Three First-Person Reflections from our 2023 International Research Intern Cohort
Ritik Mishra (B.Tech+M.Tech/Aerospace Engineering/2025) - Université Laval in Québec City, QC, Canada
I interned at Université Laval in Québec City, QC, Canada, in the summer of 2023 under Professor Seyed Ahmed Taghavi in the Department of Chemical Engineering. My internship experience was indeed an incredibly enriching one. First and foremost, I got to work in a research domain I'm greatly interested in, i.e. Fluid Mechanics. The topic of my project was "Multiphase Flows of Complex Fluids". The sub-domain I worked in dealt with the interaction between Newtonian and Non-Newtonian Fluids. We injected Newtonian fluids (water or brine) at high speeds through micro-nozzles into a non-newtonian fluid medium, Carbopol gel in our case, and captured the flow behavior through high-speed cameras to study various parameters related to the jet flow, for example, penetration depth, jet radius etc.
Before that, I had to go through a laser training course. This was a first-of-a-kind experience for me. My project was exciting as it had real-life applications in developing needleless injections and 3-D printing. Throughout the internship, I performed several experiments, surveyed various research articles and generated codes on MATLAB to calculate different parameters essential for the experimental analysis. It was a great learning experience for me.
I want to thank the IITKGP Foundation (USA) for their generous scholarship. It was only because of the scholarship that I didn't have to go through any financial trouble and constraints in an expensive country like Canada. Coming to Canada was a dream come true for me.
The scholarship assisted me financially and gave me the funds to visit different places of interest in Canada and explore the enchanting natural beauty and vibrant culture there. I got to see the major cities in Canada, including Montréal, Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and the Banff National Park, a small piece of heaven on earth. It has been an extraordinary and unprecedented experience for me. These three months taught me a lot; from being a person who couldn't cook, I learned cooking from scratch. Finding vegetarian food in Canada was always a challenge. There were a lot of other cultural shocks that I had to acclimate myself with eventually. Living in the capital of an entirely Francophone province in Canada was challenging, but learning some basic French beforehand helped a great deal. I had to learn French eventually for better communication. The people were kind enough to adjust to the language gap and tried to help in every possible way. I did face some minor instances of racism, which I've only read in books, but I experienced it first-hand for the first time. For me, Canada was a very welcoming, inclusive and multicultural country that accepts everyone with an open heart. I feel privileged to have gotten a chance to be there for three months. It wasn't just an academically fulfilling experience for me but also an emotionally fulfilling one. I got to make a lot of friends among the Indian co-interns there. And we had a lot of fun exploring various places in Canada. It was the most memorable summer for me and a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Keerthy G S (B.Tech + M.Tech/Physics/2025) - National University of Singapore (NUS), Faculty of Science
In the summer of 2023, I did my research project at National University of Singapore (NUS), Faculty of Science with the help of funding from the IITKGP Foundation Scholarship.
I feel so grateful to have received the scholarship.
Under the guidance of my professor, I was provided with a mentor who was pursuing a PhD in electrical engineering and was concurrently collaborating with my professor. This collaborative experience greatly enriched my academic journey. Initially, I gained proficiency in utilizing the Mathematica software for a range of computational tasks. Subsequently, I delved into the realm of top electrical circuits, where I comprehended the construction of circuit Laplacians and the intrinsic relationship between Hamiltonians of models and the corresponding circuit Laplacians. The lattice sites in a tight-binding Hamiltonian correspond to the voltage nodes in a TE circuit, and the Laplacian matrix corresponds to the tight-binding Hamiltonian because both matrices describe connections between the nodes (lattice sites). Employing Mathematica, I successfully reproduced specific figures from research papers, providing valuable insights into their properties.
Overall it was a great experience. Singapore as a country also was a nice experience. Thanks a lot for providing this wonderful opportunity.
Rounak Mandal (B.Tech/2024/Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering) - Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology/Center for Systems Biology Dresden
I completed my internship as a research intern in the research group of Prof. Dr. Ivo F. Sbalzarini at Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology / Center for Systems Biology Dresden. During my internship, I had the remarkable opportunity to work on training State of the Art Stable Diffusion models using microscopy images of the parasite Trypanosoma brucei. The primary objective was to generate artificial continuous images of the organism. To begin with, I trained the classical DDPM model on the Tryptag Dataset, which yielded impressive results with the generation of high-quality images. To validate the authenticity of the images, we provided these generated images to a biologist specializing in this field. We provided them with a set of eight images, out of which only two were identified as fake. This positive feedback from the biologist confirmed the generated images' effectiveness and potential utility in real-world applications.
This internship was a unique opportunity to meet people of different nationalities working in various fields. The interaction I had in the environment was enriching. Throughout my training, I was exposed to several cutting-edge papers about Generative Models (like Stable Diffusion) and various other research topics happening in the world to solve biological problems and their significance in real life. Collaborating and brainstorming ideas with some of the most brilliant people in the field was another gratifying aspect of my internship. The discussions with them were very thought-provoking and changed how I view Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. The friendly atmosphere of the group I worked with developed a positive outlook on life and created a perfect environment for learning. Working on the above project, I learned a lot about implementing and debugging machine-learning models. Also, working there taught me effective communication and presentation skills which will be very helpful for me in the future.
The IITKGPF (USA) GKF scholarship has been crucial throughout the system since I no longer have to worry about my finances during the internship.
Hence I could focus more on my work. The scholarship covered most of my expenses there and was very useful. I want to say that I am incredibly grateful to the Foundation for providing this scholarship!
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