TAMU Summer Internship Experience

Something about myself:

I am Nama Bhargav, a senior at IIT Tirupati. I am currently pursuing my bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. Having had a wonderful experience pursuing my internship at Texas A&M University (TAMU), I would like to share my experience with you all.

Shortlisting for the Internship:

One of the essential experiences recommended during your time as an undergraduate is doing an internship. Gaining work experience is critical for boosting your employability, especially as an engineering student.

Texas A&M University, College Station (TAMU) is one of the universities with an MOU with IIT Tirupati. Most of the students from our university might not have an idea about the MOU concept. Still, I would suggest contacting the professor related to these affairs to understand this better since it would be beneficial at times.

Having wanted to pursue higher studies in the foreseeable future, I wanted to have an internship experience on a more research-oriented side. I had initially approached a professor from our university, who gave me a chance to meet the professor from TAMU with whom I discussed my interests and plans for the future. The next step was to share my resume with the professor, who, in return, decides whether an applicant is the right person willing to put their heart and soul into the project assigned to them in the circumstance of being awarded the internship.

My Topic and Experience:

Having my internship pursued in the virtual mode had its difficulties and benefits. The problem statement was detecting and tracking minute particles in a particular manufacturing process. This assigned project covered many topics, from basic calculations to computer vision and machine learning.

The benefit of working in the virtual mode is the timings in which you can work, which turned out to be flexible. Having the experimental part of my project already performed by the PhD students forehand, my part of the usage and implementation of these results began. My role made me rethink the output pipeline multiple times, which is an essential requirement of an engineer since nothing can be achieved in a single try.

A few things along the way made me think about multiple aspects and whether I was going on the right path. These are common for any student since suddenly shifting from what you have learnt to real-world application stages gives you considerable doubts, making it harder for your mind to process. However, it is also a good thing as that moment will become the first time you face the reality of the world.

Alongside pursuing the pipeline, there were setbacks along the way, the first being the complexity of the problem statement. Multiple people had tried to implement the statement, but the issue that popped up was the procedure flow contradicting their previous work alongside the pipeline. This was a significant issue for me since the contrast and resolution of the image were not the best, and the changing shape, as observed by the naked eye, given its limitations, made it even harder. These problems were solved step-by-step with the help of my mentor, who knew the complexity of the problem and the resources at hand. The professor always had a positive attitude, which is essential to subdue the stress one could have felt during the entire process.

The entire internship depended heavily on Data Science, which in layman's terms could be referred to as feature extraction from a data set and then refining it for practical purposes. Being new to the topic, the first few days mainly involved researching methods for optimum feature extraction. The second step involved using Deep Learning models to train our data set, which would help solve the problem in an automated way.

Ultimately, the main goal was to develop industrial uses of the methods that would help reduce material wastage and produce good quality builds, which are highlighted necessities in the present industrial world.

My comments and suggestions:

The overall experience was one of the best I had ever had since it had its ups and downs, which is how life is; facing reality is the only way you can cope with setbacks. This internship also helped me understand aspects I never thought would be used in my career path and made me realise their importance. One of the best things in this entire journey was the opportunity to interact with many people whose thoughts pointed towards the same goal.

The suggestions I would be giving could be taken in a positive or a negative sense, but I believe that sharing them would benefit both the reader and myself. The essential suggestion is for you to have an in-depth understanding of your basics before you jump into the higher aspects of any particular topic. The second one is interacting with others, which can benefit you in multiple ways that you might find quite remarkable.

The final one would be for you to choose your internship according to your plans rather than listening to someone else flex about how well their internship went. Also, it would be helpful if you took up projects beforehand corresponding to similar topics to give you a boost for your future.