Intern experiences- Sagar Kumar Seth

Intern Experiences Summer 2018

Centre for Biomedical Engineering, IIT Delhi

Sagar Kumar Seth

Process of securing the intern:

IAF on Placement Cell described it as Opto-electronics, sounded interesting to me.

What was I working on?

We were a group of 3 including 1 Elec Sophie and 1 Elec thirdie and me. Our work was to develop a hand-held device for a new method of rapid detection of Typhoid. It involved sensing of very small concentrations (25 microliters) of sample prepared from 5 CFU/ml of cells for presence of Typhoid. The novice method was a PhD project of Avinash Ma'am. We worked in collaborationwith her to develop and test the device.

Workload:

Workload was average, although it was made compulsary for us to work full day on Saturday too. We used software's including SolidWorks to design different models and 3D print them, Eagle CAD to design PCB's, MIT App Inventor to develop the APP and Arduino IDE.

Courses that helped me:

My knowledge of optics came in handy while dealing with optical systems and changed perspective of using principle of transmissivity to scattering for checking the sample for presence of Typhoid and hence changing placement components.
Also basic Electronics course and Lab helped me in contributing to designing of PCB's.

Places I went to: 

We went to Chandani Chowk to buy Intern stuff, and roamed around for a while. We also visited Akshardham Temple nearing the end of Internship. It was a fun filled experience. We were trying to use our knowledge of optics to decipher the awesome Light show.

What did you expect from the internship before starting? Did your expectation change? If yes, how?

Reading the 1 line description on Placement Cell portal, I was preparing for reading a number of papers and doing experimental optics on my University Intern and basically learning physics. It turned out to be a device development(something you would expect in a company Internship) type of Internship. Initially it looked like it could be done in a week. But after 3 weeks we soon realized that any mistake could extend the project indefinitely and suddenly we found ourselves short of time. There were a number of steps taken in the right direction after consulting people from backgrounds in Physics and Biomedical, that helped us in being able to develop a low-cost working prototype. Yes my expectation changed from learning physics to learning that the process of development of a device.

Contact Details:

sagarkmr4007@gmail.com / 8291474889