Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Wanna Intern With Us?

Q) What is the duration of the internship programme?
There isn't a preset duration, but we expect you to intern with us for atleast a month's time (and at most a life time ;-) )

Q) Who all are eligible?
We prefer that are interns are from BE/Btech background. The main pre-requisite would be a good flair for mathematics, by that we mean you shouldn't be terrified of mathematics. You needn't be trained, but must be trainable. You should have studied discrete mathematics and calculus and must be knowing atleast one Programming language (Apart from knowing a programming language, knowledge of tamil language is prefered - especially when it comes to bargaining with the heroes of Chennai a.k.a auto-waalas).

We generally filter students based on their CGPA, but given that most of the outstanding researchers (including me ahem ahem ;-) ) have been bad at scoring at the undergrad level, if you think you didn't hear a reply from us and still think that you are as eligible as anyone else, you can try getting your undergrad teacher to speak to us and recommend you. We will surely consider you based on his/her recommendation and his/her credential :-)

Please note that we have had interns who weren't mathematically motivated who found nothing except the mid-day lunch interesting. We wouldn't recommend you to apply if math terrifies you (unless you are a die hard foodie ;-))

A good yardstick to check your eligibility is to try understanding this magnificent blog written by one of our magnanimous interns Shruthi Nayak (http://algorithinking.blogspot.com/2011/08/in-quest-of-best.html or any other article from this blog site, all the articles are equally good). You shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to understand the article. If you directly get in touch with Shruthi and acquire the necessary gyan, it wouldn't be considered match fixing, we in fact will invite you with a red carpet appreciating your PR skills :-)

Q) What is the selection process?
You must send us your resume to sudarshansudarshan@gmail.com and we will get back to you. To increase your chances, it would be great if you can get a reference from one of your teachers. We value recommendations more than CGPA.

Q) Why are we offering this internship?
Not because of joblessness but because of our job-incompleteness that we are open for internships (for undergrad students in particular). It has been our experience over the years that our country houses tons and tons of motivated undergrad souls who go void of any nurturing at all. We thrive to provide sun light, water for the budding saplings and leave it to mother India to pluck the fruits.

Q) What does it cost to intern at ISI chennai?
Interest + passion! period.
(pre-paid only!)

Q) What will an internship comprise of?
There will be three components in our internship programme:

a) The learning component:
You will be given books/papers to read or/and videos to watch. We have Ranchoddas Shamaldas Chanchad ("Rancho") on our advisory committe who has asked us not to evaluate you in a typical examination style. We instead would like to see you get inquisitive about the topics you study. You can bombard us with your questions and you will see one of the two things happen.
We won't be asking to undergo an examination/test. We instead will expect you to get inquisitive and ASK US QUESTIONS. If we are unable to answer your question we will assign that as your research topic (not kidding). *wink*

b) The training component:
We will deliver on a regular basis self-contained lectures on topics that are of research interest to us. The best part of this component is the best infrastructure that our institute houses - our intellectual rockstar Prof. CPR will deliver a few live performances and you will really know what I mean when you meet him :-))

c) The research component:
a and b would lead to questions that an inquisitive mind might want to ponder. Once you find yourself an interesting question, we will discuss and brain storm at length to help you fetch yourself an answer. It is this phase that our interns enjoy the most. The judge and the jury would envy the rigour with which our discussions are carried out. Best part, it is always done over a cup of coffee and no one is deemed criminal at the end of our discussions :-)

In this phase called the researcher's high, the adrenaline rush and the endorphin release will make you have less respect for tobacco, nicotine and cocaine consumers!

(suggested viewing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srSbAazoOr8)

Q) Food + Accommodation ?
Interns must manage their accommodation themselves. ISI will not be able to provide or help you in this regard. Areas close to our institute are Adyar, Indiranagar, Gandhinagar, Taramani. There are several Paying Guest facility providers in these areas. One can try www.justdial.com  www.sulekha.com, www.adyartimes.in . You must be really unlucky to not find yourself a PG accommodation despite going through these sites. There is a youth hostel in Indira nagar (2 kms from our institute) where you can stay for 2 to 3 days (150/- per day and one is not allowed to stay beyond 4 days) and search for a PG accommodation meanwhile.  Price of a PG ranges from 3,500/- to 6500/- depending upon the facilities offered. Lunch is provided at a nominal cost in our institute.

Q) Hey do I get to talk to people who interned with you previously?
Here are the testimonials.

Q) Why should one do an internship?
If you haven't found yourself an answer yet, we strongly encourage you to stay back home and watch Big-Boss and Big-Bang-theory (we particularly recommend the latter, given that we were told it helps you enhance your vocabulary to an extent that you needn't prepare for your gre/toefl).

*******************************************************************************
Watch the video and pictures below to get an idea of what goes in here!!!!!
An Exemplary Discussion:
(Participants: Amitash, Vijesh and Shruthi)




CPR Delivering a lecture!



Celebrated one of our interns' (Shruthi Nayak) b'day



 Vijesh and Vijay at the feet of Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar the mathematician 



 Interns working on an assignment



 Happy interns




 We discuss at ice cream parlous too (not kidding)




One cool destination that our interns enjoy visiting (5 kms from our institute)
  



Lunch and movie time....
The Panda Team!




Thinking cap on!



The question time!




Our popular Adda 



Troubleshooters at their best



 Vijesh trying to sell his idea to the interns
(Sachin and Sridhar) from PSG Coimbatore



The terrific team!



 Vijesh at his best...


 
My sincere interns welcoming me for lecture



 Anddd this is what happens when I am not around!!!!!


 This is what I do when I am annoyed with my interns
(about to take a WWF jump!)

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Are You a Pro Gmail User?



While you were in a restaurant have you ever wished there was an interactive display menu on your table which displayed items like hot-water/sugar/sauce/salt/finger-bowl/bill-please/spoon and some other frequently asked items by the customers? Well, I atleast have!, It is a pain to make an eye contact with the serving community in the restaurant (atleast in bangalore). Who wouldn't benefit with such an interactive system? It clearly folds the time and effort of both the customers and the food servers. Agreed?


Hello anybody there....., can I please have you for a minute? I am not doing very well, can you please help me with a glass of hot-water? *coughs*
Vs

At the press of a button the server gets you a glass of bubbling hot water. 




I am not making an attempt to landscape our over popu-polluted Bangalore onto Sion. This blog is an effort to convince 99.99% of the computer literates to understand the power of using keyboard shortcuts in an application such as gmail.  We spend most of our time (or should i say all our time) toggling between the inbox/chatbox/searchbox of gmail and we seldom make efforts to sharpen our axe of locomotion within gmail. My estimated-estimation is we can save 3.5 times our time if we deploy the keyboard shortcuts in the gmail battlefield. It is right to call it that, isn’t it? Place where you e-breakup, e-makeup or even e-makeout at times ;-) (or should I replace the letter e with g, just like how the word e-mail today means g-mail.)

Cut-the-Crap and get to business:


  1. In your Gmail window enable settings>general>keyboard_shortcuts_on
  2. Sign out from Gmail and Sign in back.
  3. Tantadaaaaan! there you are ... your gmail is now ready to interact with you using keyboard shortcuts.
  4. Press ? key on your k/b and you will get a list of keyboard shortcuts.
  5. Learn a shorcut or two a day and you can master all of them in 1 month.
  6. This is such a value addition --you won’t believe-- that you will save a few years in your life from now. Mouse is to key board shortcuts is like using a king-fisher airlines in place of BMTC - which unfortunately isn’t a service that can either be replaced or improved in Bangalore.
  7. If you find keyboard shortcuts nightmarish, just learn these 3: 'c' for compose, 'q' for chat box, '/' for search box and finally 'Alt+F4' to close gmail and get some real work done :-)) !!!!

Would love to see your comments telling me how employing k/b shortcuts added so much to your life span :-)

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

How to Type Math Equations in your Email/Blog/Website

Latex is a markup language used by scientists/academicians to type math equations. I have attempted to explain how to include math-equations in your email/blog/site. Drop in a mail at sudarshaniisc at gmail in case of problems.

Point your browser to http://codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php . You can now type your equation (you can use the buttons on the top if you are not acquainted to latex). For example if you type (a+b)^2 = a^2 + b^2 +2ab in the equation box the following appears . In the tiny window in the middle bottom you will see the corresponding html code. Note that you can also copy the equation as an image or a weblink by right clicking on it.


1) Email: If you are using gmail, you must first enable "insert picture option". You can do this in your gmail account by enabling settings-Labs-insertingimages. Once this is done, you are ready to insert images into your email. Use the above method to type your equation and then copy the weblink of the equation. You can now use the insert image feature to insert the weblink of the equation.

2) Website: To include an equation in a webpage, just copy paste the html code.


3) Blog: Pasting the html code works fine for blogs. If you are using blogger.com--as an alternative--you can consider doing the following: 
  • Go to your blog homepage and click on design.
  • You will see something like this:
  • Click on add a gadget and select "html/Java Script" (there are several places where you can add gadgets, you must select the one in the bottom. (look at the figure above)
  • Paste the following code :


There you are, you can now type latex equations in your blogspot blog by enclosing your latex code between $   $. You can now complicate your webpage/blog with equations and math structures. Please note that the rendering is a little bad. The equations tend to get misoriented from the line of text. Wonder if someone knows how to fix it. Until a fix arrives, lets use  and appreciate what we have :-)

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

A letter from a physicist : Skepticism about Darwin's legacy


My brother-in-law and me had a detailed discussion on the theory of evolution. He is very suspicious of the claims made by the theory of evolution and thinks that the biologists should think a step beyond it. Take a look at his letter to me and do voice your opinion in the comments section of this blog.

Abhi happens to be a physicist (Associate prof) from Duke university and his interests include Theoretical nuclear physics, Theoretical particle physics and string theory and Theoretical condensed matter physics.

Sudarshan


Dear Sudha,

The following analogy from physics might help clarify what
I am referring to. In the late 1600's when Newton discovered
patterns in planetary motion and proposed his laws, everyone
thought we had discovered how the universe functions. In fact
by the mid 1800's, armed with many physicists had assumed
we understood almost everything about the laws governing
nature. But they were all shocked in the late 1800's and early
1900's that they had not appreciated a completely new approach
to physics described by quantum mechanics where classical
mechanics was merely an "effective" approach. Ofcourse
quantum effects are rather subtle and Newton's ideas are still
valid almost in all daily experiences. So Newton certainly
deserves a lot of credit.

In the same way, I feel the theory of evolution of Darwin,
could be a very useful first step in our understanding of life.
But there may be many surprises on the way! And as scientists
we should be ready for it. In my opinion there are already many
questions that evolutionary theorists should be asking. Hopefully,
they are building more realistic models and testing the theory
of evolution rigorously. Trying to poke holes into the theory.
I would be surprised if they are not!

For example, some of the subtler questions could be related to
the quantum mechanical effects that govern the probabilities in
the evolutionary mechanism. I have heard that the physics of
protien folding is an open problem in biochemistry and I some
people believe quantum mechanics is playing an important role
there.

Finally, I am sure you will agree that human emotions and feelings
are "observed facts". At some point of time we should address them.
How do they arise? We cannot just say "these arise from "complex"
connections in the human brain"! You can almost explain anything
away through the use of word "complexity" these days and you
are not allowed to ask any more questions! Why? "Because it is
complex"! Sounds very much like religion to me!

Why did evolution create a human brain that is capable of "sacrifice" for the sake of others that by very nature goes against preserving the "gene"? Why did evolution create many human brains that thinks that "sacrifice" for others is an admirable trait in a human being and respect those people rather than "kill" them at first site! These are some questions I wonder about. I hope scientists just dont use "complexity" to explain away these observed facts and shut me up!

The bottom line is that some people become happy with an explanation about the observed phenomena. Others do not. People who accept an explanation easily are always happy. The question always is where do you draw the line? We scientists have developed some bit of arrogance as compared to non-scientists. We think we understand something better. That may be! Unfortunately, we too have to draw the line somewhere else and say, I am happy with the current explanation since I cannot go beyond this. It is too complex!

Abhi