PROMOTING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BETWEEN INDIA AND THE U.S.

Daniel Howard 2016 Summer Blog

Traveling to India after my college graduation from the University of Wisconsin-Madison was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and has decidedly impacted my future career path and life choices ever since. My name is Daniel Howard and in summer 2015 I was a S.N. Bose Scholar supported by Winstep Forward and the IUSSTF (Indo-US Science and Technology Forum). I traveled to India as a research scholar at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research – Centre for Applicable Mathematics (TIFR-CAM) under Prof. Praveen Chandrashekar studying computational fluid dynamics and numerical solver methods including Discontinuous Galerkin methods.

Most of my days were spent in northern Bangalore, specifically the bustling district of Yelahanka Satellite Town. The work was intense but satisfying, getting the opportunity to network and learn from so many international researchers. Twice during my summer, international workshops on fluid dynamics were hosted at TIFR. One of those meetings even allowed me a future collaboration on volcanic ash modeling with a Japanese scientist from Okayama University. Academically, TIFR helped me forge an early path in my international research career, which I have continued in my PhD studies at the University of Notre Dame where, surprise, I now study monsoon dynamics of the South Asian Indian Monsoon. But beyond my academic work, I’m very much appreciative that I now have friends from India with whom now our lives are intertwined. I will never forget the trekking trips we made or the nights exploring Bangalore trying food I had never seen before.

Thanks to the S.N. Bose Program, I have a newfound appreciation for our global community. This pushed me to host a Fulbright Scholar from Chennai last year at Notre Dame, and though I’m sad he’s now returned home, I’m glad that my past India experience was able to bring us together. I hope that I will continue in both my professional and personal lives to pursue work and opportunities that bring our global communities even closer together. For it is together that we can solve our greatest challenges.
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