My Research Experience at IIM-A
After my research internship at IIM Ahmedabad, I got many queries from friends and acquaintances inquiring about my experience, how I landed the internship, the learnings I had . Since I have recently started writing , I thought to summarise them in this article. Although it’s been a while for this internship but summarising it here in case it help others. If I would have these information before , I would have been better prepared.
During my 2nd year of under-graduation , I was looking for some experience in the field of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics to learn more about the field.
I started by making a Statement of Purpose (SOP) .Now for your SOP to look great , look online for SOP examples ,structure it properly . I myself looked at many of my friends’ SOP before starting mine. My key learning and advice here would be to make your SOP in multiple sittings , get opinions from different people and give it maximum time and thought process. Second , Letter of Recommendation (LOR ) . I requested for LOR from professors at my college and started applying for research experience under professors at various universities.
To start with, look at the faculty section of the university you are interested in. Under the faculties ,determine the professors whose research interests align with yours. Look online at the work being done by various professors (use google scholar to look at their work) and mail them about your interest in their work. Don’t get disheartened if you don’t receive a reply, most university professors are busy . Just keep applying at maximum places to increase your chances.
There are few things, I would recommend:
1. While emailing professors at various universities, make sure it doesn’t look like you have sent the same SOP to hundred others. Customize your SOP for every place you apply for.
2. For instance ,instead of starting the address by Hi sir/ma’am, start by Hi Prof Anil ( start the address by their name so that it looks it was made for them).
3. Your research interests should align with the work you are applying for. Be concise about what interests you the most ,in their work. Make sure you have read their papers online . Mention the name of their papers in your SOP.
4. Find what the institute is trying to aim for, through their research papers and let them know how you can contribute to it.
Finally , I got a call for one of the initiatives by BIRAC( Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council)- BIIS-SRISTI which was led by Prof Anil Gupta( Faculty IIM Ahmedabad).
Now coming to the fun part, B schools are very different from universities ,mostly because of the students studying here . The students at B schools are much more experienced in different spheres and just by hanging out with them, watching them , you end up learning a lot. The internship program I got selected for ,had students from all over India, who were PhDs , Postdocs or at-least masters while here I had completed just one year of my undergrad. Was I terrified? Definitely . But high risk situations have even bigger wins. The amount of things I got to learn from them were humongous. Just interacting with them everyday gave a lot of perspective on how to write research papers , how to get one published, which are the best journals to get one published. Once you land the internship, don’t just sit and do your internship rather interact with as many people as you can.
Everyone has their own learnings and experiences and there’s no better way to grow than just meeting new people and getting to know their experiences.
My research here was around “Revival of Cellulose Degradation Enzymes and Determining the Optimum Conditions for Production of Biofuel”.We had an internship period for 2 months. The research can obviously not be completed in a short span of 2 months so we were asked to do whatever we can in this duration and then present our work and future work at the end of 2 months . We were told that the projects which will be selected will be awarded a grant of INR 100000.
In my project , I applied various probabilistic methods as Bayesian inferences , clustering methods to determine the optimum conditions and enzymes for production of biofuel. Most of the project work was done after the 2 months period but I tried to present it in my project presentation to give an idea about the scope of our project to the audience. Amongst all the students, 5 of us ended getting the grant to proceed furthur in our project. This was surely a very happy moment for all of us since we worked really hard for the past 2 months.
Apart from the IIM Ahmedabad experience, I also got to work at National Innovation Foundation- Gandhinagar which was also led by Prof Anil Gupta. The project team here was working on the “ Toxic gas leaking problem faced by the villagers of Kharaghoda Desert “ , Rann of Kachh while digging wells for salt . The team was building an alarm that could warn the farmers in case of any toxic gas generation. We saw the extreme weather conditions in June- July at Rann of Kutch, met the locals here , got to know how difficult their day to day life is. To get the basic healthcare facilities farmers end up moving kilometres in desert’s scorching heat. The Rann of Kutch experience was surely a memorable one.
Coming back to learnings :
1. Squeeze out the maximum from an opportunity, every professor is working on number of areas. For instance apart from my paper , I tried to find what other projects are being carried out . Atleast you will get to know about one other problem statement .
2. At the end of it , do not forget to get a Letter of Recommendation (LOR) , recommendations add highly to your profile and also act as a proof that you actually worked under them.
I ended up learning a-lot , having a great start in my resume and making lots of friends from different spheres during my stay here.
Finally , networking is the key and research experiences end up giving you the gist of everything ,you are going to get in your masters or PHDs. So before enrolling in your masters or PHD programs , getting a research experience can surely help in making the right decision. All the best :)
