Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engg., IIT Bombay
So you are interested in doing summer internship with us?
I keep receiving numerous emails requesting a summer/winter project.
There is nothing much meaningful that can be achieved in a short
duration of 4 weeks to 8 weeks in my area of work (what is my area?
Good question. Please do your homework). Hence I do not take candidates
for such short projects. I consider only those applicants who are
interested in working with me for at least six months actively and are
willing to spend at least six months before this active period in
preparing background in programming and some tools used in writing a
compiler. If you are interested, please read on.
- Please do your homework on my area of work. Please go through my
web page thouroghly. Please look at the courses I teach, the
seminars/projects that I offer and the papers that I publish. Please
collect as much background information about this area as possible.
Please don't ask me where you will get this information from. I would
like to see your dynamism and initiative in building the background.
- Having collected the information, please ponder over your desire
to work with me. Exactly why do you want to work with me?
- If you are mainly interested in a stamp of having worked at an
IIT, you will not survive in my group so it is better that we spare
each other the trouble.
- If you are interested in building something fantastic and
become famous overnight, I would be very happy to learn from you how it
can be achieved. I have tried for over 25 years and have not succeeded.
- If you are interested in pursuing your higher studies abroad
and want to use IIT as a stepping stone, there is nothing much wrong in
it (something certainly is wrong), you cannot do so unless you are
willing to contribute something to IIT. For this you need to spend at
least six months of background preparation and six months of active
work.
- If you are interested in gaining more knowledge, you are most
welcome to do so but you cannot remain merely at the receiving end; you must
plan to give something back. You must learn with a goal of contributing
something to IIT. For this you need
to spend at least six months of background preparation and six months
of active work.
- Programming languages and compilers is one of the more
difficult areas of CS as it spans both theory and practice deeply,
requiring several layers of abstractions for developing insights in
this area. Please note that working in programming languages is not as
simple as writing programs using some programming language. Working in
programming languages implies providing support for programming in a
language.
- If you have read this far, perhaps you are really interested.
Good. Please spend sufficient time in learning about the following: A
good exposure to Linux, Shell programming, make, C programming,
cscope, ddd/gdb, lex, and yacc. Please try to build a project using
these tools. I will assess your project, will ask you to modify it in
some non-trivial manner (to ensure that you have really learnt the
things rather than merely copying the code from somewhere). And no, I
will not suggest a problem; I would like to see how you think of
designing a suitable problem.
- If you show sufficient motivation and initiative and I find some
promise in you, I will be happy to interact with you over email giving
you exercises and suggestions. No phone calls please.
- The students who do their homework and propose a particular
problem related to my research project stand a much better chance of
hearing from me.
Please send me a mail only if
you are sure you can satisfy all the above requirements.
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