IIT Roorkee hosted a vibrant poster session on 21st June 2019 at its lecture hall, showcasing the work of SPARK Interns. SPARK is a new summer internship initiative of IIT Roorkee, aiming to attract and nurture undergraduates from all over India including IIT Roorkee students with the objective to provide research exposure. The event included the second batch of Spark Interns who showcased their work and the event saw a large participation.
Interns were provided an attractive fellowship of Rs. 2,500/week. In addition to institute fellowship, many other interns were also supported from the design and innovation centre (DIC), centre for railway research (CRR), and other project funds. The application process of SPARK program is completely online and the selected interns worked on a project of their choice filled during the application process.
Now in its second year, SPARK program has gained in popularity with over 15,000 online applications out of which around 100 interns were selected through a rigorous selection process. Selected interns are from prestigious institutes of the country, with a large majority from IITs and NITs. Interns worked in 20 different departments of the institute and performed cutting edge theoretical, computational, and experimental research in hot areas of science, engineering, management, and social sciences. Some of such hot areas were machine learning, deep learning, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, smart grids, internet of things (IoT), renewable energies, traffic modelling, smart cities, and waste management. Also, several projects, especially the ones supported by the design and innovation center, included product and prototype development.
Posters were divided in four pools and one best poster award was awarded from each pool
Pool 1: Spandan Sahu, Civil Engineering, Architecture and Planning, Earthquake Engineering, Water Resource Development and Management, Hydrology, Hydro & Renewable Energy – Winner
Pool 2: Humanities and Social Sciences, Management Studies, Paper Technology, Biotechnology, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry – Medha Chakraborty
Pool 3: Applied Science and Engineering, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, Metallurgical & Materials Engineering – Nitika Mondal
Pool 4: Mathematics, Computer Science & Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electronics & Communication Engineering, Physics – Jagriti Ahuja
Sonali Sahu was awarded for the best poster among DIC interns in Architecture and Planning.
“The objective of starting SPARK is to provide research exposure to under graduate students. I believe this internship shall not only benefit the interns academically but also help in their entrepreneurship skills and improve their overall skills before they step out into the real competitive world of innovation” said Prof. Manoranjan Parida, Deputy Director, IIT Roorkee
Research work of SPARK interns in the first year resulted in a good number of publications, and were presented in reputed national and international conferences. SPARK is coordinated by a team of enthusiastic faculty members and student volunteers with support from the Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy office of IIT Roorkee.
