To understand the application process and the specifics of a thesis, the English Press Club reached out to students who had acquired theses at renowned institutions across the globe in varied fields. The article below summarises the preparation and application procedure for a thesis and the key points one should keep in mind while applying.

Starting at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

Pursuing her thesis at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, Ishita Bhatnagar is a fifth-year Physics and Chemical Engineering student. Her task involves surveying Exoplanet data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) by NASA, looking for signatures of sodium, Lyman lines, and signs of Exomoons. Ishita started her thesis in March as her supervisor sent a proposal for the Hubble telescope. She then took a two-month break because of her comprehensive examinations and summer internship. She will rejoin the team around July 25 to continue the project until December. 

Ishita said that planning one’s database in November would be ideal for a Fall project or a lab internship. She also discussed creating a database, which required finding the colleges one wants to apply to as the initial step. The location may be crucial if one plans to pursue further education. The official websites of departments in universities have detailed information about the research groups, upcoming projects, and contact details respective to a particular department. 

She also focused on how research projects and study-oriented projects (SOPs) add weight to one’s CV if one can present them in the appropriate format and publish a review paper. Publications are essential when it comes to making one’s application stand out. One can also use any previous academic projects while completing particular disciplinary courses that might be relevant to the project they are interested in. She explained that professors look for students who can carry their projects forward. Therefore, it is essential to use your resources to demonstrate your interest so that the professor can see your commitment.

Ishita also said that looking for Indian institutes for a thesis might be a good alternative. As a dualite, she also talked about how the institute’s timeline favours students applying for a thesis. The application for Practice School-II opens around April, so if one’s application for a thesis is not selected, they still have the option for an on-campus thesis or a PS.

Working with Dr Yoshua Bengio

Nikita Saxena, a fifth-year Physics and Computer Science Engineering student, will be working under Dr Yoshua Bengio at the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, Canada. Dr Bengio is one of the leading experts in Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning. She will be working on the application of Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets) for material discovery. Gflownets lie at the intersection of reinforcement learning, deep generative models, and energy-based probabilistic modelling.

Talking about the application process, Nikita said that for an even semester, i.e. 5-2 thesis, sending out applications in August is ideal, whereas for an odd sem, i.e. 5-1 thesis, sending out applications in mid-January is preferred. She emphasised that if someone requires funding or a scholarship, they should apply as soon as possible because the available slots fill up quickly. She also pointed out that in the case of Research and Development Centres (R&D) at corporate houses, the professors cannot confirm the project opening until a month or two before the thesis starts. Moving on to the cold-emailing process, she said that emailing in batches works for her. One can send reminder emails a week or two after sending the first batch. It can be helpful to use a mail tracker to see if professors are reading the emails because one can tell that the professor might be interested if they open their mail regularly.

According to her, many students go for Deep Learning theses because it has a vast scope of applications that can branch out into many different fields. Professors look for students who can manage their time well and are passionate about the field. Nikita said that professors sometimes also look at how well someone can gel with their research group, so the cultural background, to some extent, does matter. At the same time, they want students who are sure of what they want. When approaching a professor, they should know what project they want to work on and why. This reduces the professor’s task of assigning projects. She said that it does not matter if one has a certain number of publications or a higher CGPA if one is unable to prove their passion and convince the professor that they are the best student that lab could have. Passion and interest are what secure one’s application.

Working out the cure for COVID: Applied Machine Learning and Biology

Chaarvi Bansal, a fifth-year Biology and Computer Science Engineering student, is looking forward to her thesis at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, under Dr Rohitash Sharma and Prof. SS Vasan this Fall. Her thesis uses machine learning to automate the drug selection process and develop a model to select the drug depending on the disease at hand. This aims at cutting out the discovery costs of creating a new drug. The pre-existing down-selected drugs can be repurposed by testing on stem cells. They are using this to prepare drugs for covid, but in the future, this can be used for any disease.

Talking about the application process, Chaarvi said that a student looking to do a thesis in their 4-1 or 5-1 should start preparing their database in November. The database here refers to the details of the professors or labs one is interested in working under. By the end of December, they should be done with finalising their database. For research labs and core theses, they should start reaching out to professors around January 10. Whereas for a corporate thesis in India, they can start around the first week of February, as corporate projects have a relatively shorter deadline. Chaarvi said that cold-emailing is a tiresome and tedious process; the lack of response can also be underwhelming.

When asked what prerequisites professors look for, she highlighted that merely demonstrating interest and familiarity with the project they are working on suffices. Having said that, doing some projects or courses helps one’s application. Additionally, she claimed that more students than ever are now interested in interdisciplinary research.

Pursuing an M.Tech. at IISc Bangalore

Vinay U. Pai, an Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) student from the 2017 batch, did his thesis in his 4-2 (Jan–Aug 2021) under Prof. Neelesh B Mehta at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, which focused on the impact of full duplex communication on the network layer. He worked on wireless communication, mainly focusing on next-generation Wi-Fi networking.

Vinay talked about how the pandemic at its peak affected the application process. He shared that while looking for a summer internship, he had emailed several professors abroad, which had not worked out due to the pandemic. In the end, during his 4-1, he had stuck to a few selective institutes while applying. After his thesis, he continued as a project associate under Prof. Mehta for a year. Now, he will be pursuing his M.Tech. there.

He also shared that in EEE particularly, the PS allotments prospects in core are limited. He emphasised that this is why students interested in core EEE fields such as digital and analog electronics and communications prefer a thesis. He said that rather than doing a PS in a company that is not relevant to your field, students who know that they wish to go for an MS, generally go for a thesis as it helps their academic portfolio. He further explained that Communications has a lot of upcoming projects with 5G coming into play as it has opened the gates for extensive research. 

Study at the University of Manchester

The Club caught up with Astha Rastogi, a 2022 Electrical and Electronics Engineering graduate who did her thesis at the University of Manchester, England. Her thesis was with Dr Riza Batista-Navarro and was co-supervised by Dr Surekha Bhanot. It was based on the Automatic extraction of events from online cooking data using Machine Learning techniques such as natural language processing, machine reading comprehension, and interactive machine learning. Since it was a remote thesis, she had weekly online meetings with her supervisor and weekly presentations in person with the co-supervisor.

Astha briefly talked about how managing one’s time while preparing a database is important. She did her thesis in her 4-1 (July–December 2021) and said that a student should be ready with a list of professors they wish to work under by the end of February at the latest and start mass emailing them around the beginning of March.

She also talked about how adding relevant experiences to the project adds weight to the CV as professors seek out students interested enough in projects to complete their assigned tasks. By adding relevant experiences, one can show their interest in the project and show professors the effort they put into their field of interest before the project.