A total of 14 students will undertake a research internship at Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, LA, USA. The internship would commence from mid-May for a period of 8 weeks, and students would be working broadly in areas of Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning and Neural Networks, communication circuits, Analog and Digital Circuit Design, and so on.

This exposure would not only enhance the students’ confidence to utilise the knowledge gained at their respective institution after coming back but would also trigger their interest to take up research as a career. So far, 167 students have benefitted from 2011 to2020, and the number of students pursuing or completed Ph.D. is 21. 

The Viterbi Program of IUSSTF was developed between IUSSTF and the Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California (USC). This program is a part of the Government’s endeavour to encourage research and development amongst the bright young Indian minds to create long-term, sustainable, and vibrant linkages between India and the US.

IUSSTF was established under an agreement between the Governments of India and the United States of America in March 2000. It is an autonomous bilateral organization jointly funded by both the Governments that promote Science, Technology, Engineering, and Innovation through substantive interaction among government, academia, and industry. The Department of Science & Technology (DST), Governments of India, and the U.S. Department of State are respective nodal departments. IUSSTF has an evolving program portfolio that is largely conceived and driven by scientific communities of both the countries through extending support for symposia, workshops, conferences on topical and thematic areas of interest, visiting professorships and exchange programs, advanced training schools, public-private networked centers, and knowledge R & D networked centers.

The program provides an opportunity for Indian students pursuing a Bachelors's or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Computational Sciences at a recognized institution of higher education and learning in India to undertake a research internship at the Viterbi School of Engineering for a period of 8 weeks.

The biggest success of the program has been that many students, after completion of their Ph.D. or Masters at US universities, have taken up teaching assignments at US Universities in addition to many of them working at Research Labs of big Corporates like Google, Facebook, etc.

Satwik Kottur, a Viterbi fellow who completed PhD. from Carnegie Mellon University and is now working as Research Scientist at Facebook AI unit, USA, said, “The association with Indo-US S&T Forum as that internship was one of the fundamental reasons for me to pursue research.”

Karthik Narasimhan Rajagopal, another fellow who is now an Asst. Professor, Princeton University, USA, pointed out that he was currently an assistant professor in the CS Department at Princeton due to IUSSTF and the Viterbi programme.

The popularity of the programme is increasing, and in response to the call for applications for the 2020 internship, IUSSTF received a total of 292 applications.

 

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