Doing my B.E. at BITS-Pilani, Goa gave me this wonderful opportunity of doing an intern at Indira Gandhi Centre of Atomic Research, Kalpakkam – one of the top research institutes in the country. Now that its over, and I got some free time, I ll pen down some of my observations.
1. The first thing to notice at the place was that it has practically infinite funding. It as THE most amazing library and a 1 Gbps LAN connection.. Awraa..
2. For a ‘top’ research institution, real high end work goes on only a few of the departments. At other places, people are typical govt office lazy. Lethargy stinks through many of the departments. Its not that people there are not intelligent, but when straitjacketed and asked to complete the given work, and only the given work, even the brightest minds will be disillusioned. Then life tends to reduce to a dreary routine, with days after days of pushing through.
3. The department I worked in – Radiochemistry Lab (RCL) was one such dreary place. Still with some amount of push, we were able to get work done. Literally, we did a bit of pushing – there was no one, but us, to shift the comp from one room to another!
4. At still other places a huge amount of research is on, places like the Research Physics Laboratory, or the Reactor Safety Division will surely be interesting for people in that field.
5. Despite being in a not-so-gud dept, I did get an amazing project. I got to learn lots. Apart from working on the actual 8051 related hardware, the LabVIEW part was also very interesting. LabVIEW is a totally different idea. A graphical programming language, not a single line of code, it’s the most amazing thing I have worked with.
6. In my last week, I went to see my contact at the Safety Division. Got to see the weather prediction model software he has developed. It acquires data from the World Met Council (or something like it) and uses it to predict the radioactive fallout that would happen if there was some leak from the center. It was awesome. You could predict weather with a resolution of 2*2 km.. Talk about cool…
7. Also saw the Instrumentation Dept there. They work with a higher end software similar to LabVIEW – DasyLab. Wonder how it would have been to work in that department…
8. Now for the title: it was my standard breakfast at IGCAR. There was variety, but this was the stuff that I found to suit my palate. Seriously, the only negative aspect of life there was food. Didn’t exactly like it. Still, eventually, by the end of PS-1 found out a couple of good (more like, not bad), places. But walking 40 min way to reach a restaurant isn’t exactly the most sought for luck now, is it?
1. The first thing to notice at the place was that it has practically infinite funding. It as THE most amazing library and a 1 Gbps LAN connection.. Awraa..
2. For a ‘top’ research institution, real high end work goes on only a few of the departments. At other places, people are typical govt office lazy. Lethargy stinks through many of the departments. Its not that people there are not intelligent, but when straitjacketed and asked to complete the given work, and only the given work, even the brightest minds will be disillusioned. Then life tends to reduce to a dreary routine, with days after days of pushing through.
3. The department I worked in – Radiochemistry Lab (RCL) was one such dreary place. Still with some amount of push, we were able to get work done. Literally, we did a bit of pushing – there was no one, but us, to shift the comp from one room to another!
4. At still other places a huge amount of research is on, places like the Research Physics Laboratory, or the Reactor Safety Division will surely be interesting for people in that field.
5. Despite being in a not-so-gud dept, I did get an amazing project. I got to learn lots. Apart from working on the actual 8051 related hardware, the LabVIEW part was also very interesting. LabVIEW is a totally different idea. A graphical programming language, not a single line of code, it’s the most amazing thing I have worked with.
6. In my last week, I went to see my contact at the Safety Division. Got to see the weather prediction model software he has developed. It acquires data from the World Met Council (or something like it) and uses it to predict the radioactive fallout that would happen if there was some leak from the center. It was awesome. You could predict weather with a resolution of 2*2 km.. Talk about cool…
7. Also saw the Instrumentation Dept there. They work with a higher end software similar to LabVIEW – DasyLab. Wonder how it would have been to work in that department…
8. Now for the title: it was my standard breakfast at IGCAR. There was variety, but this was the stuff that I found to suit my palate. Seriously, the only negative aspect of life there was food. Didn’t exactly like it. Still, eventually, by the end of PS-1 found out a couple of good (more like, not bad), places. But walking 40 min way to reach a restaurant isn’t exactly the most sought for luck now, is it?
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