Anish Ram Senathi

2019, RnD Engineer, Robotics and AI, Daikin Industries Ltd.

He graduated last year and was interested in robotics and ML during his stay in IIT B. Some opportunities in the department present in these fields: (Some prior coding knowledge, interest in data analytics and ML during the first year but later went on to gain interest in the field of computational solid mechanics).

• Interest in robotics from the driverless car team of UMIC. Also took several courses under the CSE dept and pursued an RnD project under a CS prof.
• Got an internship in Daikin, Japan where he got exposure in the field of RnD. The RnD environment in companies is quite similar to tech teams in the insti, you can propose your own projects, suggest new ideas and work on them with less budget constraints and more chilled out work culture. Received a PPO from Daikin and accepted it as it was of his interest.
• You can increase your interest in robotics by joining tech teams, research projects, different competitions, extra courses, etc.
• As insti is flexible with academics, there are many robotics and machine learning courses in different departments(especially ME) check them on asc (some examples: Advanced ML, reinforcement learning, DSA, control of non-linear dynamic systems, probability theory, mechatronics, robotics and several other courses).
• Minor degree in CSE, EE and Syscon departments helps a lot. Five year DD conversion could be quite a good option in the ME dept to explore research.
• Tech teams like UMIC, AUV, MARS Rover, etc provide an immense exposure in this field.
• Several companies and fests host innovation competitions, hackathons, etc.
• Many ME professors offer research projects (Prof. Abhishek Gupta, Prof. Sangwan are some of them). CS dept offers an RnD project as an Institute Elective which might help a lot.
• Industrial automation, robotics , Ml based startups, Computer vision are some internship opportunities that you get.(Japanese companies are recently coming to IITB a lot).
• Data Science based profiles also might help, as they also imply ML techniques, and have somewhat similar orientation as robotics(particularly the AI and intelligence side).

Kanishka Panda

2018, RnD Engineer, Thermal and Fluids Engineer, Daikin Industries Ltd.

• His work revolves around research in heat exchangers.
• He was quite sure that he wanted to go in the technical direction from the 1st and the 2nd year but didn’t have any idea what he wanted to work on.
• Took courses in thermal and fluids and started to gain interest and went on to take a project under Prof. Sridhar.
• At the end of the 2nd year he joined IITB Racing, which shaped his path and led him to where he is. He was interested in thermal and fluids and luckily he got to design the thermal systems of the motors as well as the lithium ion battery pack. * Took Racing team because he was interested in the idea of electric vehicles which interested more than other tech teams.
• He got an internship in Daikin and later on went on to accept the PPO because this is what gave him the most interest. Thermal connections, experience from various projects and technical teams helped a lot in this.
• Wanted to end up in research but wanted some industry experience so he joined a company and later on might move to academia for research.

Dewashish Kumar Dey

2017 (DD CIM), Product Manager, TransUnion

• Product Management is an intersection between business and tech, it’s not really a non core job.
• He went with the flow and explored everything in the insti, tech fascinated him the most and so he joined tech council. He worked in a few hobby projects on robotics and electronics. He never dug too deep in research fields or any other particular technology.
• He did core and research internships everything related to tech but was still confused b/w core and non core company. The first company which you join mostly guides your career ahead.
• He explored many things, but during the placement season, he gave preference to core rather than non-core and finally got placed in Airbus, completely a core company for mechanical engineering. One of the best a student can get in mechanical engineering. It was a data science and research job. He was placed in a team called methods and tools which did analysis on aviation data using different tools and techniques.
• After that he was involved in a project which was coding related where he learnt what enterprise coding meant.
• He gave the interview for TransUnion, a credit bureau company. TransUnion is mainly a data company, 2nd largest data repository after Aadhar.

Vinayak Agarwal

2018 (DD CADA), PhD, MIT, (Acoustics, Noise Control, Psycho-acoustics, Signal Processing, Vibroacoustics)

• Most of the details can be found in the slides.
• After his 2nd year, he tried for research interns so that he could find if he was really interested in both science and music. He did a lot of apping and read a lot of papers of different professors. It’s a tedious process but he somehow got lucky and that was when he came to know what real research was.
• In 3rd year he did another research internship(signal processing and ML) which bought his real interest in research. As he was in the 5 year DD programme, he went on to do research in the insti under Prof.Sripriya Ramamoorthy. He used to design and run simulations for the design of a novel material that controls acoustic and thermal noise. Worked through his 3rd and 4th year and then did his dual degree project with her. This played an instrumental part in helping him finalize that if he should do a PhD.
• There are some questions which you should ask yourself.
  1. Does money drive your passion? If yes, then research might not get what you want. Just do a masters and take a job in industry that would earn you money.
  2. Are you passionate about knowing stuff in general?
  3. Do you like reasoning out or making decisions in a systematic manner?
  4. Do you crave detailed or in-depth information about things. If all are yes other than the 1st question then you should give a try to research.

The session recording can be found here

Session Summary by: Hitansh Chandra