An Indian view of Computer Science
Date Added: 3rd September 2010
The Department of Computer Science recently hosted two interns from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT): Ambuj Singh, from IIT Kanpur and Shivank Agarwal from IIT Roorkee.
Both interns worked closely with academics in the Department – Ambuj with Dr Detlef Plump, a member of the Programming Languages and Systems research group, and Shivank with Dr Adrian Bors, a member of the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition research group.
The IITs are a group of 15 autonomous engineering and technology-oriented HEIs in India, which are highly regarded nationally and internationally, with very competitive entrance requirements. The interns spent time at York towards the end of their undergraduate programmes. As they came to the end of their time at York, we asked them about their experience in the Department.
Ambuj: “Working in a research group with other graduate students gave me a chance to actually see how research in Computer Science is done. It has been a new experience for me to work on a paper that might be published, on the graph programming language, GP (which makes it is easier for programmers to solve graph problems). What I liked the best was the informal environment – here in York you can sit with staff over lunch and a beer, and discuss football, which is a really nice experience! I was a little wary there would be some cultural differences, but everyone in Halifax and the Department were really friendly, and it was easy for me to make friends. It’s been a lot of fun!”
Shivank: “My academic supervisor helped me in everything and the computers I used were very good. Social interaction with the staff here is very strong – not at all like in India! Everyone is really friendly and I was welcomed very warmly. I’ve really enjoyed the last two months, and it has been a very good opportunity and experience for me. The research I helped with would have taken much longer in India. I was working on 3D reconstruction – the software constructs a 3D image from pictures taken from various angles and distances. I was finding the limitations of the software - this work has lead to a paper that will be published, and it was very exciting to be working so close to the state-of-the-art.”
The internship partnership with Computer Science at York and the IITs has now been running for two years, and has been very successful. When Ambuj and Shivank return to India, they will act as ambassadors for York, and tell other students about their experience.