Intern Experiences
Summer 2021: Dr. Reddy's Laboratories (DRL)
-Billeswar Ghosh
Hey!!! I am Billeswar Ghosh, a final year undergraduate student from the department of chemical engineering. I am from Burdwan, West Bengal. I have recently completed my summer internship at Dr. Reddy's Laboratories (DRL). Moreover, it was a physical internship (yes!! You heard it right, it was a physical internship). I was one of you who eagerly read the articles published in this blog and got motivated. I have tried to pen down my internship journey and hope it offers you some clarity and hope.
Selection Procedure
I might be one of those few people who want to explore core chemical engineering. Having said that, the number of core companies that appear for an internship might frighten you. Keeping aside FMCG, only Piramal came before DRL (which came around mid-September). So, I started looking for alternatives. I had a bit of interest in Machine Learning. But you have to clear the coding test. And with limited knowledge of CS101, I was not able to clear a single test. Following the suggestion of my friends, I started learning Data Structure & Algorithms. The semester being online, things were getting complicated to manage.
Meanwhile, DRL came. The selection procedure consisted of three rounds. An initial test was taken, checking your basic chemical engineering knowledge and few aptitude questions. For the first time, I saw my name on the internship portal (I was delighted!!). The next round was a GD; surprisingly, it was a core GD. And the final round was (technical + personal) interview. They asked about my previous internship project and a few questions about heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and some HR questions. The interview was much easier than the last two rounds. When the results were announced, the joy was unbounded.
About the Internship
The way the second wave turned around, we didn't expect a physical internship. But, DRL took the bold decision. That's when we felt that the company wants to provide us with a great internship experience. I have worked in the API section of IPDO (R&D unit of DRL), Hyderabad.
The first two days of our internship were digital induction which we attended from our guest house. We reached our office following a one-week quarantine and learned that the company was vaccinating its employees. And I didn't miss the opportunity to get SPUTNIK V's jab (Don't be jealous!! ).
In the meantime, we were allotted our projects and mentor. The objective of my project was to optimize different unit operations involved in the continuous manufacturing of an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) and simultaneously improve the yield of the process. I had the opportunity to work in the laboratory under the guidance of two of our IITB alumni (2018 & '19 pass out) and one from IITD. Could the intern be any more fun than working with our seniors!!! In the first month of the internship, I focused on understanding the project and the working principle of the machinery involved in the process. I learned how to deal with this machinery, set up a reaction, and most importantly, the safety norms. In the latter half, I was allowed to perform experiments. That is the best part- getting in-hand experience of a real-life project.
Work Culture @ DRL
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| DRL Office premises |
Of all the experiences I have had, I will never forget those with my three project guides. They always treated me as a part of the DRL family rather than a 2-month intern. They used to introduce me to new people. All the employees are so friendly and enthusiastic to help you out there. My mentor himself knows some of our professors, for the likes of Prof. Jyoti Seth, Prof. Sanjay Mahajani. He also came as a guest lecturer in the course CL 323. There was an IITB connection all around.
Accommodation
We resided at the company's guest house in Kondapur. The rooms provided were way beyond our expectations and equipped with all the modern-day facilities. The rooms were double sharing. A total of 10 interns (6 IITB + 4 IITK) stayed here. The hostel environment wasn't missed at all. Breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner were provided by the hotel. We used to take our lunch in the office (no short of our mess food). Our working location was far from the guest house. But, the company arranged a transport facility for us.
Hyderabad City
Getting the offer letter, I was more excited about reuniting with my friends. Finally, we don't have to sit in front of the laptop all day. For the first three weeks, there was partial lockdown. We decided not to miss a single opportunity and made plans beforehand for the respective weekends. Once the lockdown was lifted entirely, we went for road trips. First, we covered Birla Museum, Birla Temple, Hussain Sagar. Next week we went to Ananthgiri Hill station. There was a shopping mall- a walk a distance away from our guesthouse. We became regular customers.
I love to explore different foods. And Hyderabad is famous for non-veg items. I indulged in some of the lip-smacking chicken and mutton dishes. People are warm and kind. Overall, the city of Hyderabad is just incredible.
Ending Notes
This is the best summer I have ever had. I can't think of a better internship for someone who wants to explore the chemical industry. Now, I have more reason to pursue my interest in core ChE. Reflecting on the memories I made, it was a very fulfilling experience improving my skill set, understanding varied cultures, and making new friends.
Believe in the process rather than the outcome. Do not panic if you don't get shortlisted. Eventually, you all will find a way through it. Wish you all the very best, guys. Feel free to reach me if you have any queries. I will be glad to help you out.
Summer 2021: Deutsche Bank
-Samarth Doshi
Hello everyone!
“Suno sabka, karo khudka!!”
Talk to as many seniors as possible because everyone will have something to add and then finally decide your plan of action. So, here I am sharing my internship experience with you. My name is Samarth Doshi, and I am a 4th-year undergraduate student in the Chemical Engineering department. Having zero knowledge in finance, I never imagined that I would get an opportunity in Deutsche Bank (DB). So, you can consider me as an example if you are interested in the field of finance but do not have any prior exposure.
The first and the most challenging task is to build a strong resume. After completing the 2nd year, most of us won’t have enough points to fill an entire page but do not be too concerned about this. Start working on your resume as soon as possible, and do not forget to get it reviewed by your seniors.
Regarding the selection procedure of DB, there is no aptitude/coding test conducted, and instead, they take a psychometric test. This is followed by three rounds of interviews. In my case, they grilled me on my resume in the 1st round and asked a guesstimate question at the end. As I had mentioned in my resume that I am the Institute Board Games Secretary, the question was to guess the number of different positions possible in a game of chess after the first five moves of both the players. This was followed by an HR round and was pretty chill. In the 3rd round, they grilled me again on my resume and asked a probability question as well.
HR and resume-based questions will be asked by every company irrespective of the sector you are targeting. So, you can prepare a doc for this and start writing your answers there. This doc will help you not just for your internship but for placements as well. Also, never mention in your interview that you want to pursue higher studies just after your graduation.
Working at Deutsche Bank, I have been able to see firsthand how an investment bank works. I was in the Credit Trading Desk and was supposed to work on trading strategies based on CDS indices. Since people at my desk traded in the European markets, we usually started working at around 1:00 pm (ideal for us, right?). The work allotted to me was pretty interesting, and I had an amazing experience throughout the internship.
“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great!”
Start working on your weaknesses, and don’t worry too much about the results. Feel free to reach out to me if you need any help. All the best guys!
SUMMER INTERN: FINMECHANICS
Hello all, I hope everyone is safe and doing well. This blog is from a person who was as clueless, if not more, as some of the people who will be reading this when trying to crack an internship. I’m Raghav Agrawal, a final year undergrad from the Chemical department (obviously ChEA blog mei padh rahe ho :P), and I am a summer intern at the FinMechanics
I would say first and foremost that whatever guidance any Tom, Dick, and Harry senior gives to you, think of it as a double-edged sword, as it will contain a lot of helpful information but, at times, it will be demotivating as well. There are some norms built around some profiles that you have to be a certain way (read machau) to get into so and so field. But that is not the entire truth. I feel you don't need to have the same qualifications as the senior you talked to. It is good to have them but not entirely necessary.
Intern Season Pressure:
I started preparing for my intern season initially by gaining all the technical skills I was interested in: probability and finance. Along with working on my interests, I also started reading about puzzles, and you don’t have to be a master of puzzles from the get-go. You will develop an intuition of them by practicing those repeatedly. Here “Practice makes Perfect” literally applies. Other than that, I started reading various HR questions that are asked in interviews. Mainly on the HR side, make a general document for it having generic questions. After you get shortlisted in a company for an interview, edit it according to the company specifically. I suggest doing this because you usually do not have a lot of time between getting your shortlist and the interview (in my case, it was around 12-15 hours on average).
Coming to my internship, I got it through Placement Cell. I remember thinking that this company is far out of my reach (aukat ke bahar) because I consulted some “seniors” who said that you need a great CPI to get into finance. I was interested in finance early on (being baniya ig), but I was getting signals from everywhere that you need at least 8+ if not 8.5+ CPI even to get a shortlist in finance. And before this, I got shortlisted in two core companies and went deep into the selection process.
Core or Finance?
So I got shortlisted earlier for Hindustan Unilever in the supply chain and Piramal in pharmaceuticals. I think I got rejected because of my knowledge in core (or lack thereof). It was very demotivating to face rejection, but in hindsight, I think it was good for me personally because I got into the industry I was genuinely passionate about. As they say “Hindsight is always 20/20”.
So I thought that I should leave finance and try for core, but then after giving numerous tests for various companies, I finally got my first non-core shortlist in FinMechanics, which I could have never imagined. We had two interview rounds, one was more of a technical round, and the other was primarily HR. Not lying, it was quite intimidating in the second round seeing 11 people sitting across the computer screen at midnight (yes, my second round was at midnight). We got our results approximately 45 mins after my interview. I had made my mindset that I was not capable of getting into finance because of all the noise in insti creating a stigma. It took me a week to let it sink in.
My Work as an Intern:
Coming to my internship experience, I will not bore you guys by throwing finance jargon. My internship mainly involved delivering the clients (investment banks in this case) with their financial trading requirements in the treasury department. The work culture in the firm was non-hierarchical, as most of the consulting firms are. There are mentors allocated to each intern who are the project managers as well, who are proactive in teaching all the work. They helped me clear my doubts at any given time of the day and made sure that I was catching up with them.
I worked on various asset classes that the client operated on their investments. I learned a lot about how these institutional investors operate in their trades and hedges. Also, a lot of brainstorming went in when I got stuck at various places when implementing a particular financial instrument in an asset class.
Ono, COVID!
Initially, when I received the offer letter, it had mentioned an offline internship. So I was pretty excited to work in Mumbai, the heart of finance in India. I started dreaming about the workspace and being in the center of all the meetings and deals. But then, lo and behold, the second wave hit in April, and our internship was converted to work from home. At first, I was a bit underwhelmed that I would not be able to get the experience firsthand. However, when the internship started, I could not have been more satisfied with the interaction that I could have with people at the firm and the learnings that I was able to gather.
Being engineering students, we are exposed to finance neither in college nor at our schools. As I was interested in finance, I started to study for FRM in my third year (which has been postponed because of COVID). So I tried to make myself familiar with the jargon a little bit. But the internship gave me a whole new and elevated experience of the real world, which was very much overwhelming in the beginning but later on, it kind of grew on me.
Lastly, in my opinion, if anyone is sitting on the fence, they can always try consulting and finance as an option. If you have any further queries, feel free to hit me up. Cheers!
INTERNSHIP AT PIRAMAL PHARMA SOLUTIONS
Hello everyone! I am Arsh Deep, and I have just completed my 3rd year of chemical engineering. I am currently interning at Piramal Pharma Solutions (PPS). Like most of my peers from the batch of 2021, my summer internship seemed like a once-in-a-century experience. Interning amidst the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown has been a revelation in its own right. In the following paragraphs, I reflect upon my experience as an intern at Piramal Pharma Solutions.
The Selection
The company came for internships around mid-August. My DAMP mentor was an intern at Piramal the previous years, so I had some background knowledge about the selection procedure. The selection process consisted of four rounds. The first was a conventional resume screening. After 2-3 days, a list was published, and we were asked to take an online assessment test consisting of puzzles, questions on logical reasoning, etc., based on which the GD shortlist was released. The GD consisted of very unusual questions such as what would you do if you become the PM of our country etc., and we were given two minutes to speak on the topic. Based on the GD, 11 candidates were selected, and interviews were conducted. I had two rounds of interviews: a personal interview and then a technical interview. The personal interview was a typical HR interview, and the questions mainly revolved around my POR’s, interests, and hobbies. After the interview, I was informed that I will be having another interview in 15 minutes. The second interview was intense and revolved around my technical skills. Though the major part of my interview revolved around the projects and motivation, basic knowledge about core subjects will be more than sufficient for any counter questions during the interview, which will reflect in your problem-solving approach.
Kickstart to the Internship
So before the start of the internship nearly two weeks ago, the Piramal team rolled out a survey asking our superheroes and words that describe our attitude to know a bit about us. I did not know why then, but over these two months, I was totally captivated as to how they gave the personalized touch to the whole virtual internship journey. A two-day induction was held online to help understand the organization and get a clear understanding of the working environment. During the induction, we connected with leaders from different parts of the world who helped us get an insight into the values and fundamentals of the organization. One great thing about Piramal Pharma Solutions(PPS) is that they give a lot of importance to their values and “Patient eccentricity.”
About the Project
I was allotted the Pithampur site, which offers commercial manufacturing and packaging services for oral solids. A one-day site induction was held where we were given a fair idea about the site, after which we were allotted our project and project mentors. My project was to optimize Utility cost and implement measures to reduce it by 5% from the baseline of FY-21 consumption. To my surprise, this project had both core and non-core approaches, and with due deliberation with my mentors, I decided to divide the project into two sections. The first part was to analyze data and optimize it using QC tools. For the second part, I used my core knowledge to analyze current working conditions and came up with better solutions. (Can’t disclose anything further due to NDA).
Ending note -
Working from home made connecting with people difficult, but my mentors and the team at Piramal left no stone unturned to connect me with the right stakeholders. One of the major highlights of the internship was the sessions we used to have weekly with Leaders from different fields of PPS. Although it is a core profile, they focussed on overall development through the Global Emerging Leader Program. The company put in all endeavors so that interns can get the best out of these uncertain times and indeed against all odds. Ping me on Facebook if you have queries.
P&G Intern Experience
-Mustafa Burhani(2021)
Hello everyone, this is Mustafa Burhani, a fourth-year undergraduate in Chemical Engineering Department, IIT Bombay, pursuing minors in Electrical Engineering. I am currently a summer intern in the Femcare division of P&G.
Intern Season
The beginning of the third year can be very overwhelming with companies coming in to hire you for their internship program. It is the first time for most of us to get into the real world, work for companies, learn, and experience the corporate world. Surges of anxiety are common in this season(Which is completely fine, it is the next step towards personality development).
I remember I was pretty uninformed about the upcoming intern season during my second year summers. With the advent of the pandemic, I was confused about how the intern season would be, so I didn’t focus on it at first, just worked on my POR( Institute Dramatics Secretary) and a SURP project under professor Amber Jain. Around the 9th of July, I was asked by a junior(Yes, you heard that right, a junior), “How is your intern prep & resume making coming along? You have your submissions around 23rd of July(Don't remember the exact date).” I started to panic and got gravely anxious. I began to feel low & regretted not being proactive. I started reaching out to some of my seniors, seeking advice & empathy. I was assured that I have enough time and can still make a good resume. I dived into the process, researched several companies, reviewed resumes of past year interns & also of placement peeps. It soon got balanced, and I successfully created a decent resume.
Talking about my previous experiences, I have been involved in managerial roles for a long time. Therefore I had a little inclination to explore it more. But I even signed up IAFs for coding companies(with no coding experience apart from CS 101 XD) and terribly failed at them. Then came Day1 non-tech companies like Strategy&, Deutsche Bank, P&G, HUL, etc.
I signed up for them all, gave all their tests. Finally, I got a shortlist in P&G. I was elated for the moment, but within minutes the shortlist was taken down. I got pretty tensed and waited for them to re-upload the shortlist. To my surprise, after two days, they re-uploaded the shortlist with lesser selections, and I was one of them. It was around 10 PM, and after being happy for like a minute or so, I realized I have an interview the very next day at 2 PM. After several minutes of panicking, I called some of my seniors, asked for guidance and how to plan the next 16 hours left. They sat with me, helped me prepare an HR Document. After the HR document was completed (5 in the morning), I took a nap for 3 hours, woke up, and prepared my resume(Going through each and every point and trying to explain them in a concise and detailed way). After hours of preparing, I gave my interview, got selected for the second round & finally gave the second round. Now it was time to wait for the results, which were announced within 4-5 days, and after getting selected, my happiness was unending.
Start of the Internship:
It is a work-from-home internship. I do feel sad that this couldn't be an offline experience, but the company has tried its best to provide us with a wonderful experience.
The past few months took a serious toll on my family, and I was not even sure that I might be able to work, but everything turned out to be better, and I started my internship. The first week was getting to know the company, fellow interns, guide & the problem statement of my project.
Currently, I am working to create a digital platform that will be used across plants for managing projects. It is a little unconventional project for the product supply role, but this is the best we can get in such times. The first month I understood a different process and authored a solution on paper that was supposed to be executed in the coming month. After getting the solution approved and reviewed, currently I am developing the application.
P&G Culture
The best thing about P&G is, they don't hire their employees on the basis of their technical skills. Instead, they hire them on the basis of their personalities & they believe technical skills are something which can be developed eventually. People here are very sweet and always ready to help. It is a very good learning experience so far.
I have learned a lot of things like communication skills, presentation skills, task management, different processes within P&G, and most importantly I have learned how to develop an application (with no strong programming background) (still learning though :P) in my past few weeks while working for P&G.
Gyaan Ki Baatein-
Remember one thing, you all are precious and amazing. Just take a step back and look around at your friends in other colleges; you might realize you are doing a lot at this early stage. Of course, this is not going to be easy, but crazy is what you signed up for, and trust me, you will find yourself as a completely different person at the end of this.
I am not a “machau” student, I have decent CPI, I had no previous internships, I had a simple sa project and some PORs, yet I ended up getting a Day 1 intern, by believing in the things that I have done in the past, and making the best out of them (The place that you are standing right now, is an outcome of the fantastic things that you have done in the past, you might not remember them exactly right away, but sit and think about how awesome and wonderful you are, it will help you a lot in the coming times). I am not patronizing myself here; I just want you to know that if I being an average(maybe below average) student can do it, you definitely can. Just don't stop believing in yourself.
Come on, this is life, you might get rejections, you might have to sign in for most of the companies until you land an intern, just trust me, don’t STOP TRYING, and you will realize what a legendary task you have done when you finally get where you wanted to be. I really respect those of my peers, who had to wait for months to land an internship. Because while I was done with my internship and stopped caring about the selection, those guys were consistently applying for companies, giving tests, preparing for them day and night all whilst managing their college and personal lives. Those guys turned out to be so mature & skilled at the end, that it's just amazing.
Just don’t stop trying, each and every step that you take while trying to land an internship will make you a better person.
All the very best guys, you all are gems and will make us seniors proud :)
Any problem you face at any point, feel free to reach out to me, I will try my best to help you out!
Peace
Summer Internship at Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories
- Manish Mehta(2020)
It’s Boards. This is the most important exam in your life. Study hard.
Its 12th, JEE Mains, JEE Advanced.
Ab insti aagaye ab life chill hai :) Then come Midsem, Endsem, Minor, electives, projects, PoR, intern. How many times have we heard “Bas ye karlo sab chill hai aage”. How long have we been waiting for the ‘chill’? Or did the ‘chill’ really begin a long time ago and we never realized that cause we were so focused on the goal? And what even is the goal? To earn millions of dollars? To become the happiest person? To become successful? Enough with the cliche talk. Time for real shit :P
I’m Manish, a 4th-year chemical undergraduate. My intern experience? Average (One of the many catastrophes of covid-19) Why am I still writing this? To share the journey, the efforts, the ups & downs had to face and the lessons that I learned.
Selection Procedure & Pre-Internship Phase
Let’s begin at the time when I started applying for companies. I was so confident about my interest in core that I didn’t even apply for companies other than core and some coding. I remember my HuL GD. I was so confused on reading the 1-page topic and sitting in a group of 10 scared me more. I spoke only once on some random point, made some amateur mistakes and as you expect did horribly. Of course, at that point I didn’t realize what I did wrong and blamed my luck. Then came Piramal GD and again, I sucked. Only this time, I had a friend in the group honest enough to tell me my mistakes and then it hit me. I prepped hard after that, watched a lot of YT videos, jotted down the important headers to keep in mind, the common phrases to use, and the mistakes not to make for my next GD by DRL and here comes flash point. But before that, how did I get here? Well after giving like a million coding tests for finance and analytics companies and performing poorly in all, appeared in apti + core + psychometric test for DRL and fared well in that.
Then comes GD. From what I gathered from seniors, DRL had always conducted a core-based GD so that was a relief but no matter how much I prepared, it scared the shit out of me just thinking of the things that could possibly go wrong. The topic was described briefly on 2 sides. Didn’t start or conclude but said important points in between, was calm and collected during, and that’s what got me selected.
Seeing my name on the interview shortlist was one of the happiest moments in my life. Not because I was shortlisted for DRL but because through hard work and the right preparation and practice, once again in my life I had conquered one of my fears. Skipping ahead to the interview, I was so damn confident about it that I knew I would ace it. It began with the usual ‘Tell me about yourself’ and I mentioned only those things that would steer the interview exactly where I wanted it to head. She then asked me about my AZeotropy PoR and my project. Surprisingly I didn’t remember what my project was xD. The look on my face was priceless! I thought that this was the end, maybe I shouldn’t have been so overconfident that I forgot my own project. But to my surprise, the interviewer herself read the first line of my project from the resume and I said to myself, “Damn, good timing God” xD. Well after that I aced it and from the look on her face, I knew I would get selected and I did!
Oops, I missed something……. I had an Oyo interview (Data science profile) the exact same day before my DRL interview! That interview too went very well, I answered all the coding and probability stats questions the interviewer asked me and some other questions as well (my passion for gaming and how I overcame my addiction :P). He was an IIT B alumnus so he could relate and told me about his experiences as well. Then there was the final question. What do you want to do? Where do you see yourself working years from now? I was so confused, didn’t know what to answer as I had prepped for all HR questions except this! I stayed silent for a minute. Thought to myself that this is the deciding moment and gathering all the courage left, I said that I have an interest in studying data analytics but I want to work in a chemical industry, one where I could gain practical knowledge working on the site and simultaneously work on a RnD project, preferably simulation and coding based. That’s it. I messed it up as I first thought…. but did I? The interviewer appreciated me for my honesty, wished me luck in my future endeavors and also, I finally knew what I wanted! Yeah, I know, sounds stupid and took this long! Well after that I got selected at DRL and was happy as finally the ‘intern lag jaye yaar’ was over.
My Intern Experience
The more the pandemic bloomed, the worse my fear got for my intern getting cancelled. But I was grateful that DRL planned a work from home intern for us. The first two days, we had 9 hrs. long induction session each day to get us acquainted with the industry and the online interface. As boring as I predicted it to be, it was the exact opposite. The sessions were very informative and I learned a lot about the pharma industry which further strengthened my interest for core. After that, projects and mentors were allotted. The project was decent considering everything. My job was to go through existing research work on the internet and mine for solutions for some problems faced in the development of a particular generic product. I reported my findings to my mentor and got continuous feedback on what to do next. The mentors were very helpful and we connected at least once every week. Apart from all of this, DRL biweekly conducted a competition for all the interns. One was to post a video of us doing an exercise every day and the winner gets to do the exercise with the CEO :P. Other competitions were technical and one was based on business development. All in all, these 6 weeks were a lot of learning and fun and I enjoyed every bit of it!
My advice? Doesn’t matter where you do your intern or how big the stipend is or intern kab lagi, what matters is the level of preparation you did, the struggles you faced, the things you learned, the experience you gained and the conclusions you came to! Sayonara!!
Internship Experience at TATA Projects
- Abhinav Anand(2020)
As much as I fancy to write for someone, to my dismay I barely get chances to do so. At least the Chemical department was benevolent enough to ask. I am Abhinav Anand, a fourth-year undergrad and this is about my summer internship experience at TATA projects limited.
Summer interns are much anticipated by the undergrads, mostly by the third-year students. The season brings much hype and anxiety in students’ lives. It is dawned by the big and famed firms with a fat pay check, which we all have on the get-to list. Anyways it was the same for me, like most of the students, I applied to most of these. I filled JAF of the FMCG companies but I couldn’t make it. I restricted myself to core and related companies, not because I had planned it prior, but my perception of being a little unskilled and unprepared for other sectors i.e. consulting, finance, data science etc.
As the rejections increased and interviews got spoilt by my feverish disposition, I grew tough and bold in my approach with some amount of fear and consternation always beneath. I now focussed on the core companies entirely. I blew a few core companies as well, finally, it was TATA Projects. I anxiously filed the JAF and I was shortlisted. Their selection procedure was rather brief, just shortlisting and an interview and you don’t need to prepare much, just follow conventional wisdom and guidelines. Even though senior firm employees were present, I was asked some basic questions, related to the resume and a few general questions to check my promptness. It went well and I was out of the whirlwind of rejections. It was extremely relieving when I didn’t have to go to any more internship sessions.
With the joining letter in hand, I was waiting for the semester to get over, surprisingly it ended quite soon and abruptly. Pandemic has been a kill-joy for all. In coming days its consequences unfurled, the suspension of classes kept extending and in no time the semester was over. To our concern, it did not augur well. I was no exception with the foreboding of internship getting cancelled looming around. I would say that I was lucky, internship commenced, even though late by almost a month, in June. Still, it was a two-month internship, curtailed only by 10 days, as per the initial timeline.
I liked that they put me in the execution of a live project, under operation in Andhra Pradesh. The development Project, undertaken by TATA Projects Limited as an EPCIC contractor (i.e. Engineering, Procurement, Construction, Installation and Commissioning will be done by Tata Projects Limited), has a very broad horizon with immense work and I was working on a small part of it. The Project is related with recovery of Mono Ethylene Glycol (MEG) from the rich MEG coming out from Oil & Gas field. Other companies were also involved, India based and one from Norway, and numerous other players. All this work was for ONGC, offshore, 25-30 kilometres from the nearest land. The fields discovered in the area comprise of a number of oil and gas discoveries, are spread over a large area, and ONGC intends to develop the new exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), in deep waters off the east coast of India.
In the first month I was primarily reading the documents related to the MEG recovery unit which was to be augmented with new equipment and packages. There were bidder lists, inquiry & requisition documents, technical bid evaluation (TBE) sheets, purchase orders (PO) and some detailed renderings of the packages and the plant. In the second half as the execution resumed, which was at halt for some time, I was involved. My task was to observe and understand the procurement process. The project manager, my guide, whom I was assisting was fairly experienced, he formally and friendly explained all my doubts and informed me of everything required in his capacity.
The internship ended on 30th of July with submission of work report on the same. I had an unparalleled experience. Pandemic and work from home made it unique but I was left pretty appalled at the end. I was not given the job in which I could contribute effectively, it was a study and I felt rather like an onlooker with everything passing under my gaze. The work was not anything of my capacity, surely there should be no doubt in that but I would have been happy to work on anything small with my knowledge involved in it- this is a generic statement, made by every student, yet this is our basic expectation. With the pandemic on spree and unexpected adjustments I should be thankful to whatever experience I obtained but I can’t be content with anything. Everything was done in haste, the adaptations from the company side must be respected, still I would say more could have been achieved. The slow and tedious job could have been rewarding, on-ground job would have been fulfilling, there could be an endless charade of have and have-nots. COVID holds excuses for everything and anything which went wrong yet I surmise it could have been better.
I can go on but I wouldn’t say that it was not worthwhile. In the seventh semester, the courses are practical and I find it much natural to grasp the working of industry. It did provide me with knowledge which I otherwise would not have gained. I got to know about the operations while sitting at home, had I been onsite, it would have been more giving. If someone wants to gain industrial experience then I would recommend this internship.
I must append something at the end. The internship was not one which I hope anyone has to do in the future. If a task has to be done on-ground but is done from home, it will leave the participants unsatisfied. It was peculiar but it should not be held as a metric to judge the ensuing internships.
Good Luck!
Research Internship Experience at Purdue University
- Rishikesh Shete(2020)
INTRODUCTION & MOTIVATION
Hey! I am Rishikesh Shete, a fourth-year Chemical Engineering Undergrad. Aside from my academically inclined life, I also love taking photographs, playing chess with my peers whenever I can and a cup of good coffee.
I was deeply fascinated by how the fields of mathematics and science explain the complex phenomena of this world with ease this prompted me to take engineering in the first place.
Chemical Engineering study and the overall syllabus at IIT Bombay is primarily streamlined and focuses on the RnD aspects of the field. As a sophomore I really wished to learn about its application to develop my understanding further in the field. So, I perceived to opt for a project in the Fluid Mechanics Lab of our department under Prof. Partha Goswami. This project proved to be a crucial aspect of learning for me and also the fact that I completed it with due diligence. It helped me to get ample amount of lab experience plus I used my academic knowledge coupled with the use of softwares like MATLAB to solve problems in Fluid Dynamics.
After this project I decided to be a part of Course on Wheels which is a fabulous initiative taken up by Prof Sanjay Mahajani. This course covered all major aspects of our field and we get an opportunity to see them applied in the chemical industry. Again, increasing my interest to pursue a research-based internship.
In my third- year I decided that it was time to explore internship opportunities overseas. Purdue University being one of the top universities in my areas of interest was an obvious choice on my list.
SELECTION PROCEDURE
Purdue University made the selection of its PURE (Purdue Undergraduate Research Experience) students primarily based upon the Statement of Interest which is required to understand your motivation for research, then your resume (which should include your past research experience in an easy to understand manner )and lastly there was a CPI cut-off of 7.5.
Before applying to Purdue, I had also done apping and applied to many research universities through sending emails to a lot of professors but as it usually occurs in this scenario, I found my luck at none.
WORK EXPERIENCE
I am working under the guidance of Prof. Shripad Revankar who is the director of the Multi-Phase and Fuel Cell Research Lab (MFCRL) in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University. I am a part of this lab, though not physically present due to the CoVID-19 pandemic.
My main work is on the designing and scaling of a High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) accident testing facility. What excites me primarily about the work I am doing is that we are basically trying to build a miniature version of a nuclear reactor in the backyard. The project at the beginning required to make a lot of CAD drawings after extracting all the dimensions of a HTGR reactor from published research papers. After getting over with the geometry I am required to simulate this facility using the concepts of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) on famous softwares like ANSYS.
Prof. Revankar is a busy man but is very innovative and quick to provide ideas during the discussions I had with them for fixing the bottle necks that were faced during the course of the project. I was also required to submit a weekly progress report on the work done during the week. All in all, this is a very enriching experience and has provided me an opportunity to actually study in depth, an intangible component of the source of renewable energy for any advance economy on this planet.
WORDS OF ADVICE
To any research enthusiast in our department I would like to tell that your interest in the field of chemical engineering is very important to push you ahead when you face a bottleneck and thus performing a worthwhile task. As I said earlier that I didn’t got selected in any university through apping so it is also important to be patient and trust your skills you have gained during the course of your study.
All the best!
Internship Experience at Piramal Group
- Anvay Varekar(2020)
(4th year, Chemical Engineering)
INTRODUCTION & MOTIVATION
My first exposure to the field of analytics was an online course I did in the December of my second year ( Python for Data Analytics and Machine Learning - Jose Pourtilla). It was a great course with lots of hands on work and I recommend it to a lot of people. I spent some time exploring Kaggle for the rest of the year.
I started looking for an intern in this field partly because of interest and partly because it was one of the few marketable skills I had.
PRE–INTERNSHIP PHASE & PREPARATION
I secured an internship in Bombay Stock Exchange in the second year summer through LinkedIn and worked in the Data Analytics Department there. BSE had a lot of data generated every second and I got to learn a lot about Big Data Analytics, especially the infrastructure used in the state-of-the-art systems and frameworks like Hadoop, PySpark and Impala.
I did a few additional courses including one on web scraping with beautiful soup and Selenium, GUI Automation with python and one about MS Excel. These along with my internship at BSE were discussed in my interview of my third year intern.
SELECTION PROCEDURE & INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE
For Piramal Analytics, there was an aptitude test initially. People were shortlisted for an in-person test in an LH. I initially did not know what to expect but it turned out to be a test based on data manipulation, using basic pandas functions. It was open and you could search online but the time limit required you to have a good grasp of the library to complete the questions in time.
On the basis of this test, people were shortlisted for interviews. Mine lasted for around 30-40 minutes. The panel consisted of an Analytics Manager and two people from HR. They asked me a few questions about myself followed by asking me to walk me through my resume. The main points they were interested in were my second year intern and my MS Excel knowledge and how I'd used that in my PoR. They were interested in all the points in my resume even if they weren't technical but the questions focused on these.
I was asked in-depth questions about my intern, about big data analytics and about K-Means Clustering which was the main project of my intern. After this and apart from the other parts in my resume, they asked me a brainteaser which I made significant progress on, but could not solve. They moved on to questions like why do you want to work here and others before wrapping up the interview.
I got to know about the selections the next day. I was excited about working at the Piramal Campus in Kurla, but that didn't happen.
Looking back at my intern, the remote communication and data restrictions made a lot of difference and some problems, but I'll focus on the work and what I got to learn.
WORK EXPERIENCE
My project was based on Time Series Analysis and to forecast the customer sales for the Piramal Pharma business. I worked with Python and various models like ARIMA, RFRs, Recurrent Neural Nets, Holt Winters etc. The data I had access to was very limited as I was working on a personal computer, but I got a great opportunity to learn about this field while working on real world data.
All the best!
Internship Experience at Nomura Research Institute
- Sparsh Goyal(2020)
Hello guys,
Hope you all are healthy and staying safe.
Introduction
I am Sparsh Goyal, a fourth-year undergraduate. I am pursuing a major degree in Chemical Engineering and a minor degree in Management. This article is an attempt from my side to help you understand my journey through the internship season at IIT Bombay and finally being lucky enough to land at Nomura Research Institute, a Japanese management consulting firm.
Starting with some personal background, I worked as an Internship Coordinator in my third year and I was a DAMP mentor as well. I had a decent CPI (8.5+), which imo only matters to get you shortlisted for some companies. People at consulting firms look for distinctive features in your resume, 3-4 should suffice. You should ensure that the person screening your resume looks at how efficient and productive you have been in your two years of institute life, how have you honed your leadership skills and personality.
Pre – Internship Phase & Preparation
In my second year, I had an opportunity to work as an associate intern at Ernst and Young under the Performance Improvement Advisory vertical. I got this opportunity very late, nearly at the end of my second year. And I had no clue about consulting at that time. I applied just to get some experience in the consulting sector which proved to be handy. It won’t matter if you don’t have a second-year intern, what will help you get shortlisted is how you spent those two months doing something which made a powerful impact on you and others in general.
Now comes the preparation part. The interviews are broadly categorized into technical and HR. For technical part, there are various sorts of things which can be asked depending on the company. Many companies apart from specific domain knowledge like finance test analytical skills as well through math puzzles and probability questions. Consulting companies test case solving skills. You can start by watching Victor Cheng videos on YouTube and then move on to solving cases from book named Case Interview Cracked. You can form groups of 2-3 and try to solve case problems. The basic motive of this exercise to be done in group is to look at the same case from different perspective so that you can finally arrive at a more holistic approach to the case. Practice Guesstimates thoroughly and you can utilize your free time solving one as it doesn’t require a partner unlike cases (You can create your own questions for guesstimates and work on your approach). The HR part can be prepared by making a doc with answers to some common questions like Tell me about yourself (sector wise), strengths, weakness, why a particular sector, why a particular company, Examples of where you showed a particular skill etc. ( More questions from the book ‘64 HR Questions’). Get the doc reviewed by seniors and take a look at this doc before going for the interview.
Interview Experience
I was shortlisted for almost all Consulting companies on Day 1 except L.E.K but didn’t get an offer from any company. I messed up my interviews especially the HR part and was demotivated. To all the students reading this, especially the ones who are going to sit for internships, remember what is needed the most at such depressing points in life is the ability to move on quickly (A friend told me this and believe me when you apply this to your life, you will reap awesome results). Don’t waste time crying over something you don’t have any control over and try to come out of your deep sorrow as a stronger and motivated person. Search for where you went wrong and how you can improve.
Cut to my interview at Nomura Research Institute. Keeping all my fears aside, I went into the interview room without any fear of rejection. I had only one round which was a combination of Technical and HR. Though my interview was an odd one out, it was a total delight. The interviewer didn’t ask me any case questions. But he pointed out at one of my projects on Data Analytics I did under a professor at SJMSoM and asked me to explain to him the entire project. He gave me a sheet of paper for making a general outline and left the room for 5 mins. I used those 5 mins and tried to note down all the points I could think of to present to him. After he returned, he asked me to begin and I used the blackboard to present. I made sure to make a story of my project covering every aspect of it. For my juniors, this is the thing I would like to point out. People in consulting love stories and it would be great for you if you can present them one. Be it your introduction or a very basic question like Why consulting, make sure you have an interesting story which answers this question. One more point which is useful to keep in mind is to have an exhaustive knowledge of everything you have on your resume. Never think your interviewer isn’t going to ask questions about something on your resume of which you have very limited knowledge.
Work Experience
During my one-month virtual stint at Nomura, I worked on a single live project. The project progressed in a very agile manner and most of my weekends were occupied with work due to the short duration of the internship, although we also had fun Fridays to release the week’s stress. My project leader, an IITB alumnus, was really helpful and devoted ample time to ensure that I was learning, growing and delivering results. Everyone at NRI was very approachable and you could discuss with them any problem you might be facing without any hesitation. The broad goal of the project was to analyze the root cause of the sales decline and improper brand perception of a client using data gathered from social media and the key tasks involved secondary research, insight gathering, hypothesis creation and validation and finally making a presentation. I developed the skill to approach a problem in a systematic and structured way and refined my interpersonal skills. The short-term goals for each member were important to keep everyone engaged and to have proper ownership of their respective deliverables. My team had to work hard constantly to deliver the final proposal by the end of the duration without any slack and to be honest I enjoyed being occupied with something all the time as I hate to sit idle.
Virtual internship certainly hampers interaction with people and might lead to a decrease in efficiency. Traditional internship at office surely would have been more enriching but I am grateful for whatever I had in these challenging times and made sure to make the most out of this opportunity. I am grateful to NRI to give us a wonderful experience despite the challenges.
I have tried my best to cover all the major points which are relevant to students who will be sitting for the internships. In case you feel like talking over this more or anything else, ping me, I’d be happy to help.
All the Best!!
Anik Biswas (Taiwan)(2019)
Ni Hao,
Last summer I found myself interning at the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, which comes under the umbrella of Academia Sinica, the national academy of Taiwan. My internship guide, Dr. Jer-Lai Kuo, was visiting IIT Bombay last February, so I mailed him conveying my motivation to work in his group, to which he promptly replied with the details about the international internship program of IAMS. Almost a month after my application, I received the offer to pursue my summer internship at the Molecular and Material Modelling Lab at IAMS.
Working Field and Experience:
It is very common to use tandem mass spectrometry for protein identification, however, due to a large number of isomers of a monosaccharide with a given chemical formula, it is very challenging to determine the structure of a carbohydrate using an analytical method. This project aiming at sequencing the carbohydrates analytically is currently at an early stage. The research group is presently working collaboratively with another experimental research group and for now, they are only focusing on monosaccharides. The idea is to sodiate the monosaccharides so that the oxygen atoms and the sodium cation get oriented according to their mutual interactions. Then the collision-induced dissociation mass spectrometry technique is used and after analysing the fragments produced, it is possible to distinguish the different monosaccharides and their anomers having the same molecular weight.
My work there was entirely computational and my job was to produce the database of distinct optimised conformers of several neutral and sodiated anomers. I generated thousands of random structures of those neutral and sodiated anomers and geometrically optimised those along the potential energy surface and then analysed the hydrogen bonding and sodium connection pattern of those group of conformers.
During the entire period of Internship, I was thoroughly guided by a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Po-Jen Hsu, and a PhD student, Huu Trong Phan. We used to have a group meeting with Professor Kuo every two weeks and the discussions with him used to immediately set the course of the next work and analysis.
All of the group members were very helpful and cooperative and I could run to any of them anytime with my doubts. I also had a chance to have an insightful conversation with Dr. Kuo about research as a career and about further graduate studies.
Other than work:
Taipei is the capital of Taiwan and one of the biggest hubs of East Asia. The weather in Taiwan is tropical; temperature lies between 25-35 degree C in summer with intermittent rains. The island is earthquake-prone and hit by multiple typhoons every year. I myself experienced a mild earthquake in the very first week of my internship! The public transportation is very cheap and convenient there and every part of the city is connected by regular bus services and 5 MRT lines. The bicycle pooling system is great and the government incentivises the riders for using this green mode of transport. Taipei has a disproportionate number of convenience stores than any other city and they say that there is no pocket in the city where there is no convenience store within 300-400 metres! As Taiwan is the centre of the world's semiconductor manufacturing industry, it boasts a large market of a wide range of inexpensive electronic goods and products. The people of the city are habitually very generous and affable.
The added benefit of any university internship is the chance to get to travel to many tourist-destinations on the weekends. As Taiwan is merely a 400 km long and 150 km wide island, it is very easy and convenient to plan 1 or 2-day trips. The terrain of Taiwan is predominantly mountainous and full of tropical vegetation. I travelled to two national parks there - Yongmingshan and Taroko. The tranquil and serenity of nature far from the hustle and bustle of city life was really transcendental for me after a busy week. In addition, the turquoise rivers and sea, the cerulean sky, the steep cliffs, the charming waterfalls, sandy and pebbly beaches and scenic mountain trails of Taiwan kept me enthralled for the entire period I dwelt in the island country.
I also took part in the Dragon Boat Festival, a traditional Chinese festival where I participated in a dragon boat racing competition. I rowed in a nearby river with the co-interns and the local students, which was a lot of fun.
Being a foodie and a hardcore non-vegetarian, I believe the most exciting part of my time in Taipei was the chance to savour numerous oriental dishes. Food is really really affordable in Taiwan and hence I never had the propensity to convert all the prices to INR like my friends interning at other countries and I literally fed anything and everything into my stomach.
Every working day, I used to have lunch with my Vietnamese labmates at one of the many restaurants around the campus. Like in most East Asian countries, Taiwanese people always prefer rice and noodles as their meal. Though I had a kitchen at my disposal in the dormitory where I stayed, I never bothered to cook dinner as I kept eating outside on most days!
If I do not mention the lively night markets, I would miss out illustrating the most significant part of my food adventures in Taiwan. The night markets mostly consist of local vendors lining up along a thoroughfare and offering a cornucopia of mouth-watering street foods. Upon numerous visits to several night markets, I managed to have a grand feast of seafood(octopus, squid and oysters). I always found myself in the midst of a delicious meaty treat and never deprived my taste buds of the eclectic palate of culinary delicacies Taiwan has to offer!
All in all, the overall experience I gathered through this internship far exceeded my expectations. I made some truly good friends, got to work with smart and talented researchers and learned a lot from them. I could not have asked for more.
Swarali Ghodkhande - Dr. Reddy's Labs(2019)
Hello there!
I am Swarali Ghodkhande, presently in my final year of graduation. During the summers of 2019, I was interning at Dr. Reddy’s Labs Ltd. in Hyderabad. My inclination towards Chemical Engineering helped me to narrow down my options during the third year internship season. After trying my hand at research in the second year University Intern, my main focus this time was to get the perspective of Industrial Research happening in Indian Chemical Industry.But the harsh reality is that there are only a handful of companies offering this type of opportunity, and Dr.Reddy’s Labs is one of them. I am wholly satisfied with my intern as it perfectly aligned with my motives.
About DRL:
Dr. Reddy’s Labs Ltd. is an Indian multinational pharmaceutical company based in Hyderabad. It is one of the major players in the Generic Drug market. The company had come for Internships on the 25th of August for both Chemical and Mechanical Engineering students. The selection procedure includes a Technical Test, followed by highly technical Group Discussion of shortlisted candidates. With the help of my experience from previous GDs, I was able to pass it. On the basis of the test result and GD, candidates were selected for Technical + Personal Interview. They only asked about my previous project and training and finally my motivation for this Intern. So, there were 5 interns selected from ChE and 4 from Mechanical Engineering. The company visits other top IITs for Chemical and Mechanical engineering and we were a group of 27 interns posted in different units in Hyderabad, Vizag, and Baddi.
Accommodation and Food:
DRL provides homely accommodation at their own guest house for the entire stay of 2 months.All the interns stayed in the same guest house, which made it more like a hostel environment. where we would chill out after the hectic working hours. The company also made all the arrangements for food and travel.
The Work:
The work profile of IIT interns was quite diverse. There were few of us posted in the RnD unit and remaining at different manufacturing divisions. My work profile was of a process Engineer working in the API division. The intern begins with a week-long induction program which gives a basic overview of the working of a generic pharma company and the market. I worked on the process improvisation of a particular drug. The objective was to identify the problems with the seed in the crystallization process of an API and to determine if in-situ seed generation was possible using wet-milling operation. I had to propose different approaches for in-situ seed generation and conduct
experiments to support them. In the end, I had to come up with a protocol for in-situ seed generation using wet-milling operation.I also contributed towards developing a modeling approach for a scale-up of a wet-mill. Others interns were given projects varying across the domains of Chemical Engineering. From implementing basic ChE to simulating unit operations. The work atmosphere at the RnD center was what you would expect from a Multinational Company. Even the higher authorities were easy to approach and friendly. During the internship, I had been allotted a buddy and mentor who would help me bring my ideas into reality and provide me necessary help. The working hours were not so flexible and sometimes I had to work on Saturdays to catch up with the deadline.
Hyderabad - The Pearl City:
Hyderabad may seem like a city mostly visited by tech employees and businessmen. However, the city was the center of medieval history and the place where diamonds were first mined. It's filled with stories of war, conquest and love that makes it a historical heritage. Apart from that, Hyderabadi Biryani is what comes to mind first. There are so many places to be explored for food and shopping. The city is an amalgam of both old architecture buildings and world-famous skyline. Ramoji Film City, Golconda Fort, Wonderla, Charminar are just a few of the many wonderful places one must visit.
Takeaways:
When you choose to work in a corporate world, life is never smooth. There will be things which will not go as you wish, but all you need to do is set your priorities straight and get through whatever comes your way. Looking back, I feel immensely satisfied with the learnings and everlasting frienships that I have gained during my stay at Dr. Reddy’s Labs.
Deepankar Varshney at University of British Columbia
(fourthie-2016-17)
Finally writing an internship blog which I had been reading since my first year. ☺
Pre-internship Phase:
So without wasting much time I will get to the point how I landed up in Canada for an internship.
I was very clear that I would go either for good chemical core companies or a university internship (I now realise if I would not have got this, I might have been sitting at my home :p . Don’t be that choosy for at least your internships until and unless you are very sure about your career choice in the long run)
I always had a dream of going to a foreign country for internship and hence I started applying in the universities /programs coming to our college through placement cell. I applied for at least 8-10 foreign universities program (all of them from PT Cell) and finally got this mail in November from my professor here in University of British Columbia stating that she liked my application but it totally depends on the MITACS (the program which is funding me) if they would select and pair us up.
Finally got the confirmation in February after a three months anxious phase between appreciation and confirmation.
Internship begins:
Day 0: Mumbai
Airport: This was my first visit to Mumbai’s International Airport. I guess my friends seemed more excited than me. The feeling of so many people coming to see you off cannot be put into words. ^_^
Day 1: Vancouver
It is obvious that the beauty of this city can leave anyone awestruck. So was I. Being a part of a program like MITACS ease up a lot of things for initial days as they allot a mentor to each and every student. My mentor came to pick me up at the airport and then we proceeded to my accommodation in the university campus housing. The roads, aura everything was perfect. The accommodation was great as per the expectations.
Day 2: Work Introduction/Department/University Tour
I met my professor in the morning and was very much impressed by the simplicity and respect professors have here for their students. I met my M.A.Sc. guide and he took me for a tour of the labs in the department. The department building is amazing in terms of infrastructure facilities, layout, security and safety plans. I was introduced to my project regarding working procedure, timings, schedule, safety courses etc.
Project and Work Culture:
I am working on the catalytic partial oxidation of pyrolysis oil to produce acetic acid from biomass. The work includes experimental and analysis by varying different parameters to find the best way to produce the product. Dealing with very expensive machines requires a bit of precaution. Working hours in the lab are generally quite chill and varies from project to project but the average is around 6-7 hours daily for almost all the interns.
City:
The city of Vancouver has something for everyone. Full of beaches, mountains, hiking trails which are extremely amazing, provincial parks, extreme sports, landmarks, nightlife and what not. We are a group of 8-10 students and weekends give us enough opportunities to explore all above. The city has a very good internal transport system having buses, skytrain (metro) and seabus. Travelling and moving around the city is very convenient.
Food:
The city has enough places to eat around having a varied number of cuisines like Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Indian etc. If you are non-vegetarian, you are going to love this place. Unexpectedly this place also has enough for vegetarians (I being an eggetarian :P ). You can find an ample number of Indian restaurants serving our great Indian food to the level of samosas and chaat. Even then we all friends prefer cooking dinner altogether at least on weekdays. The feeling of cooking together, sharing a common table and eating our own Ghar ka khana is amazing. Since Canada being another home of Punjabis, you can get literally get all you can think of in India as far as food is concerned.
People & Culture:
The people are very friendly. There is no wonder that recently Canada was ranked friendliest country in the world. But yeah since the west is supposed to be more individualistic than us, you will hardly find anyone interfering in your matters. It might take some time in adjusting if you are a bit introvert and needs company at the same time. Go out, talk to people, initiate conversations and make friends.
Expenses:
The best part of being a MITACS Intern is that you will never be short of funds, unlike other university interns. In fact, you will be able to save quite a few amount depending on the expenses you incur on food and travelling around. Cooking by yourself will save you a lot of bucks.
Conclusion:
I would like to give very much credit to my second year summer project which opened the door for this. (Try to apply for projects which have something in relation to the work you have done so as to show your credentials).
Looking back over the past two months, I cannot believe the pace with which this memorable time flew. Apart from learning experience in terms of work is concerned, which you will learn in any internship, if one thing which I believe a foreign intern teaches you is to become independent, improving your ability to adapt and adjust in a totally new environment. It prepares you to not only survive in alien conditions but also makes you adaptable enough to enjoy that. ☺
P.S. I did not know I can do wonders in cooking before this. :D
Abhay (TATA Steel)
Pre internship phase
At first, as most of the guys I was not sure about what should I choose but after few rounds of discussion with my seniors, I wanted to go for either university intern or some core intern and as it turns out, I am here, working in one of the biggest steel manufacturing companies in the world. The selection procedure was same as for most of the firms. We had an online exam prior to the interview, which was quite easy with little bit revision of some core courses. The interview was half an hour long with both HR and technical questions.
About Internship
With all the excitement and fun, the first day was really great here with a lot of freebies. But the real adventure starts on entering the plant, the plant is so large and has so many different sections that you can’t explore the entire plant even in two months, but try as much as you can, it’s amazing. Experiencing the work in a steel plant is great as you can actually see all the theoretical principles and operation that you have ever studied in action.
The work culture here is really open here, you can approach your head or chief of your department whenever you want, with any problem, and they are always helpful. Since everyone has a very busy schedule here, lined up with meetings and daily goals, you also have to move fast as surely you don’t want to be left behind.
My project is related to the final product manufacturing section, and the kind of freedom which I get with my project is amazing. I got the full authorities of making any type changes based on my analysis and doing experiments with production line which may affect the product quality or production rate, but that’s the kind of trust they put on us. New idea and innovation are always encouraged here.
About the Place
Well, this is one part which not as exciting as the rest of internship. Jamshedpur is a small city, you can find all the necessary things but it’s definitely not as luxurious as Bombay. There are few tourist places for you to visit. No malls, just few shopping complex and a couple of movie halls but for food lovers, it has few good restaurants.
Takeaway
If you even have a slight interest in core, you should definitely give it a shot. The internship will help you experience all the exciting aspects of core engineering and show you how thrilling it is to use your theoretical knowledge to tackle the daily problems that you face in a plant.
Chinmay at Mechanobiology Institute(MBI)
(fourthie-2016-17)
Hi all,
I am Chinmay from Chemical Engineering Department. I have completed my second year and currently doing my internship at Mechanobiology Institute(MBI), National University of Singapore.
It’s been a memorable six weeks for me, staying in this wonderful country-city Singapore, following strict traffic rules every day, getting a first-hand exposure to research and to roam around this beautiful city. I will be giving you a brief overview about how I got this intern, work profile, and will also try to answer all your queries.
Application process:
Well, I have to admit that it is quite difficult for a sophomore to crack a good university intern. Only 2-3 university opened for chemical students through PT cell, but that was around late January.. I had already made my mind to do hard-core apping. Even though, my CPI was not that good, I had done a project in my freshie year summers, so I moved on, taking that topic as my baseline for apping. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to send a 500 mails, like it usually happens while apping. having sent out around 35 mails, I got 3-4 positive responses. The problems that you might face are:
1. Most of the time (75%), you will not get replies from the professor and you may have a saturation point. So, patience is very important.
2. About 15% of the time, you will receive a reply from the professor. In my case, this was about 75% of the time. The professor can write you two types of mail.
A. ‘I am happy that you have shown interest in my research and I am glad that you want to also work in our lab. But, we have no vacancy this year. You can write to me next year.’
B. Straightaway a ‘No’.
3. About 10% of the time, you will get a positive reply. So, there are two scenarios here:
A. The professor will give you required funds to cover your travel and accommodation or can give you a monthly stipend. Even, if the stipend is less, you should surely go.
B. The professor doesn’t have any funds and so you have to cover your entire journey from travel, food to accommodation all by yourself. In this case, you can request the prof for partial funding. If you are able to gather the required funds and you think you can get the best research opportunity of your life, then you can think of going.
In my case, I received 3 positive replies from the Professor but had no funding. I had thought of funding myself as they were amongst the world’s best universities. Obviously, it proved to be too much funds to gather, and so had to ditch them. Luckily for me, I received a positive reply in mid-October from Mechanobiology Institute (MBI), National University of Singapore and were giving me a monthly stipend as well. My stipend was enough to cover my food and accommodation in Singapore. In Singapore, you need to have a TEP form which requires some documents to submit. My visa procedures were completed by early February.
My workplace!!!
The internship:
The labs here, where I got to work on various new inventories, are high-tech and provide a very good environment for research. My project was to study the regulatory pathways in Salmonella Typhimurium and role of silencing and anti-silencing of certain genes. I chose to do the experimental part, as it gives better vision and computational part becomes easy as well. Prior to this, I never had handled bio samples, so, it was a bit difficult for me initially. But, my guide was extremely helpful. She helped me practice simple lab methods like pipetting, test-tube labelling, sample labelling and so on. Once I was confident enough I started doing my experiments individually. Plus, she was from India so all the doubt-clearing stuff was very easy. Our lab had postgrads from India, Japan, Singapore and China. And, my PI was from US. All of them helped me clear my silly doubts. The lab had lots of interesting inventory which I was surprised to see at first. A black room and a -80 deg C fridge to name a few.
The scheduling of experiments decided our lab timings. But, I used to enjoy working in the lab, so I used to work from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Plus, we had usual lab meetings, where I got to know various new research that is being carried out. Safety was really important while working in a bio-chemical lab. Wearing a lab-coat, nitrile gloves, safety goggles was compulsory.
Internship experience at Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore
Moin Khan
Hi, I am Moin, a dual degree student in Chemical Engineering, now entering my fourth year. I would like to share my internship experience at Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore. The research which I did here has got very little to do with traditional Chemical Engineering, but biology as a subject has been amalgamating quickly with Chemical Engineering, and has opened up many new avenues for research. This is also evident by the fact that quite a lot of professors in our department work in bio related areas. This involves working with high end instruments and softwares, something which I believe created the initial enthusiasm of research within me, towards the end of my fourth semester.
I took a project under Prof Abhijit Majumder in my fourth semester, and continued it during the upcoming summers as well. To express the work in simple words, the lab studied the effects of external factors on the dynamics of a cell. Since cells in our body are subjected to various forces from surrounding tissues, experiments were done to mimic these conditions and observe the changes on varying the conditions. I liked what I did and later, and also received URA 01.
After entering the third year, I had made up my mind to do similar research in the upcoming summers. But the universities which opened up through PT cell did not suit my profile, as I had developed a flavour of mechanobiology and hardly any univ had a project to offer on this. I began to make a database of universities where I could find my work of interest, and Prof Majumder helped me a great deal in this. I finally got accepted into MBI, which in Prof Majumder’s list was among the favourites. In all, I had sent mails to around 10 professors across different universities, so the apping experience for me was quite light, unlike those who show a lot of perseverance in the whole process. This was mainly due to the fact that I was targeting very specific projects, which would be the next step for me after the experience gained in sophie year summer. Prior to sending my applications, I had worked extensively on preparing the cover letter, covering all details of my previous project.
At NUS, I am working on ‘Telomere Dynamics during Cell migration’ (Still 15 days left for my intern to be complete, as I write this!). Telomeres are parts of the chromosomes present in the nucleus of a cell, and in the long run, this project has implications in Cancer research. And the best part, I am quite sure of having my first Research Publication here :D. So you see, I have swayed quite too far from so called Chemical Engineering, but as far as it interests you, I don’t see any problem with it.
Research in this field calls for highly tremendous amount of investment, and I feel blessed to have used such state of the art facilities here. After experiments, you need to analyse the data using MATLAB and other high end image processing softwares, one of which requires at least 16 GB of RAM to run! So this project had a very good balance of experimental and computational work, something which I aimed for.
Miscellaneous
My lab group here is very helpful, especially my mentor, which is one of the prime reasons for me learning quite a lot of things here in the 2.5 month period. Speaking about NUS, it just took me a very short time to understand why is it ranked among the world’s top universities. Bring in any comparison parameter and NUS proves to be the best! People here have a drive for innovation, and couple this with excellent infrastructural facilities and other factors. There you have a great place to learn. Plus, getting Indian food here is never a problem and I had better food here than what my hostel mess serves :P
As this was my first trip abroad, I was mesmerised by the cleanliness, greenery and civic sense of the people in Singapore, with almost zero crime rate. We had a group of around 10 people, with a majority of them interning at NTU. We covered almost the whole of Singapore, which exhibits a beautiful combination of natural and man-made marvels. Though I didn’t get to explore the neighbouring countries much, apart from a 2 day visit to a nearby island in Indonesia.
I was not provided accommodation in the halls of NUS, so I managed it on my own. I shared my flat with a few other Chinese people, which also had a kitchen, so also got introduced to a bit of cooking over here. I received sufficient stipend to cover my expenses of food, travel and accommodation. Singapore being quite an expensive city, I had to manage the funds properly, but overall I didn’t had any trouble financially.
As of now, I wish to pursue a PhD later on, and this internship has given me a very good insight about how it is like. I strongly believe that the work I did here will greatly help me in applying for PhD anywhere in the world. Living for 2.5 months among the Singaporeans here has taught me to be more humble, respectful and be helpful to everyone , something which I will cherish forever. It has made me more responsible and independent as an individual, and I certainly have had a great time of my life here, from the perspectives of both work and fun
Rohan Kumar Purdue University
Introduction
Summers 2016 found me interning at Purdue University in the United States. What began with resume and CV reviews, apping fundae and spamming Professors worldwide ended up as the best 9 weeks of my life.
2. Getting there
It started with apping. I was amongst the lucky ones, I only had to send around 40 emails before getting an affirmative reply. After some email correspondence with a graduate student, under whom I am interning, I got one of the most exciting emails ever. It’s easy to remember the dates as the first reply I got was on Diwali and the confirmation email with stipend information came the day after Christmas. Come second semester I was corresponding with the graduate student regarding the paperwork for Visa. Around this time an internship from Purdue University opened up via the PT Cell. This was a formal program called as PURE - Purdue Undergraduate Research Experience. However, this had only opened for Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering departments. When I told my professor about the program, the JAF opened up once again, this time exclusively for Chemical Engineering students, and I ended up being included in the program. This expedited my paperwork by leaps and bounds however my stipend ended up being reduced. The good thing was that now I was going with 10 other people from IIT Bombay, including my roommate!
3. The Project
The research group I joined specialises in Computational Biology, and the project I worked on was in personalised medicine. The problem was to estimate the dosage regimen of Vincristine, a paediatric chemotherapeutic drug, so as to minimise its side effects. The major side effects we were concerned with was Neuropathy. Purdue has a tie up with a hospital in Indianapolis which gave us patient data - the metabolite concentration in various patients with varying levels of Neuropathy, and based on that we were supposed to select the metabolites which were useful, a process known as feature selection in machine learning. I had been advised to take up a course on machine learning in my fourth semester however I had ended up dropping it because of too much course load. Hence after the first week was spent understanding the problem (and presenting on it, to my horror but more on that later) I spent reading up on machine learning. When I was finished I was given a test dataset, and I played with it implementing various machine learning algorithms. In the end, I wrote a program that can be applied to any dataset. The second part of my internship was more interesting, in the sense that we were doing original research. I got to see in live action how theorists work. We developed a pharmacokinetic model on Vincristine then analysed it to develop a dosage regimen. I should point out that all of the work I did was theoretical and involved coding in R, Python, Mathematica and MATLAB at various points of time. Courses I did in the second year like Numerical Analysis and Data Analysis were a huge help and so was Biology (BB 101). It was beautiful seeing the theory woking in real life, though admittedly from another theoretical point of view itself.
4. The Work Life
Arriving there I was pleasantly surprised when I came to know that I was to be allotted an office along with the other graduate students. This has been a point highlighted repeatedly in many of the internship diaries but the hours were pretty flexible and relaxed and as long as you were getting work done. I did miss many Mondays, left early to catch a bus to the airport on Fridays and ended up ‘working’ from home for one week when I mentioned I was reading up on Machine Learning, but as long as the work was getting done nobody minded. The research group I was part of consisted of 5 PhD candidates, a sophomore and myself. We did meet up every Friday in which one of the group members had to present his research work. That was what happened to me on my very first Friday and I was scared shitless!
5. Life in US
In my opinion the most important thing life in the US teaches is to be independent. There’s an initial shock period when you have to cook for yourself, clean up after yourself, go grocery shopping etc. This does shake up the routine one gets accustomed to in the hostels (and yep it’s pretty comfy when all you need to do is go to class) . This actually is a nice experience and helps one mature exponentially. Everyone has heard of the American dream and yes, it’s pretty much true. The pay is high and so are the standards of living. Initially when every price is still being converted in INR we tend to get stingy but in due course of time one does automatically adjust.
6. Travel
From the amazing Manhattan skyline to Niagara Falls to a boat ride in Chicago downtown to fireworks on the 4th of July there’s a lot to see in the US. There’s great intercity connectivity but the flight might be a bit expensive considering it’s the summers and people travel a lot. We did end up covering Chicago, Indianapolis, Boston, New York, Raleigh and Washington DC. West Lafayette does not have a commercial airport, which does pose a bit of a problem, as to take a flight out one has to either go to Chicago or Indianapolis, both a bus ride away. West Lafayette in itself is a small university town and there is not a lot to see there, and adding the fact that it was summer vacations the city seemed a bit boring, however one is mostly busy with the internship on the weekdays so it’s not much of a problem.
7. Takeaways
It does see, paradoxical but before this internship I was pretty dead set on going non-core. However this internship did give me a new and unique perspective and I did enjoy the work so much so as to seriously consider higher studies in Chemical Engineering. I would definitely recommend a research intern not only to test out one’s interests in the field but also for the amazing exposure it gives.
Go Boilers!!
Kushagra at SABIC
Pre-internship phase
Enthu: In chemical engineering, I am more inclined towards modelling and simulation part. Hope it continues. :P
Fundae:
Make a good resume, don’t exaggerate it.
Be good at your speaking skills, do hand movements if necessary.
Be confident at what you are delivering.
Don’t expect too much.
Selection process:
My interview was telephonic. In general these kind of interviews are chill because you don’t have to talk to them face to face. So I was interviewed mostly on the projects that I had done. In a telephonic interview also be confident about what you are telling and be loud and clear.
Internship
SABIC stands for Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation. Mostly deals with the plastic products that have day to day uses. For more info just google it. :D
First day was great. As you enter the office the infrastructure will make you flat. You will be given a separate desk with your name written on it (that feels though :P) Then you will be assigned to your mentor and team members. Work culture is great. Don’t hesitate in asking doubts as it is a part of your learning process and by this you will also get to know the people working there. My so called group there had ten members so we all went for lunch and tiffin together. In this way, you also get to know more about the corporate culture you are working in.
My project was modelling related to FCC Process and then implementing in ASPEN. It involved literature part, then developing the equations and thus finally incorporating it into Aspen.
Others
Accommodation, travel and food, city
For accommodation, you have to search for it on your own. Believe me, no place is better than Koramangala. It’s basically, because it is a home to many exotic food outlets and pubs. It feels like every day you wanna try a new one :D. Bengaluru is a great city. Weather is fantastic as always. Sometimes rain may cause you some trouble but hey who does not like rain. It is highly recommended to travel nearby hill stations every weekend :D. I guess exploring the city by yourself will give you more fun rather than just listening from others. Lunch and travel cost were being taken care of by the company. The company is situated a little bit outside the city but they provide the bus transport for that so I guess transportation will not be much of an issue.
TAKEAWAY:
As it was my first internship I got a pretty much idea about how the corporate culture works, how accountability plays a role and yes got a little bit sense of how to dress nicely :P and ya miss all the fun that I had during my weekend trips.
Sanket Michigan University
Don’t step on the “M” else you will flunk a course is a myth here at the University of Michigan. "Go Blue" is their greeting phrase. You can see countless posters with the scores against their arch-rival, the Ohio State University, depicting their pride and madness for college sports. I am halfway through my intern along with 3 other students from IIT Bombay. University of Michigan was the first university to offer interns through Placement Cell in this year’s internship season
Selection Procedure
Prof. Fogler, an esteemed personality in the field of Reaction Engineering under whose guidance we work has been offering internships to students of Chemical Engineering for the past 5-6 years. The selection procedure is quite straightforward. He prefers the top DRs of the batch. So if you are among the top 2 students amongst the ones who have applied, statistics reveal that your selection is inevitable. The selection of a third student is not sure, though. The IAF opens by last week of July and final selections can be expected by midsem. The bottom line of the selection procedure is that your DR/CPI alone in your resume would serve the purpose.
The visa procedure though could take you long. The to-do list for a US Visa is exhausting and time-consuming. Most of the students visiting the US get their Visa Appointment during the endsems. So, sooner the better.
Work here
Needless to mention that the research facilities here are stupendous. The labs are pretty lavish and hi-tech. The solicitude for safety in labs is noteworthy. One is required to pass two courses on lab safety prior to entering any lab. Though the university is established in many aspects, the internship programme for undergraduates is not very organised. The key facet in such universities is you get to interact with your research group and become conscious of their approach to their assignments and work. One thing I personally perceived is getting work done is important irrespective of your work time. It is immaterial whether you work for 4 hours or 12 hours a day as long as you complete your work. This stance of students here is reflected in their overall progress.
Internship with Prof. Fogler, in a nutshell, comprises of two types of work. One associated with Prof. Fogler and the other with the PhD students in his research group. My chunk of work this year with Prof. Fogler involves revamping modules with real life applications of Reaction Engineering and making a small video for one of the models as compared to the proofreading of Prof. Fogler's book as done by the previous interns. His work can vary in terms of difficulty and effort right from reviewing simple concepts in CRE to literature search for a methodology of an experiment. The work with Prof. Fogler might not be organised and could be on different lines throughout your intern.
The second part of the internship is the research work on a specific project. Your job on this project is mostly lab work but the PhD guides can allot computational or modelling jobs as per your interests if any. It is indeed a great learning lesson in the labs where you appreciate their precision and sophistication. You are out of your 8 hour work day closet on certain days and may clock 12 hours in lab almost standing all day long. My research work involves modelling the effect of flow rate on asphaltenes deposition rate considering shear ablation in MATLAB. In the second half of the internship, I would be conducting experiments for the same. PhD guides here are very helpful and you get to learn a lot from them.
Food
The takeaway message from the first experience of self-cooking is appreciating the fact that cooking a meal two times a day is not a petty thing. I wonder how our moms manage this! With four vegetarians in our apartment, the best option was resorting to cooking at home. The food scenario is decent for vegetarians and this place is a real feast for non-vegetarians, which was not surprising. There are about six Indian restaurants in the campus. You have easy access to Indian grocery as well. We also tried Mexican dishes here and one cannot miss out on the Chicago Deep-dish pizza. It’s just awesome!
Touring
Touring on weekends are the perks of any foreign internship. The location of the university is away from prime cities as it goes with most big universities. Big cities and tourist attractions nearby are Chicago, New York City, Detroit, Cleveland and the Niagara Falls. Your city count might be less than that if you would have been in Europe but every downtown is unique in its own way as is the peculiarity of this country with 50 states. You can also catch up on a baseball or soccer game in nearby cities or have a shot at skydiving, camping, trekking, river kayaking or hiking nearby.
Student Life
"How are you doing today?" is the way everyone greets you, may it be in your office or the retail store you visit. Though the city is free from the hustle and bustle, the campus is pretty lively. The university is not only rich and varied in research but also in sports and extracurricular activities. The sports scenario is well established here and fitness is an integral part of their life. Students from many countries study here and interacting with multi-ethnic groups influences your approach in many ways. You witness globalisation in the real sense. You would be surprised to know that we play cricket almost daily with the Indian diaspora in the university. People, in general, are very helpful and rational in every sense. Nightlife scenes in the campus are awesome and there are many pubs and clubs lined up in the prime area of campus. Concerts are arranged frequently in the campus or in the universities nearby. We were lucky to have made it to Ellie Goulding's concert in one of the universities nearby.
Finally, as I conclude my blog, I would like to highlight the positives of a foreign internship. Apart from the academic work, you get acquainted with the rules, culture and lifestyle of a different country. The overall experience is enriching in terms of academics, personality and most importantly your approach to a particular situation in life. A foreign internship is a must for PhD enthusiasts as it offers an idea of what is lined up for the next five years and that was what this internship did for me. You would have no regrets if you make the most of this opportunity.
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