Hey everyone, I am Ishan, a fourth-year student in the Electrical Engineering department, pursuing a double minor in the CMinDS and the CS department. I love listening to music, and I also make music occasionally. My interests lie in Artificial Intelligence and its applications in medicine, in particular. This summer, I interned at ETH Zürich.
Although I have had multiple interests over my three years at IITB,
one of them has consistently been Artificial Intelligence. Like most
people interested in AI, I also developed an interest in it because
I was told again and again that the future is AI. To this end, I
took up the (then newly offered) data science minor and picked up
most courses from the AI “basket”. Besides, I also took up a minor
in CS since I soon realised that I would need to have a decent
knowledge of a lot of core CSE concepts to bolster my grasp on AI
itself. I attempted to take as many courses within the field as
possible to gain a broader perspective of everything that the field
offers. Last year, I interned (online :/) at Indiana University
Bloomington, where my work was primarily focused on artificial
intelligence and its connections to neuroscience.
Honestly, I didn’t have much to prepare during the internship season. I drafted a resume and made sure that I was thorough with the contents of the resumé and the projects I worked on. This time around, I was quite curious to explore an internship in biomedical engineering or health sciences, and thus, this was the field I was primarily on the lookout for. I ended up applying only for one internship, which, spoiler alert, I ended up securing. However, outside the PT cell, I looked at a few other professors.
The selection process was relatively straightforward. I got shortlisted (along with 6-7 other candidates) based on my resumé soon after I had applied. This was followed by an interview, which was conducted by a group of three PhD students at ETH whom I would be working under during the course of my internship. The interview started with them describing the project, and asking me if I had any questions about the same. We had a brief discussion about the project, following which, they went over my resumé and asked me a couple of questions about the projects that I had done and whether I was familiar with programming in Python and C++. Quite interestingly, I had mentioned some stuff about my music in my resumé which caught their attention, and we ended up spending some time discussing that as well. Overall, the interview was pretty informal and relaxed, and they really just wanted to get to know me. I honestly thought I did pretty well in the interview and the fact that my profile fit the bill aided in my selection. In the end, I was super happy that I got selected, since ETH Zürich is one of the best universities in the world, and I managed to get an internship that catered to my diverse interests.
At ETH, I worked primarily on the application of micro-multiphysics
finite-element agent-based models in simulating the differential
effects of romosozumab on diabetic bone. Simply put, I was trying to
simiulate the course of treatments for diabetic bone in
post-menopausal women, and check whether these simulations replicate
the trends observed in clinical trials. The point is that if
successful, we could use these models to simulate and test out new
drugs rather than having to conduct long and expensive clinical
trials for the same. The work mainly involved running a set of
simulations, checking up on the results the next day, and tweaking
some parameters for the next set of simulations. This was the first
time I got to work in an actual university lab, which was a steep
learning curve since they had their own framework with tons and tons
of code and it takes some time to get used to it and find your place
within the framework. The work environmen was super healthy, with
traditional work hours being only Monday to Friday 9:00 to 4:00, and
anything outside that being absolutely optional. I also had some
paid holidays, and was being compensated very generously by the
university.
Zurich as a city was beautiful, as is expected from one of the best cities in the world. The cost of living is high, but again, I was paid enough to have an enjoyable time there. The public transport there is super convenient to use and is one of the most punctual in the world. The city has tons of immigrants, so the people are really diverse, and welcoming. There was no language barrier, as most people could communicate in English. The only challenge the city posed was that everyone had their lunch and dinner very early, which is somewhat different from how things happen in India, but I got used to it soon enough. My colleagues at the lab were all friendly and welcoming and are always happy to help. I met people from all across Europe, and had a great time. The one cultural difference I noticed is that Europeans are usually quite reserved and take a while to open up! However, they are all still very nice and will help you whenever you ask for it!
All in all, the internship was a rewarding experience for me, as I learnt a lot working there, and more importantly, living there. A piece of advice for those planning to take up research internships in the future: Don’t expect a lot of progress by the end of your internship. 2-3 months may seem like a long time, but it is quite short when it comes to research. A lot of research takes almost a year to get tangible results. So your main aim shouldn’t really be to get a publication or prove something amazing. The main objective should be to learn how to do research in a lab or a company (whichever is the case), and how to contribute to the team.
That’s about it. I hope that this blog helps everyone reading it. Feel free to contact me if you have any doubts. Phone: 99304 99619