MITACS GLOBALINK: How to Apply Instructions

MITACS and Canadian Government sponsors an internship for Indian undergraduate students from prestigious universities under MITACS Globalink Program.

There are two categories:
1. Professor identified project

The professor gives a problem already and if your area of interest matches with that you can apply for it. The chances of publishing is more in this case (from my experience)

2. Student Identified project

The student based on his research experience should identify a problem and express his interest to work on it. The chances of publishing is quite low in this case because sometimes if the problem identified is not strong the student might get lost in research and end up with nothing. Only myself and one or two more guys from this category submitted papers in this category.

PROCEDURE

The procedure goes as follows:
1.Track the MITACS website for announcements about application dates. (Last time application submission closed on Dec 4)
2.You will have to submit resume, work plan,recommendations and transcripts with a list of preferred professors whom you would like to work with in Canada.
3.Then wait for intimation from MITACS team about your selection. (last time it came on Jan 20 I believe)

KEY POINTS

• Your selection is independent of the professor list you give. So thoughts like if your preferred professor is busy you might not get selected are not necessary. MITACS eyes only on talent. If they don’t get your preferred rofessor they will automatically find you a professor.
• You will be needing two recommendation letters. Try to get as much solid reco as possible.
• As far as student identified project is considered, Work plan is vital. It gives them an idea of how clear you are about working on your problem there in a Canadian University. Hence kindly give special care for Work plan document.
• Professor identified projects deadline will be seperate from student identified project deadline. Make note of it..!
• Regarding choosing professors use these inputs:

1. Find profs relEvant to your field of interest

2. Try to find from their website/blog about their knowledge of MITACS GLOBALINK program and give priority to profs who know about the program

• There is no need to mail profs and inform them that you are trying for internship through MITACS under him.

PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS IN CASE OF ANY QUERIES. WILL GET BACK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

Other useful links on internships:

MITACS website
My post on Internships
My post on Microsoft Internship

Internships for a CEGian: First look

As soon as one steps into his pre final year every student tries to strengthen his profile. Internships have always been one great savior for students in many ways. First they primarily help a student to test the waters in scientific research. Second it helps them to showcase their talent in proper directed way.

But it all depends on what you choose. An internship after third year is way different from something you might have done at the end in second year. Because third year summer hols provides solid time to prepare for placements and other challenging exams such as CAT,GRE,GMAT. Hence those who suffer terribly from megalomania in college days can take the step ahead.

Caution:
Internships drain both time and energy. They will mostly be occupying or else you are wasting someone’s resources or time. So plan before hand whether your career plan requires an internship or not.

Types:
One should definitely opt for an internship that would help him shape his profile according to his career plan. For that he has to try getting the right kind of internship.

1. Research intern
2. Corporate intern
3. Programming intern

Research Internships:
As the name states these are for people who want to test the waters in research. Some famous organisations that provide these internships abroad include
DAAD – Germany
MITACS GLOBALINK- Canada

DAAD is quite a difficult one to get because of severe competition from IITians. There are lot of intricacies involved. Like IIT professors have tie ups with universities in Germany and hence they directly accept IITians there. Plus all arrangements including stay and other organising has to be carried out by student himself. I am not sure about the sponsorship from DAAD.

Contacts: Vijay Venkatraman, Final Year, Mechanical

MITACS is quite open for Anna University. Last year three students including me applied for MITACS GLOBALINK program and got selected.MITACS is a fully sponsored program and regarded as the most organised internship program by IITians. It gives great exposure to research abroad and sets you the right platform. In turn turned to be the most valuable experience in my Undergraduate study.

Contacts:
Vidhoon Viswanathan  (myself), Final year, IT
Swathi Meenakshi, Final year,EEE
Nagarajan, Final year, Manufacturing

My post on MITACS intern apping is here

Other means to get an internship abroad is to find profs who take intern students and apply manually. This is a very tiresome process indeed. Going through various professor profiles and finding the right one.. then mailing them without spams .. is quite challenging according to me and my seniors.

Contacts:
Naveen Somasundaram,2010 passout,IT

Ramakrishnan Durairajan, 2010 passout, IT

!!MOST IMPORTANT!!

People going for internships abroad should focus on trying to outwit the co-IITians in order to establish the name of CEG. Apart from all enjoyment fruitful results should be produced to achieve that goal.

Within India, there are abundant options and is not as much elusive as the above category.

• IITM,
• IITB,
• IISC,
• IITD,
• IAS,Bangalore are some of the institutions that organise research internship programs with professor guidance and stipend.

Contacts:
Sanjeev Chandran, 2010 passout,CS
Jagdish, Final year,CS

Corporate Interships:
For people eyeing to get placed in great organisations and start their professional carreer head on, corporate internships are the best means to make contacts and prove what they are capable of. In case of corporate internship one should be keen in establishing a good conduct and relationship with the organisation so as to help convert it into a full time opportunity. Since Anna university has no internship term in their schedule all corporates that offer 6 month internships (includes big shots like amazon) are eliminated. Hence it is in turn very challenging to get an internship under branded organisation.

In our college Microsoft hires interns from third years and that seems to be the only option from the institutional side. All other opportunities depend on contacts with seniors and companies and stuff.. For more info on Microsoft intern see these:

My post of Microsoft Intern
Naveen’s blog

Contacts: Naveen,Final year IT

Programming intern
This category of internship is meant to be done in second year summer hols. It is available in our college as well as under RTBI in IITM. It won’t involve research and may or may not have stipends. The goal might be something a little beyond a semester project that is unlikely to be dumped in dustbin after completion.

Contacts: Kannan Venkat, Final year, IT

So be wise in choosing internships and try to reason out the need to do one.
Best Wishes!!

Research Intern at University of Victoria,Canada : Writeup

Over 600 million passenger cars travel on the streets and roads around the world today.The average time spent by a person driving or riding is 2 hours and 52 minutes per day.The rate of growth of the passenger car population is projected between 3–6 percent in the coming years. All these statistics intensified the need for the development of Vehicular Networks, a means of communication and information sharing between the vehicles on the move.

When calculated, the significance of the data that can be gathered while a person is on the move is quite astonishing. And the effect of sharing this amount of data among the other vehicles around is mind blowing! The tides created by these effects push us towards the shore of inter-vehicular communications.

The very thought of sharing information on the move opens the door to a large pool of applications based on safety and business needs. You want to escape a traffic jam? You want to enjoy high-speed Internet on the move? You want to find a parking space just like that? If these questions erupt butterflies within your stomach then I have something to feed those butterflies. Those days are not far away! Let us examine different kinds of applications that arise from the roots of Vehicular Networks first.

One fine day, I am going on a highway and all of the sudden a car on opposite lane looses control and overturns. It would be helpful if I could call an ambulance while I concentrate on driving. It would be even better if I could tell the other vehicles to slow down in order to avoid a pile-up crash. This particular case gives rise to emergency message dissemination
applications.

Another fine day, I am going by car to airport in order to catch a flight for Toronto. But due to the heavy traffic it seems that I would likely miss my scheduled flight. It would be great if I was able to reschedule my trip by connecting to the Internet on the move. It would be very helpful if I get to know the density of the traffic along each possible route to my destination, so that we can choose the best path. This scenario leads to the category of smart traveler services and traffic information services.

Now having a clear idea of the scope and the diverse range of applications that branch out of Vehicular Networks, let us move onto some other important aspects of this promising field of sciences and engineering. Vehiclular Netowrks are rapidly dynamic in nature.

Hence we bring them under the ad-hoc class and label them as “Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks”—VANETS.

With the safety and comfort comes a cost! Yes, VANETS would require great expenditures if implemented as an independent infrastructure. But the existing Internet infrastructure can be very well used to overlay the infrastructure needed for VANETS. Scientists and engineers have continuously toiled to reduce the infrastructure requirements so as to minimize the time and cost required to realize the technology. This has been one of the prime research focuses of Dr. Jianping Pan and his vehicular networks group at the Protocols for Advanced networking Lab (PANLAB), University of Victoria (UVIC), and the research community has made significant contributions in the past few years towards the VANET technology. I have been a part of the vehicular networks group during my MITACS GLOBALINK’10 internship at UVIC and created simulations of real world scenarios to analyze the protocols developed at the laboratory. It would help in better understanding the performance of the protocol and modeling it more accurately, suited to the real world scenarios. Simualtions help protocol designers and researchers by providing different situations due to the variations in traffic load and condition and several other factors while the protocol is being simulated and evaluated.

During my technical presentation session

In an attempt to use the existing infrastructure, we preferred connecting several VANETS at different places to propogate information using wired access points infrastructure. My project involves the analysis of the availability of an access point for vehicles to upload their information. It includes the estimation of parameters such as wireless transmission probability and communication collision probability. This study would result in the complete analysis of positioning and distribution of access points across a region. This would be vital in determining the infrastructure cost and ease the cost-benefit analysis.

MITACS has played a vital role in my research by bringing me to the right place for doing the research in my field of interest with experienced researchers and professors of the field. Added to that they have exposed us to valuable experiences during the industrial engagement week and also created the awareness on the various oppurtunities that are open in this land of enormous oppurtunities. Above all, the nature, beauty, weather and stunning scenery that Canada has offered to us deserve special mention.

With Sue and Megan 🙂

Crazy in Canada: Bungee Big thing!!!

Recently I got an opportunity to do Bungee jumping at Whistler, Canada. I would like to share my experience about this adventure sport.

Two days before the scheduled trip to Whistler the bungee talk caught fire. All those who had balls decided to do it. I happened to see some of the videos in the WhislterBungee site.  That created the temptation to do it. The scenery was awesome. I could n’t imagine how it would feel to fall from 160 feet! A strange thing to imagine though… But one of my friends who was hesitant to do the jump decided to divert us and started pouring all X-facts about the jump like people get cardiac arrest, people suffer brain haemorrhage after the jump and stuff.

Then I decided to study about the jump and got the following facts :

A bungee jump can be separated on three different stages: Free fall, Body deceleration, and Upward movement.

First Stage – Free fall . During this stage, all jump stress hormones, like beta-endorphin, growth hormone, prolactin, testosterone,and adrenalin , are supposed to be released.

Second Stage – Body deceleration. A sudden body deceleration occurs because the elastic property of the cord ( Hook’s law- F=KX) . The intensity of deceleration depends on the kind of cord used and the altitude of the jump.

Third Stage- Upward movement. It is characterized by an upward movement in a head-down position. It is responsible for a further increasing in intrathoracic and head blood vessels pressures.

All the facts and videos I saw increased my temptation to do the jump and so I decided not to regret my decision and enjoy it instead. All is well :p

The next morning we reached Whistler and took gondola ride to snow peaks, played with snow, toured the Whistler village and stuff. Finally the tour operator took us to the bungee site.

Before doing the jump they handed out a declaration form which I had to sign before doing the jump. It seemed like a printed suicide letter !! But I was confident (or crazy!) to sign it. After that they prepared me for the jump. They bound my body with two belts .. one for the chest and one for the waist .. Finally attached the jump chord (which was quite huge in thickness) to the clamp and asked me to get ready for the jump. I was the first one to go among my friends and they were holding the cameras ready to capture the action.

The jump operator carefully asked me to step to the jump spot and look down. My heart was beating through my eyes.. Hands became cold.. Head became heavy… But mind was still clear with the decision to jump.. I felt some small insects flying around inside my stomach and sweat dripping in my forehead.

I don’t know how but my lips automatically uttered “I ‘m ready for the jump!” .. The operator counted 3..2..1.. and swiffffff………………..

After the first two seconds, I was falling down like a bird whose wings had betrayed it….  Skin was tearing against the acceleration and my brain dint even have time to react with fear!!!

I rapidly reached to the bottom of 160feet depth jump and stretched the string to full length.. Then I rebounced up and down twice during which I spent all my energy shouting and screaming!

After the cycles were complete the operator pulled my rope up and helped my heart gain back its  beats!!

No more words to descirbe the experience here is a video!

Cheers

Vidh

Crazy in Canada: Getting to Canada!

I feel its good to keep posting my experiences right from the beginning since it might be quite informative!

I took flight from Chennai to Vancouver via Hong Kong.

I had a great experience at Hong Kong International airport which I would like to share with everyone:

Interesting thing #1:

Hong Kong Airport near the port

The Hong kong International airport was awesome! I had a great time there… It was very organised,advanced and quite… The most amaing thing was its location… It is situated close to the port that we can see the waters from the waiting lounge… It was incredible scenary which killed most of my waiting time…

Interesting thing #2:

Internet access center @ Cafeteria

This pic reveals a Cafeteria which provides free Internet access service to its customers. The funny thing was a customer can use Internet for 30 mins after every service in the Cafeteria. Example, He has to get a coffee every 30 mins to extend his internet service.

Interesting thing #3:

TV serice @ Restaurant

The restaurants inside the airport had a TV attached to every cabin for the customers.. I have never seen such a thing in my life!! Every table has a TV and customers can switch and watch channels they want during their service time in the restaurant!

Interesting thing #4:

The UNiversal MOney machine!

This machine can accept any card that renders service from VISA/MASTERCARD and produce four different currencies: 1.USD 2.HKD 3.CHY 4.JAP

Beware: It might take lot of service charges :p But still it was something new to me!

Interesting thing #5:

Airport complete Free Wifi access and charging stations

The airport had high speed Wifi access .. I spoke with mom ‘n dad thro Skype.. The experience was awesome… And they have charging stations between every pair of boarding gates which is quite amazing.. It becomes very handy when you have a universal adapter in hand!! 🙂

Interesting thing #6:

Seperate chamber for smokers!

The airport had sophisticated facilities for smokers which was quite surprising! The smoking chambers in fact had additional facilities like cushion seats and was maintained clean.

After my journey to Vancouver I happened get a chance to travel by a ferry from there to Victoria. It was a wonderful experience.. I had managed to take some photos from the ferry which might do some talking:

The view from Ferry !!!

This pic shows the view from ferry.. It was about to evening there and the chill waves of air kicked goosebumps all through my body!!!

Outside the chambers of Ferry

The ferry has 6 levels in which 3 were dedicated for vehicles and 1 for dock and 2 for passengers.

It has restaurants, game stations ,tvs and every other stuff you need to kill time! 🙂

On top they had verandas were people just peep out and enjoy with music, smoke and stuff.. IT was way too cold for me and so I could nt spend a long time outside the chambers of ferry..

These were some of the cool experiences that I had during my travel to University of Victoria.. Hope you all enjoy!

Cheers,

Vidh