|
||||
|
||||
Talking about the place, Chhatarpur was once ruled by Maharaja Chhatrasal. One of my favorite movies ‘Bajirao Mastani’ is based on the love story of his daughter, Mastani. The Gulganj fort of Maharaja Chhatarsal is still well maintained. The epitome of art and sculpture, ‘Khajuraho Temple’ is not very far from this place.
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:100%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
*With my Mentor IAS Manohar Dubey and the Happiness Department team.*
|
||||
|
||||
## Summing up and key takeaways
|
||||
|
||||
I got to understand the intricacies of public policies by performing a long study in one such field. It has helped me to broaden my horizons and gain a lot of perspective towards public policy and social issues. I learned many things about the legal and social aspects of governance. The Internship challenged my command on the soft skills as I had to interact with a diverse set of people, ranging from a villager to the Governor. Yes, I met with the Governor of Madhya Pradesh, Mrs. Anandiben Patel. After getting impressed with my work, my mentor gave me the opportunity to present my work to her. That was the best reward I could get.
|
||||
|
||||
In the end, I came out with a Journal and an experience worth cherishing.
|
||||
@ -1,41 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Institute Lecture : In Conversation with Professor Arnab Bhattacharya"
|
||||
image: arnab.jpg
|
||||
tags: [wona, column]
|
||||
category: verbatim
|
||||
excerpt: 'Professor Arnab Bhattacharya is an accomplished physicist and researcher at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.'
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
*Professor Arnab Bhattacharya is an accomplished physicist and researcher at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He is well renowned for his social endeavors that tend to science outreach. On 23rd August, Prof. Arnab will deliver a lecture on the Periodic Table of Elements. Watch Out! decided to interview Prof. Arnab to converse about his research, his social outreach, his Institute Lecture and his time as an undergraduate at IITB.*
|
||||
<br><br>
|
||||
**Watch Out! :** You completed your B. Tech. from IITB, then did your PhD from Wisconsin-Madison. How did you actually become interested in your current research work? Also, could you give us some insights regarding your topic of research (III-Nitride semiconductors) and talk about your experience with the same?
|
||||
|
||||
**Prof. Arnab :** Well, long story. I've meandered a long way before settling on what I wanted to do. I could have gone with the standard engineering branches like Electrical or Mechanical or Chemical etc after JEE, but I was fascinated by astronomy and astrophysics, so I finally took up Engineering Physics at IITB (Good decision in retrospect). Eventually I found what professional astrophysicists do a bit too mathematical (I suck at math) and disconnected from hands on stuff (like what one did in amateur astronomy). I slowly drifted towards microelectronics, as it was something i could relate to. During the pre-internet days there was no way of really knowing what one would find in grad school. I got a scholarship with the Physics Department at Wisconsin, but figured I didn't like anything in physics as such, so I moved over to work on semiconductor lasers with people in Electrical Engineering. So, I have a Physics PhD certificate, working in an electrical engineering lab, and my mentor was a chemical engineer. Two important learnings - the fun stuff is happening at the intersection between traditional disciplines, and it really doesn't matter what you do - a Ph.D. is an exercise in problem solving, you can apply that anywhere.
|
||||
|
||||
I had never worked on nitride semiconductors in grad school or as a postdoc. When I came back to India, initially I was keen to do the same semiconductor laser stuff I was familiar with. But these new materials were coming up and I decided I just HAD to get into it.... Thankfully I got enough support to set up the first GaN epitaxy lab in India. Then I've moved around a lot into different materials after that...
|
||||
<br><br>
|
||||
**Watch Out! :** You have been actively involved in the field of science outreach. Could you tell us what exactly science outreach is, and how you have been involved in it? Also, you pioneered “Chai and Why?”. What is this initiative? In what capacity can college students contribute in science outreach?
|
||||
|
||||
**Prof. Arnab :** Ok, again I might ramble, but let me try. In India, there is a worrying disconnect between science and society. The role of curiosity-driven, basic research such as that done at research institutes like mine, (TIFR) is rarely appreciated. Unfortunately, the scientific community, though mainly publicly funded, hardly engages adequately with the public, with outreach being a public relations exercise rather than a platform for discussion. Even for members of the general public with an interest in science, there is no forum to interact with scientists and ask questions. “Science” is that difficult, boring but unfortunately compulsory school subject, where one memorizes facts to answer questions in an exam. School education does not convey the spirit of enquiry in science, and fails to present it as a way of understanding the world around us. Not surprisingly, many students drop science after high school. Science is often thought to be elitist, with scientists in ivory-tower research institutions. Hence I really felt I needed to do something about this.
|
||||
|
||||
I thought of adapting the well-known “Café Scientifique” format, where scientists chat with the public in an informal environment, to make it relevant in Mumbai. The word science itself was a problem – anything with science is perceived as being “not-for-me” by the public. To make it user-friendly, I thought of the name "Chai and Why?". I could luckily try this out (a six-month experiment!) at Mumbai's popular theatre venue, Prithvi Theatre and “Chai and Why?” was born in January 2009. The public response was phenomenal, we immediately went to a twice-a-month format (at a second mid-month venue) and in 2015 started an occasional 3rd venue. We’re still running without a break, now in year 11 with over 270+ successful sessions!
|
||||
<br><br>
|
||||
**Watch Out! :** IUPAC has declared 2019 as the International Year of The Periodic Table. Why is this so significant?
|
||||
|
||||
**Prof. Arnab :** Short answer this time. Every culture throughout history has been keen to know what the world around them was made up of. From ‘Earth, Water, Air, FIre’, we've now gone to 118 elements in the periodic table. The Periodic Table is not just an icon of chemistry, it is an icon of science as a whole, so it is good we get to celebrate the journey that has led us here. (150 years since Mendeleev, completion of the 7th period elements etc.)
|
||||
<br><br>
|
||||
**Watch Out! :** What topics are you going to touch upon during your talk at IITR?
|
||||
|
||||
**Prof. Arnab :** Two things - that there is no unique periodic table, and that the Periodic Table is universal - we find the same elements everywhere in the universe. So lots of "ChemHistory" stories with lots of Astronomy as well.
|
||||
<br><br>
|
||||
**Watch Out! :** Moving away from academics for a bit, what’s a crazy college story you’d like to tell us?
|
||||
|
||||
**Prof. Arnab :** Most of the stuff will probably be censored.... My time at IITB was wilder than things are now.
|
||||
Let's see. I've done way too much "keeda" in IITB lingo - from convincing professors to let us go watch the sunset right in the middle of an end-sem exam, to stealing beds from other hostels (we had a large corner room in the hostel that was the unofficial "adda" for mugging or partying, but you couldn’t have 2 beds in your room - however that rule was applicable only for your own hostel inventory), to arranging booby trapped doors to dunk people in water.....
|
||||
<br><br>
|
||||
**Watch Out! :** We would like to know about your experience at TIFR, and the different opportunities it provides to students interested in research.
|
||||
|
||||
**Prof. Arnab :** TIFR works on everything from Astronomy to Zoology, literally A-Z, and there are world class labs working on cutting edge problems. It is a very different environment than almost any other similar national lab in India, for the historical ethos that pervades it, right from our fantastic art collection that greets you when you enter, to the most inspiring seashore.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,63 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
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.
|
||||
|
||||
{: 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)
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:70%;height:auto;"}
|
||||
|
||||
I was also given a farewell lunch on the last day of my internship.
|
||||
|
||||
{: 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.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,130 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
title: "Branch Change"
|
||||
tags: [wona]
|
||||
category: academics
|
||||
image: branch-change-1.jpg
|
||||
excerpt: "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."
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
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
|
||||
|
||||
{: style="width:80%;height:auto"}
|
||||
|
||||
> “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:
|
||||
|
||||
{: 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 Jayraman** (2nd year, Branch Changer from PSE to CHEM)
|
||||
@ -1,49 +0,0 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
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.
|
||||
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Reference in New Issue
Block a user