Like most undergrads, I spent my summer after junior year doing an internship. The internship wasn’t at a top MNC or a software company. It was much more as I had the opportunity to work with cutting-edge technology in a research center at the L. V. Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) in Hyderabad.
This was a new experience for me since I had never left the comfort of my home for more than 10 days and managed all the chores on my own from washing clothes and waking up to navigating an unknown city. Until the last minute when I had to leave for my flight, I experienced what my friends describe as “getting cold feet” every moment till I left my house. I was ambivalent as I embarked on this journey but the adrenaline rush and the excitement kept me in the loop. But my mom was sure nothing was going to happen to me because I had stepped out with my right foot ahead, I had sugar and curd and she gave me Rs. 201 for good luck. Though, I like to describe it as the unluckiest day of my life. On our way to the airport, my dad’s phone was stolen. If that wasn’t bad enough, I was two hours early to the airport for a flight that was delayed by 5 hours and later 6 hours. So as you can tell, my excitement had reached its “peak” when I reached Hyderabad, half a day after I left home.
After so much drama, on the first day, I just exchanged a few chatters with my new roommate at a local hostel where I stayed for the next couple of months. And the next morning, I was all Mr. Hardworking Intern. I walked into the premises of L. V. Prasad Eye Institute and was the 3rd guy to come into the research lab. Spending next 30 minutes checking out the things around the office, along with Newton’s cradle which I enjoyed (yes, the laws of physics work, they aren’t a conspiracy). The first day, my mentor briefed me about what my work here was going to be about and also insisted that I should be thorough with the Anatomy of the Eye (Protip: If you are going to work with people from other backgrounds get their lingo straight in your head).
I spend the next few weeks developing a unique algorithm, to get quantitative data from pupil images taken using Pupil+. Yes, I know, quantitative data doesn’t tell you a lot, but I am not supposed to tell you about it. I can tell you what technologies and fields I was working on. So it was Computer Vision coupled with Machine Learning (not deep learning). Though, I did some deep learning for a particular case. In the midst of all this, I also developed a really good friendship with two fellow interns from IIIT Chennai. We used to help each other fix bugs, have lunch and coffee together and sometimes go out after work to take it easy.
L.V. Prasad Eye Institute was about to host a hackathon in the following month which invited interns to either participate in the hackathon or in the event management team. I decided I will be a participant. So we spent 5 long days/nights in solving problems in ophthalmology using our knowledge and disciplines. We were crowned first runners-up of the hackathon out of the 30 teams shortlisted nationwide proficient in various domains such as ophthalmology, engineering, and design. The hackathon was one of the best experience I had in my time at LVPEI.
After the hackathon, we interns resumed our task and I was ready to integrate my developed algorithm to the device. Though there was a tiny problem, we wanted the algorithm to work in real time which took 10 sec to analyze 1 image. After spending some days and pulling off some all-nighters trying to optimize the algorithm, I used various techniques like decreasing the overall time complexity of the algorithm by analyzing it, converting mathematical operations from pure python to Numpy, so on and so forth. And the final thing that helped me the most was to convert the major part of the algorithm from python to C++ and wrapping it back into a python function so that the rest of the things still worked as they were in Python. This task was something, I think is one of the most valuable skills I earned there. Now, I can use the two languages that I am proficient in together.
My time at LVPEI gave me some great new skills, awesome connections and yes I did explore the beautiful city of Hyderabad. After various interactions throughout the tenure, I have gained a lot of perspective about my aims and goals in life. I now intend to be in a place where my work brings in noteworthy changes in the lives of people, helping getting through everyday life easier and better.
I highly recommend doing internships away from home because although technical skills are the need of the hour, life skills and understanding the meaning of work are the need and necessity of the human race.