Summer Research Fellowship program by IAS is a research program under the guidance of professors of different renowned universities
Well, all of you must be aware of the prestigious IAS summer research fellowship. Its the dream of every Science student to be a part of this. It is a Summer Research Fellowship offered to selected students all over India.
Summer Research Fellowships Program(SRFP) offered by the Indian Academy of Sciences, is a summer immersion experience in India, which supplements research activities that occur during the academic year. Typically, this is a highly competitive undergraduate program, overseen by a colleges faculty(Typically of IITs, NITs, IISCs and other prestigious colleges in India), who provide general guidance to the undergraduate research work. The Fellowship is offered for a minimum of 8 Weeks. Areas of research vary widely and can come from any art or science discipline.
In the program students are offered to research under the guidance of professors of different renowned universities, in their respective areas of interest.
I, unlike others, had wished to work on image and pattern recognition under this renowned research fellowship. The results were expected to be announced on 28 February 2017. I was anxious as usual, hoping to find my name amidst the awardees. Though there were slim chances of my getting, I still hoped for the best. But, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Alas! My name wasnt there. I thoroughly went through the list several times on that day and I was completely disappointed.
Despite having very fewer chances owing to my low GPA of 8.5, I had gone through the profiles of all professors who were working in the field of signal and image processing. I had shortlisted around 30 professors, went through their research papers. Though I wasnt able to comprehend a significant part of that, I was able to figure out the gist of their area of research.This had helped me to present a write-up up-to-date with the latest technology trends, which was also verified by a number of seniors and lecturers. As I had some experience with OpenCV and image processing, I was somehow expecting to get selected.
However, I moved on and applied for RGSoC*(An Open Source Contest for Girls)*. I devoted two whole months for that but again my team wasnt selected. The semester was edging to an end and I had no internships in my hands. I was worried and clueless as to what will happen next. I started applying for local internships and I was completely depressed.
I was not at all aware that the second selection list was yet to be announced. On 2nd May, I got a Congo message from one of my seniors and a link to the IAS second selection result list. And Viola! I found my name. Anisha Swain It was my name. I couldnt believe my eyes. The credentials matched with that of me! I was selected to work on the image processing under Dr. Geetika Jain Saxena at the University of Delhi.
After getting the confirmation email, I got in touch with my mentor and asked about the details of the work to be done.To my utter surprise, my area of interest was completely related with her field of expertise. Again the problem that arose was accommodation. The accommodation list was only published for the people who had got the fellowship in a first selection list. I was in a dilemma. Whether accommodation will be available or not? I asked my guide for help and she was kind enough to approach the hostel superintendent for my accommodation. I got the accommodation at IIT Delhi provided by IAS but I decided to stay on the campus of Delhi University.
Summer Research Fellow Meet (INSA,Delhi)
Everything was fixed. I sent my letter of acceptance to the Academy at Bangalore and set on my journey to Delhi on 26 May 2017. I joined the fellowship officially from 29th May 2017. On the first meeting with my guide, I was asked about my previous work experience and she introduced me to some other faculties who were going to guide t through this long journey.
After that, I was assigned the first-week task i.e. basic operations on images. In the whole period of internship, I tried my best to complete the tasks assigned in the specific amount of time. The best part of the work was diving deep into the theoretical aspects of the project as well as getting engaged with the physical and mathematical concepts behind those. With proper guidance and lots of enthusiasm, I completed the first part of the project i.e Face Recognition with OpenCV and Python, in the first 4 weeks of joining. After that, I was ready for my second adventurous experience with Microsoft Kinect. I was completely a new bee in the field of Kinect and C#. Though it took a little more time to get acquainted with the hardware and software platform of Kinect, it was indeed an exciting learning experience. While collecting the data for database creation people out there were so helpful and at the end, we had data of 10 subjects with 32 features. The most difficult part for me was Data Mining. However, at last, we were able to analyze the data and achieved 89% accuracy for face recognition and 65% accuracy for gait recognition. I successfully completed the 57 days long project on 25th May 2017.
data extraction from kinect
I would like to express my deepest appreciation to all those who provided me the possibility to complete this project. However, it would not have been possible without the kind support and help of my mentors and The Indian Academy of Sciences. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all of them. I am highly indebted to Dr. Geetika Jain Saxena for her guidance and constant supervision. In addition, a thank you to professor Dr. Amit Pundir for providing necessary information and future insights regarding the project.
I would also like to thank Mr. Rajshekhar Mukherjee for his support in completing the project. I would like to express my gratitude towards my parents & members of Maharaja Agrasen College(University of Delhi) for their kind co-operation and encouragement which helped me in the completion of this project.I would like to express my special gratitude and thanks to the authorities of The Indian Academy Of Sciences for giving me such opportunity. My thanks and appreciations also go to my colleagues in developing the project and people who have willingly helped me out with their abilities.
My journey of The IAS fellowship was exciting as well as inspiring. This experience will always stay with me and will inspire me to dive deep into the area of image processing and machine learning in the years to come.
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