Intern Experience Summer - 2019  

Riya

Australina National University

Process of Securing the Intern:

It was through an University organized fully sponsored program called Future Research Talents Award (FRT). ANU has collaboration with IIT Bombay. Around end of August, dean-ir sent a mail to student notices about the program. I asked my project supervisor to send Letter of Recommendation to him. Dean-IR selected 10 students for nomination. Then we need to fill the form at ANU website with usual cv, statement of purpose, recomendee details etc. There was no interview. At beginning of December that I am selected.

Work:

I was working in SABRE dark matter detector collaboration. My project was on scintilator characterisation. The aim was to test if any material in the detector-system is not affecting the liquid scintillator. This was done by keeping the scintillator in contact with the material samples and taking weekly measurement of light yield properties. One more thing which I tried to do was trying to measure the decay time for scintillation event. This time was to be used in simulation of detector.

Workload and Tools used:

My first week was mainly on reading stuff and getting idea 9f dark matter detector and my project topic. After that I was engaged in preparation of experiment (which includes washing containers and drying them with Nitrogen). Later work includes taking repetitive measurements of scintillator sample with Cs137 source (gamma-ray source). So, at some times, I felt like being used as a manual labour. (Though it was my choice as in start of intern my supervisor has asked me to choose between 2 projects - other one was simulation of detector). Along with this I was trying to fix a data-analysis code (using chisquare method) written in python (Jupyter - notebook) and searching internet for some standard library when I was unable to do so.

Learning Experience:

Repeative tidious measurements and repeated failures to work my code taught me to be very patient to be in experimental field. Also for experimental work, your knowledge need to be broad. Apart from physics, from knowledge of chemistry to first year workshop to electronics to software, it needs all.

Places Visited:

My group was in possession of Australia's largest ion accelerator and the new students in my group were taken to its interior to explain its working. All FRT scholars were taken to Mount Stromlo observatory and we were also shown the space technology (satellite testing platforms). We were also invited to Indian Embassy for tea. We were given a tour of Canberra (went inside Parliament). Canberra has many trekking opportunities. They also organised a trip to Sydney (whose cost was bourne by us) which was an amazing experience.

My Expectations (before and after):

The one of the reason taking an experimental project over simulation one was that I was expecting to produce a paper out of it. But the experience taught me that the experimental work is not as easy as it seems after reading the papers of other. Even though I was unable to get any significant result, I got an exposure to experimental work and overall I enjoyed it too.

Contact Details: 

rsriya383@gmail.com