My Experience at IIT-B during SRFP 2019 — Part 1
Applying for the internship
Before Summer of ’19
It was during the October of 2018 that I came to know about the Indian Academy of Science’s Summer Research Fellowship Programme (SRFP)which offers a fellowship to the selected students while they work under a professor or a guide from many prestigious institutes in India. It’s a programme which connects the students interested in research in the fields of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Life Sciences (along with Engineering). I wanted to try out my hand at research because it was something new for me. At that time, I was in the second year (3rd Semester) of my Undergraduate programme in Mathematics and Computing from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra and had not done any internships till then.
Applying to the Programme
The process to apply for the internship was like any typical internship programmes where you fill your details on a portal and upload your required documents and submit. You just log on to the portal and fill in your details. Along with that you’ll have to prepare three documents — your statement of purpose (around 250 words), a letter of recommendation from your Head of Department (HOD), and your transcripts stating your marks in the past semester examinations.
When you start filling your application it will ask you for your preferred department of work (Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Life Sciences, and Engineering incl. computer science). After that you will have to specify your field of interest. On the portal you shall mention along with your basic details, any courses or training/projects you’ve done before, curricular activities and the write-up (or statement of purpose)
“A write-up (not exceeding 150–250 words) as to the specific area of interest of the applicant and what he/she would like to learn and achieve through this fellowship. It can also include the specific experiment or theory that the applicant wants to work on but NOT a general description of the area.”
In my case, I selected Mathematics as my department and Statistics and Probability, and Financial Mathematics as my preferred topic of interest. I had already worked for a brief period under a professor in the Computer Science Department of my college in first year which I included in the training/project section along with the other courses I had taken on Machine Learning and related topics. For the statement of purpose, I included the topics I was familiar with in machine learning and mentioned the field I want to work in. Pro Tip: Just keep it real honest without any exaggeration.
Now when you have finished filling all the information required, you will receive an email form jointsrf@ias.ac.in as an Acknowledgement letter, where they will provide you with your application ID along with three links
- First one will direct you to a page where you have to fill up the name of you HOD who will send your letter of recommendation to the academy
- Second link will direct you to another portal where you will have to upload your mark sheets.
- The third link will let you print your application when you log-in with your application ID and your registered email ID.
This is pretty much it, now you just need to remind your HOD to check his email and write you a letter of recommendation and send it to the academy. This completes the application process, now you can pretty much forget about it (like I did 😬) and focus on something productive you wish to do the coming winter.
Announcement of Result
The first list of selections was released by the academy on February 25, 2019 on their website. One of my friend messaged me regarding the result and then I checked in the list that I was selected and was paired with Prof. K.S. Mallikarjuna Rao of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR) Department atIndian Institute of Technology, Bombay. The list keeps on getting updated till April so you don’t get disheartened if your name didn’t appear for the first time. The way your application is accessed is still a mystery to the students and only the academy knows how they select and match up the students with their guides.
The Academy will send you a mail regrading your selection along with necessary details about the stipend and your stay at the institute you’ll be joining and a post with the selection letter, joining report and form of acceptance. You shall follow the instructions given in the email and fill the form of acceptance and also send it back to the address on the envelope through speed post. NOTE: These documents sent to you by the academy are really important and you must keep them safely with you when you go to your respective institute, they might be needed anytime.
We had to work for 56 days (including Sundays and Holidays) to be eligible for the fellowship. I fixed my dates from 9th May 2019 to 4th July 2019 and just kept in touch with my guide for anything regarding the internship. He was really cooperative in helping me getting a place to stay for the initial 10 days because IIT-B provided me the accommodation from 20th of May. I reached Mumbai on 8th May to start my work from 9th May.
This ends Part 1 of the blog — The Application. Any suggestions and queries are appreciated.
To continue reading about the things that happened after reaching the place and during the internship, follow the link given below:
Thanks for reading!
