INSIGHT, IIT-BOMBAY PRESENTS : THE INTERNSHIPS LIVE BLOG

I am particularly giddy while writing this due to a grand birthday party we had last night, but hopefully this blog will put off the hangover. I am doing my research internship at The University of Arizona, commonly referred as UoA. Since this blog has to serve as a guideline to prospective students, let me describe the logistics involved.

I have a particular interest in Medicinal Chemistry even before I came to IITB. So I started applying for research internships during my second year for the following summer, and that is when I contacted this Prof. here at UoA. I should throw this out right now: Current state of research funding in the US  is horrible. Universities are closing down departments and cutting on graduate intakes rapidly, so be prepared if you receive a lot of negative replies. So I got a similar reply ( this was in Nov,2007), but the Prof. encouraged me to apply next year and if he had funding he would take me in. Finally, I ended up joining the Nucleic Acid Chemistry research group at IITB last summer, which turned out to be the best decision I ever made. This is my advice to anyone who is serious about going into research, join groups here and try to gain some experience. The internship should serve the purpose of consolidation, ultimately leading to a graduate school where you will have an advantage of knowing the field well and coming up with interesting projects. Back to the discussion, so I applied  again last December and this time luck favored me. I was accepted with full funding and a variety of projects to choose from.

I was basically accepted into a big collaboration, which spanned from UoA to Moffitt research center in Florida and has some 6 investigators working on it. The field is called ‘Peptidomimetics’ which is essentially synthetic peptides mimicking the function of naturally occurring  proteins. These can be used as drugs to target a variety of ailments, in my case the group works on Cancer as the target. The current work proposes a new route to target a variety of cancer receptors in tumor cells and the grant is around $800,000. Medicinal chemistry is definitely a growing field and provides attractive career options both in India and abroad. If you have an understanding of biomolecules, this may very well be what you are looking for.

The biggest hurdle I faced was time, I had to be here on May 18 and my papers arrived from US on May 6. It was due to a variety of factors: you are asked to submit a number of documents to the host in order to process the DS-2019 application and in my case, the final acceptance came in April. I had a backup option in Bremen,Germany in case this hadn’t worked out, so keep applying because you never know when things go wrong. Also, keep soft copies of your passport, proof of parental income, transcript and medical insurance ready so that you can cut down the delays. Getting a US visa is time-consuming but not hard, you should be prepared to answer any questions the interviewer may have and you’ll be set. I got my Visa on May 14, and four days later landed in the land of opportunity:USA.

The A-mountain in Tucson. This is also the official logo of UoA.

Tucson is the second largest city in Arizona after Phoenix, which is of course a mammoth in comparison. The Us-Mexican border is 100 km away, so the area has a pronounced hispanic population and culture, which is actually good for Indians as the Mexican culture is quite similar to ours, whether it’s family dynamics or culinary experiences. Only exception, they put beef in everything, so be prepared to spend a bit more on food if you respect the cow like me! Other than that, you have a chance to experience the excellent work the Indian exports are doing here. I am working with an Indian post-doc here and have seen countless Indians handling some of the most sophisticated projects. It is indeed inspirational to see the amount of success Indians have  achieved through hard work and dedication and the world salutes us for it. Everyone here is aware of the IITs and the grindstone we call ‘JEE’. I am reaching towards the conclusion of my project and my internship, but this experience has all but re-assured me that I stand to learn and enjoy as a researcher in the future. If you are uncertain about how you’ll end up after doing a Ph.D.,  it will be a very full-filling experience from what I have seen. Hope this has been an interesting read and do post comments if you wish to.

Later!

Formalities first. I am doing my intern at Forschungzentrum, Karlsruhe (lit: Research Center, Karlsruhe). It is more like a Summer Project, and I have received funding for this from DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service).

The Details, and some Fundae:

DAAD is an organisation that funds students who wish to study/intern in Germany. For interns at Undergraduate level, DAAD has a WISE program which funds students from Engg colleges who will be interning in German Institutes for a period of 2-3 months.

DAAD does NOT help students get internships in Germany; it only funds them. So, looking for an internship is your job, and it’s best if you start around August itself.

• The last date for submission was 30th November last year.
• The DAAD application form needs to be sent along with many documents (all in triplicate) which include letter of invitation from the German host and Bonafide certificates from IIT, details of the project that is going to be done and lots of other stuff. Each of these documents entails quite some red tape, so it is best if you start working on getting all of them ready well before the deadline. Plus, remember that Oct-Nov time is Diwali, and hence vacations, time, so take that in account too. The moment you get the thumbs up from your German mentor, send him the Form that needs to be filled by him so that he gets sufficient time to get the stuff completed while you secure the other document.
• Last year, the deadline was extended by a fortnight, but don’t rely on something similar happening this year too.
• The funding (as of 2009) includes € 600 to cover travel costs, and € 650 per month.
• You also need to submit your CV and a letter of motivation along with the form, and 2nd year students should start drafting their CVs too, if they haven’t already done so.
• There isn’t a fixed number of students who are awarded the scholarship. It depends purely on merit, but generally, most IITians get it.
• I suggest those who do not have a passport should apply for one immediately. The procedure can take up to 2 months or more and it’s best that you don’t have to deal with that when the Deadline is hanging close.

I’ve completed 2 years of my B.Tech. (Engineering Physics) and am doing a 12-week internship at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany.

Why Optics? and How I Got Here

To be honest, Optics wasn’t my first choice - I would have liked to spend the summer working in an engineering job in a railways-related firm (for bizarre, inscrutable reasons beyond my own comprehension). Full of enthu and optimism, I began applying in September or so, not to receive a single reply other than a couple sent by automated non-humans. I gave up on the railways angle some time in December.

Not knowing what I generally wanted to do in life, I was stuck. I was never really “in” to physics or science or tech or anything, unlike many of my E.P batch mates - a totally awesome bunch, for the record- the epitome being this one person who’d been reading about Quantum Mechanics since he was in class VII.

As a part of my core curriculum, I had done a course in Optics the previous semester, which I quite liked, and this gave me a place to start. I’d found various Optics principles rather elegant, perhaps even aesthetically pleasing. And oh, yes: I knew working with Optics meant bright shiny lights, which I am a total sucker for - I’m even more attracted to them than your average household insect. I spoke to the instructor for my Optics course, Prof. Kailash Rustagi (Dept. of Physics), who was very helpful, and suggested various places I could apply to- one of which was the Max Planck in Erlangen, where I finally am.

Being all Optics-enthu, I registered for Prof. R. K. Shevgaonkar’s (Dept. of Electrical Engineering) course on Fiber Optic Communications (Spring 2009), courtesy the Biswas Committee (bless their souls multiple times) and the flexibility offered under the new B.Tech. curriculum. This would prove to be very helpful during my intern (and possibly in procuring it as well!).

After a month or so into the semester, I began applying seriously to various Fiber Optic Communications groups across the world. I sent about 15 applications in total (quite low by IITian standards!), got maybe 5 replies - all negative, but a couple of very nice ones. I decided to diversify a bit in terms of “acceptable” fields of work, and wrote, on Prof. Rustagi’s suggestion, to Professor Philip St. John Russell, F.R.O., inventor of the Photonic Crystal Fiber and generally a bigshot celebrity in the Optics world.

Surprise, surprise, I got a response- asking for a letter of recommendation from Prof. Rustagi, whom he knew professionally. After at least a month of waiting, I got a response- negative: no internship positions available. Disheartened, almost depressed, I gave up on the whole foreign internship thing. But in late March, most unexpectedly, I got an e-mail from a post-doc in Prof. Russell’s group at the Max Planck in Erlangen, Germany offering me a paid internship. And of course - I jumped at the offer akin to how hungry lions in Circus Maximus would jump at unfortunate people (for want of a better analogy).

Next up: Work, food and other things.

A foreign intern, a US university, research work… there’s much to talk about. I’ll try to break it down.

So I am working at the Transportation Research Group (TRG), which comes under the Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engg. Among the different fields of civil engg., I find transportation somewhat interesting. This interest was born sometime during the 3rd sem, and I have since forgotten the reason for it. I would have liked to work on a transportation project in a civil engg. firm but the only available positions were on the construction side of the projects and not on the design/planning side (and I didn’t have any inside contacts). So after receiving no replys to my mails/calls for a month, when the ban on foreign PT was lifted, I started applying. WSU’s was the first positive reply that came near the end of Jan. after which I stopped trying. It was too late to get anything at the good univs. anyway (or so I thought).

As an undergrad. intern, I always knew that not much would be expected from me and the work would be trivial at best. I hate to say this, and I certainly am not trying to generalize, but working as a ‘research scholar’ in a US university is even less stimulating than I’d imagined. I’ve been here two weeks and all I’ve done is collect data about seat belt usage on roads and enter it into excel sheets. It’s not research, it’s a project funded by the state’s Dept. of Transportation, in an effort to increase the seat belt usage rate. No doubt the project is important but there’s nothing much to learn and it’s mostly mindless labor. And its not just us interns (two of us from IITB), even the grad. and doctoral students here are doing the same thing for the most part. This will go on for another two weeks after which we’ll do something on crashes (road accidents). I don’t expect that to be much more interesting, but it’ll probably be better than this.

Work aside, this is my first trip abroad… so that’s cool. Its good to finally see for real what I’d only seen in movies and sitcoms. My workgroup consists of people from US, India and Bangladesh. It’s fun telling them about India, asking them about stuff…

Although Detroit is not a great place, and we haven’t seen much of it (no car, no proper public transport ), the weekends have been good. We visited Niagara falls and Chicago and both trips were awesome. I’d love to give details but this is not the place…

I guess this is it from me for now… more later…

Harsh