The Competence Street
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Volume 1, Issue 1 The Competence Street In this Issue Editors Design Credit Editorial Shankar Manoharan Animesh Kumar Singh From the ARC Kshema Prakash Preshit Ameta Alumnus in Focus Associate Editors The Shutterbug Student in Focus Manisha Kaler Research in Focus Mayank Maheshwari News & Highlights Shah Nisarg Anish Editorial - The Road to Competence It has been a little over a year since the current Alumni Relations Committee (ARC) was constituted. Developing Competence is the mandate of the We have been mostly working behind the scenes with Institute. One of the visible outcomes of developing one goal: to ensure that you all remain connected with competence is the good performance of a graduate IIT Jodhpur. To ensure this, we have been actively during her/his career. Competence is developed in compiling and recording basic contact information of three directions, namely Attitude, Skill and Knowledge each Alumnus. (ASK). Attitude is a way of thinking or feeling about This year, we had the unexpected pleasure of something or someone. Skill is an ability and capacity hosting Mr. Ayush Raina, currently a Graduate Student acquired through deliberate, systematic and sustained in the Integrated Design Innovation Group at Carnegie effort to smoothly and adaptively carried out activities Mellon University. On a short notice, Ayush offered using ideas (cognitive skills), things (technical skills), valuable guidance on navigating career choices to our and/or people (interpersonal skills). And, Knowledge is current Students in an “Ask an Alumnus” session the human capability resulting from interpreted organized by the Student Volunteers of the ARC. information. A successful career needs all three of these three milestones to be actively engaged along on the road to competence. Applying a correct combination of these three characteristics, while performing the simplest or the most complicated tasks, demonstrates the competence of the person. The Institute is dedicated to set you on your path of Competence development. To remind you time and again, and to refocus our minds back to the road to Competence, IIT Jodhpur presents The Competence Street... a newsletter that stands as a regular reminder, each time you receive a copy of it from your Alma Mater, to find your way back the Road to Competence, just in case you got distracted… We also had a surprise visit by Tanmay Sethi, Kshema Prakash, Editor Yogesh Kumar Gupta, Vishwas Garg, Utkarsh Trivedi, From the Alumni Relations Committee Vasu Goenka and Sunita Pateer, all of them from the 2014 batch. It was fantastic to discuss their current Greetings from IIT Jodhpur! As the Chairman, career trajectories. The interest they expressed in Alumni Relations Committee, it is a pleasure to reach mentoring and offering career support to our current out to each one of you. Your Alma Mater has moved to Students was heartening. We exchanged our views on it’s award-winning and truly stunning permanent the potential activities that could be planned in campus in Karwar. I extend all of you a very warm collaboration and more importantly, the setting up of an welcome to visit the Institute and rekindle the nostalgia. IIT Jodhpur Alumni Association. We are now actively We had the pleasure of hosting a few of you in the past working with Alumni representatives, who are couple of months. I only request anyone, who is spearheading the effort to setup an association and planning to visit Jodhpur to send an email to actively engage with the Institute. [email protected] before your visit, so that we can plan for your visit to the campus and organize interactions with I do hope that this year will see many more such current Students. visits and trips down the memory lane. I’m sure that we 1 Volume 1, Issue 1 Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence for Software Engineering. The idea is to use Machine Learning techniques to solve challenges in the domain of Software Engineering. We started with a case study on a large-scale services product within Microsoft and observed challenges that are bottlenecks at different stages right from coding stage to build, deployment, alerting, root-causing, etc. My work is mostly focused on the first stage where I try to come up with techniques to optimize test resources utilization and at the same time, maintaining the code quality. Prior to this, I have worked in the Bing-Ads team where my work was focused on improving the existing ad-click prediction techniques by taking into account the decorations/annotations added to the advertisement. I also worked on a research project to model the user behavior by using ‘time to first at the ARC will give you plenty of reasons to reconnect click’, dwell time data. with the Institute and with each other in the coming MM: What drives you to do what you do? days. I look forward to meeting you all soon. I wish each one of you only the very best in Life. SM: The fact that I like the work I do and my passion towards my work are the fuel that drive me every day to Shankar Manoharan, Editor work. Not everything is easy and perfect, there are Alumnus in Focus challenges at every step but if you change the perspective, those challenges become opportunities, This issue’s Alumnus in Focus is Sonu Mehta, and that drives me forward. I still feel like a student, Research Software Development Engineer (Machine learning new things every day at work and from Learning) at Microsoft, India. Sonu graduated at the top colleagues. The urge to learn new things drives me of her class from the Department of CSE at IITJ in forward. 2015. Our Associate Editor Mayank Maheshwari had a chat with Sonu to find out about her current work and MM: How has your experience at IITJ influenced the the journey to her current position. trajectory of your early career and life as such? SM: I had a memorable four years at IIT Jodhpur. It was a great learning experience which has helped me in both my professional and personal life. I miss those memorable four years spent at GPRA hostel where I met some very good friends who made the journey even more beautiful. I started my life as a student in Department of CSE at IITJ, admitted in the year 2011. With time, I explored different aspects of Computer Science and Engineering, with which my love and passion for the subject grew stronger. The curriculum prepared me really well to work with some of the greatest brains in the world while I was pursuing my Master's at Harvard University. When I was at IITJ, I did not realize that I was being groomed and moulded everyday but looking backwards, I am able to connect the dots! MM: What are the three things you would tell IITJ's current students who aspire to reach where you are today? SM: I feel like I still have a long way to go but I would like to share 3P’s formula that has helped a lot in every stage of my life. Be Passionate about what you Not everything is easy and perfect, there are are doing. Persevere for what you aspire. Be Patient. challenges at every step but if you change the Some good things take time but it is worth the wait! perspective, those challenges become Student in Focus opportunities, and that drives me forward : Life always keeps on surprising me. The previous Sonu Mehta, B. Tech., (CSE 2015) year was no exception. Who would have thought that a simple student like me would land an internship at one MM: Tell us a little bit about your research of the best labs in Spain? Yes, I had spent 2 months of at Microsoft. my summers interning at BISITE - a multi-disciplinary research lab at the 800 years old University of SM: Currently, I am working as a Research Software Salamanca. The fact that the problem I was working on Development Engineer at Microsoft Research. For the was related to the military felt so cool! past 6 months, I have been working on a project – 2 Volume 1, Issue 1 particular interest in designing of next-generation specialty optical fibers and study of light dynamics through such structures. Lately, the optical communication has revolutionized the mode of information exchange and optical fiber plays the key role. To meet the ever-increasing demand of signal bandwidth and their long distance propagation is only possible due to the simple and interesting light guides. One of my research students is involved in designing the new class of optical fiber to deliver high optical power over long distance for possible medical and defense applications. Whereas one of my group members is exploiting device application of “singular points” of light in optical waveguides for integrated photonic applications. We are also exploring a new optical device called “random laser” in our group which is brighter than “conventional lasers”. They can even be used in projectors and image transport systems. Also, For a student, I believe the most important help we have keen interest in ultra-sensitive fiber optic is to provide a platform to achieve what he / she sensors. wants : Vishesh Mistry, 4th Year B.Tech. (CSE) My mentor, Dr. Juan Corchado, was at that time M: What do you think is your main motivation to working on identifying terror suspects from Twitter who pursue your research questions? were related to radical groups such as ISIS, GD, etc. SG: The driving force of our team effort in The title Deep transfer learning for the detection of photonics research at IITJ is the specific and next- radical groups' iconography in real-world Images with generation applications.