My Internship at NCL

I know, I know - It's been a while since I last blogged but I was helpless. You must understand how awfully  busy I have been working on my internship project. I slog from morning 9am to midnight, writing hundreds of lines of codes, debugging, reading journals, etc, etc....Phew! I get some respite on Sundays which incidentally is the only time I get to sleep.

Okay! That was a lie(a big fat one). The truth is - "I get up at 9am, reach lab by 10am, eat breakfast by 10:30 and then get to work. My job is computational in nature and working in close proximity with computers has its share of unique occupational hazards, namely, www.facebook.com. Unlike my colleagues in wet labs who get safety gears there's none available for me."

But seriously, awesome friends and riveting roomies here have made my stay at NCL joyful. Will post more stuff about my internship and its stories as soon as I am done with my work...until then, you know where to reach me: facebook ;-)

Sherlock Holmes once met a Bengali writer Hurrie Chunder Mukherjee

Just back from an exciting lecture by Suneet Singh Tuli(CEO, Datawind), organized as a part of IIT Guwahati Entreprenerial Summit. F.Y.I - Datawind is the company manufacturing the Aakash tablet. So, he talked about the 'Indian Pride' and how he used it to his advantage against all adversities. I don't want to write anything about his lecture here because I wouldn't be able to do justice to his  narration(more likely reason is that yours truly is feeling too lazy) but you may try to get a copy of the video recording from the organisers.

Anyway, the above things got little to do with Sherlock Homes. I am not a big fan of Sherlock Holmes stories but I had watched the BBC series - like any true IITian - within a span of two days. And I must admit it did catch up my imagination though not as much as what I am about to tell you. So, I was reading the book 'The Fang of Summoning' by Giti Chandra when it struck me to check how many Indian writers wrote fantasy which I will make it very clear excludes the crappy and disgusting love novels from stupid engineers. It was then that I came across Vodafone Crossword Book award winner 'Mandala of Sherlock Holmes' by author Jamyang Norbu. I will simply quote the abstract found on the internet(what can I do? laziness is my vice) ............

In 1891, a horrified British public learnt that Sherlock Homes - in a last deadly struggle with arch criminal Professor Moriarty - had perished at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland . Two years later, popular demand made Conan Doyle resurrect the great detective. Holmes informs a stunned Dr. Watson: 'I traveled for two years in Tibet , therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhasa .'
This is all that the world has known of Sherlock Holmes' journey to the East. Jamyang Norbu - an avid reader of Kipling and Doyle - decides to take the matter in his hands; to investigate Holmes' stay in Lhasa , Tibet . What he unearths is the Mandala , written by a wily Bengali scholar, Hurrie Chunder Mookherjee, Holmes' traveling companion. The Mandala holds the key to the mystery and revelas that it is difficult to resist.
An exciting, often richly humorous detective story The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes also evokes the romance of Kipling's India .

Truly proud of being an Indian today...... 

Entrepreneurship in Chemical Engineering

We all idolise Bill Gates, Zuckerburg, Steve Jobs, Page & Brin; founders of multi-billion dollar enterprises Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, etcetera. Sometimes I wonder - all these giants built their empires on technology that involved computer sciences. Is there any hope for a chemical engineer to achieve similar success in entrepreneurship? Or for that matter let’s take someone from Physics/Mathematics background. Even though most physicists are more absorbed in tearing the mask off nature and staring at the face of God than creating jobs not unlike mathematicians who dwell in some deep problem of their own making. Common sense suggests - it is possible. People have made money from all kinds of non-sense (fart app, pet rock), why can't it be made from the knowledge of Physics and Mathematics?
But has any Chemical Engineer made money recently? In 2009, Becton Dickinson Diagnostic Systems acquired Handy Labs, a molecular diagnostic start-up company, in a landmark deal valued at more than $275 million. One of its founders is Dr. Kalyan Handique, a former student of IIT-B and Kendriya Vidyalaya, Khanapara; this son of Assam co-founded the company while he was doing his PhD work in the University of Michigan. Shown below is an old youtube video of Handy Lab....

Currently, he is the CEO of another company DeNovo Sciences, which incidentally also won North America's largest business plan competition, the 'Accelerate MichiganInnovation Competition Award' this year. One of his interviews with details of DeNovo Sciences. Kudos to this gentleman and his team for transforming medical technology, and in the way improving the lives of many.
I think it's time for my batch mates to start looking beyond the traditional domains of chemical engineering like petroleum(I know it pays a lot). And also to move ahead and think bigger than campus startups Foodbeez, Hunger Connections, etc. (I am, in no way belittling the achievements of students involved. However, I shall put forth to you the same famous question that was once asked “Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to ….. change the world?”)