DAMP Physics, IITB

Intern Experience Summer - 2019   Sukanya Kudva University of Waterloo Process of Securing the Intern: I had got in through Mitacs. Mitacs is a programme for summer internship in Canadian universities. The application deadline in mid-September, interviews happen some time in November and results are out in mid-January. They have a very long application. It includes a SOP, minimum of one reco and browsing through a huge list of projects. So if you are interested, start early. Work: I was working in a quantum computing group that specialised in semiconductor quantum dots. We were trying to implement "virtual dots" for a double quantum dot( basically there were 2 dots on the same chip). I had to understand how applying a voltage on one dot affected the other through models. The idea behind virtual dots was to make a basis confirmation in the external applied voltage space to decouple the dots. The aim of the project was to establish a setup for future experiment...

Course Name: MA 406: General Topology Credits: 8 Course Type: Theory Course Instructor: Prof. Ronnie Sebastian Prerequisites: Formal: MA 403 (Real Analysis)                            Informal: Some Linear Algebra was also used Important Topics covered: Topological Spaces, Continuous Function, Open/closed sets, Interior, closure of a set, Connectedness, Path connectedness, Compact Sets, Separable Sets, Metric Spaces, Regular and Normal Spaces, Fundamental Groups, Path homotopies and an Introduction to Algebraic Topology  Other Topics covered: Topological Groups (covered in exercises) Useful Books: Topology, Second Edition by James Munkres Lectures: No attendance policy, professor used blackboard throughout, the lectures were good but there was a lot of non-academic discussion going on during the lectures which I personally bel...

Intern Experience Summer - 2019   Abhisek Sahu Institute of Quantum Computing Waterloo, Canada Hi there folks! Abhisek from third year EP B.tech program here. This summer I took a UG research position at the Institute for Quantum computing at Waterloo, Canada. In this article I plan to pen down my summer internship experience! Most of it would be factual, some  of it might be subjective and overall, I hope this gives you some idea about what is it like, doing research, especially in Quantum Physics. The article is organised in the following manner: In section 1, I briefly describe my work here, the skills I learnt etc. In section 2, I focus on the overall research experience in Waterloo. In section 3, I write about the other fun (non-academic) stuff. Section 4 contains information about the  process of securing the position, logistics etc. . In section 5, I conclude with my major take-aways from this experience. What have I been up to? My proje...

Instructor: Dibyendu Das Course Name: Digital Systems (EE 224) Course Type: Theory (Core) Credits: 6 Prerequisites: Informal EE 112 Course Content: Review of basic Combinational and Sequential logic, Boolean algebra, Binary Decision Diagram (BDD) and its reduction, Shannon's decomposition, Minimization of boolean expressions (K-map, Quine McClusky algorithm, Petrick's Method), Fast adders (Carry look Ahead and Kogge Stone), Sequential Circuits, Finite State Machines and their minimization, Systems architecture (processor design, memory, ALU), testing and verification of circuits Books: Switching and Finite Automata Theory - Zvi Kohavi Switching Theory and Logic Design - Hill and Peterson Lectures: All the lectures except the first and last ones were taken on blackboard. No biometric attendance. Manual attendance was taken a few times. No DX grades were given. Assignments: Two graded assignments and one graded group project were given at the en...

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 takeaway...

Instructors:  Virendra Sethi, Munish Chandel, S. Karmakar Course name: Environmental Studies: Science and Engineering Course code: ES 200 Course type: Theory (Core) Credits: 3 Pre-requisites -None Course content: Classes of Air pollutants, their dispersion, wind rose, Atmospheric stability, pollution control measures for particulate pollutants, pollution control measures for gaseous pollutants, Radiation balance,  Municipal Waste management, biomedical waste management,  Multidisciplinary nature of environmental problems, Utilization of natural resources and environment degradation, indicators of environmental pollution, ecosystems, biodiversity and conservation, environment and human health Other topics: Books: Online study material: Lectures: Lectures were given using slides. Assignments,e xams and grading: There were 3 modules:  1.Air Quality: 2 assignments (14%) 2.Waste management: 1 assignment (10%) 3.Multidisciplinary nature of enviro...

Instructor: Dibyendu Das Course Name: Statistical Physics (EP 320) Course Type: Theory (Core) Credits: 6 Prerequisites: No formal prerequisites, though knowledge of probability theory and basic quantum physics helps. The instructor made sure to cover the required basics as well, though. Course Content: 1. Revision of Thermodynamics 2. Elementary aspects of probability theory 3. Statistical Ensembles: Microcanonical ensemble, Canonical Ensemble, Gibbs ensemble and Grand canonical ensemble 4. Quantum Statistical systems 5. Quantum gases: Bose and Fermi distributions Books: Statistical Physics of Particles - Mehran Kardar, though the professor provided hand-written notes which were sufficient for most cases. Lectures: slides/blackboard The prof uploaded hand written notes of every lecture before hand and explained them on board during the lectures. He expected everyone to have gone through his notes prior to the lecture. Attendance was not compulsory, but...