PROMOTING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BETWEEN INDIA AND THE U.S.
Ann Arbor is one of the United States’ most educated towns. It is a university town, which means a lot of greenery , as opposed to being a densely populated concrete jungle like some of the major cities in America. It does have plenty of attractions and events happening during the summer.The town is well connected by a very good bus service; it is possible to get anywhere in Ann Arbor reasonably free of cost (as a student/research scholar). The University of Michigan is most famous for it’s automative engineering department, being so close to Detroit, where GM and Ford have their main headquarters. It also has the US’s oldest collegiate Aeronautics program : started in 1914. I interned at the Department of Aerospace Engineering,at the Computational Aerosciences(CAS) Laboratory working on deep learning techniques for aerodynamic predictions.
I really enjoyed, aside from the challenges of research itself, the environment in which I was able to work: The place has an air of excellence, and everyone around me was very good at what they did, further encouraging me to do good work as well. My advisor and PhD mentor both were extremely helpful, and by giving the right inputs at the right time enabled me to do conduct good paced research producing good results. Despite starting my internship late (due to the 221(g) visa sanction) and interning for only 7 weeks, I was able to achieve most of my internship targets due to them. The research process was, in a nutshell, a lot of fun, frustrating at times(as usually is) and overall a great learning experience.
I got to experience a lot of cultures, as there were students of many nationalities in my lab; Indian, French, Chinese, American, Middle Eastern, to name some.I got to learn a lot from this, but something I will take back with me for life is the American work ethic. I really liked how much passion Americans do their jobs with, not just research scientists but people across all kinds of jobs, even the cleaning staff. It is my belief that this is one of the main reasons the US is far ahead of many countries, particularly in things like public services. Overall, this experience has been a life changing one, and I am thankful to WINStepForward for giving me this opportunity.