Intern Experience Summer - 2019  

Sowmya Ravichandran

Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Process of Securing the Intern:

I went through MITACs; I had to choose projects on the MITACs portal, and my professor selected me through a Skype interview.

Work:

The research group that I was a part of works in hydrology and climate science. The objective of my project was to study the trends in freeze and thaw patterns of ice over global mountain regions and how climate change has influenced them. It involved extracting and analysing the global data of various climatic and hydroclimatic variables and studying their trends.

Workload and Tools used:

The workload was pretty chill and for the most part, I didn't have to come in at off hours. Software used - MATLAB.

Learning Experience:

Academically, I learnt about how research works and life in academia, which really helped me in deciding my next step in my life, career-wise. Apart from that, my major takeaways were learning to cook, and meeting people from all over the world and learning about different cultures.

Places Visited:

Montreal is one of the best cities to be in (during summer of course :P) as a student. There are numerous summer fests and your weekends would never be boring as long as you have enough energy in you to try everything out. I didn't travel around much - just Ottawa and Toronto - but I had a wonderful time in Montreal. I also discovered a lot of nice pubs and restaurants there.

My Expectations (before and after):

I didn't have much expectations before going, in fact, I was afraid I wouldn't enjoy my work much as the project wasn't directly related to my research interests. Nevertheless, I had a wonderful time there and I learnt a lot, academically and otherwise.

Contact Details: 
rsowmya1234@gmail.com