Objectives
Building on the enthusiasm from both mentors and interns for the 2022 edition, we are launching UPLINK 2023 on Feb 10.
Notable features of UPLINK 2023
- IKDD will provide a stipend of 50000 INR in total for the 3 months on successful completion of the internship.
- For in-campus internships, the faculty mentor will assist the student for accommodation for in-campus internships. IKDD will reimburse a maximum of 5,000 INR for travel between the student’s hometown and the internship location upon presentation of receipts.
- The student will be recognized with an ‘ACM IKDD Uplink Intern’ badge on successful completion of the internship.
- If the internship works results in a paper acceptance at a relevant CORE-A* conference, IKDD will support the conference registration and travel for one of the authors of the paper. We also encourage submission of papers based on the work done in the internship to the CODS COMAD 2024 conference.
- We plan to support about 11 students in the 2023 edition.
Student Eligibility
- The student must be enrolled full-time in a bachelors or masters program in a degree granting institute in India.
- A bachelors candidate must be studying in the 3rd year of the program and a masters candidate must be studying in the 1st year of the program at the time of application deadline on Mar 10, 2023.
- There are no restrictions on the department or specialization area of the student as long as they meet other eligibility criteria.
- The student must get a no-objection letter from the institute for enrolling in this internship. While the letter will be sought only if a student gets selected for the internship, we strongly recommend checking feasibility of the same prior to application.
- The student should ideally have a strong background in fundamental subjects such as probability, statistics, linear algebra, excellent coding skills, and completed courses in machine learning / deep learning. Prior experience of executing projects related to data science is ideal.
Faculty Mentors
The following excellent faculty members and data science researchers from top institutes across India have graciously agreed to be mentors for the 2023 edition.
| Mentor | Internship Topic | Internship Type | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prof. Md. Shad Akhtar [IIIT Delhi] |
 |
Code-mixed Machine Translation | In Campus |
| Prof. Prathosh A P [IISc] |
 |
Few-shot, resource-constrained deep generative modeling | In Campus |
| Prof. Srikanta Bedathur [IIT Delhi] |
 |
Scalability of neural networks in temporal graphs. | In Campus |
| Prof. Maunendra Desarkar [IIT Hyderabad] |
 |
Efficient context representation for dialog systems | In Campus |
| Prof. Shweta Jain [IIT Ropar] |
 |
Design of fair federated AI models | In Campus |
|
Prof. Animesh Mukherjee [IIT KGP] |
 |
Algorithmic fairness | In Campus |
| Prof. Swaprava Nath [IIT Bombay] |
 |
Artificially Intelligent EV charging [More details] | In Campus |
| Prof. Divya Padmanabhan [IIT Goa] |
 |
Data-driven Robust Optimization | Mainly Virtual |
| Prof. Harish Ramaswamy [IIT Madras] |
 |
Feature learning in U-nets for segmentation | Preferably In Campus |
| Prof. Sriparna Saha [IIT Patna] |
 |
Investigations in Multimodal Summarization Systems | In Campus |
| Prof. Charu Sharma [IIIT Hyderabad] |
 |
Problems in Geometric Deep Learning | Preferably In Campus |
Timeline for Uplink 2023
The time for all deadlines is 23:59 IST.
| Apr 5-15, 2023 | Candidates notified |
| Apr 15, 2023 | Selected interns announced on Uplink webpage |
| May 1, 2023 | Internship starts |
| Jun 15, 2023 | Midterm feedback |
| Jul 31, 2023 | Internship ends |
| Aug 15, 2023 (Tentative) | Final presentations |
Application Process
- To apply for the internship, a student must fill in an online application form by the application deadline.
- The form includes an entry for a resume in pdf format. See below for guidelines for the resume.
- The form includes an entry for a statement of purpose (SOP) in pdf format. See below for guidelines for the SOP.
Student Responsibilities
- Selected students will be notified by email by IKDD with a copy to the faculty mentor. They must indicate their acceptance by email within the stipulated time along with a no-objection letter for conducting the internship full time from a designated authority (e.g. Head/Chair of the department where the student is enrolled). Otherwise, the internship offer will be withdrawn.
- The student must get in touch with their mentors and start working full time on their internship from May 1, 2023.
- The student must be available full time (at least 40 hours per week) for the 3 month duration of the internship.
- The student must complete an internship report and submit it to their faculty mentor by the last day of the internship.
- The student must make an end-of-internship presentation to a group of experts which will be facilitated by IKDD.
Faculty Mentor Responsibilities
- The faculty mentor should verify the no-objection certificate from intern’s parent institute at the start of the internship
- The faculty member will provide to the student a well-defined research problem and also relevant datasets for performing experiments at the start of the internship.
- The faculty member will meet with the student (face to face or virtually) on a regular basis through the duration of the internship and provide guidance on executing the research project.
- If the project execution requires additional computing infra-structure, the faculty member will provide access to such infra-structure to the student.
- The faculty will provide an internship completion certificate to the student at the end of the internship.
- The faculty member will inform IKDD about successful completion of the internship.
- Upon acceptance of a paper based on the internship work, the faculty member will inform IKDD.
IKDD Responsibilities and Other Guidelines
- IKDD will pay full stipend amount directly to the student on successful completion of the internship.
- If a paper gets accepted in a Core-A* conference based on the internship work within 18-months of the commencement of the internship (i.e. the notification of paper acceptance must be received by 30th October, 2024 AoE), IKDD will provide a grant to the faculty member towards supporting registration and travel expenses for attending the conference. The faculty member will be free to decide who among the authors will register and attend the conference.
- IKDD will have no stake in the produced IP through this collaboration/visit of the mentee to the host institution and beyond.
- It is acknowledged by both parties that mentee pursuing research is purely voluntary and will not result in any obligation or liability on IKDD with regard to quality and/or standard of the research plan. IKDD will also not be responsible in any manner for any kind of misbehavior or disobedience on the part of the mentee or for any misuse of facilities provided by the host institute. IKDD India will not be liable to the host institute on any account except for the grant provided for the research project.
Resume Guidelines
- The resume should be in pdf format and at most 3 pages in length. Font size should not be less than 10pt.
- Mention your institute name, department name, CGPA, all relevant courses and certifications. Specifically mention courses / certifications in probability and statistics, linear algebra, machine learning, deep learning, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, data science, natural language processing, computer vision, etc.
- Mention your coding skills, i.e. languages and proficiency level / years of experience. Proficiency in python (numpy, scipy, scikit-learn), R, and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, Tensorflow, Keras, etc. are particularly relevant.
- Mention and briefly describe any project (research or otherwise) that you have done on data science related topics. These may be course-related or other projects at your institute or internships that you have executed in academic or industrial settings. If any of your project code is publicly available (e.g. on github), include a link to it.
- Mention any accepted or submitted paper to a research conference based on any of your projects. If the paper is publicly available, (e.g. in arxiv), include a link to it.
Statement of Purpose Guidelines
- Use the statement of purpose (SOP) to explain what makes you qualified for this internship opportunity. The SOP should ideally have 3 parts. These should describe
- a. your motivation and what you expect to gain out of this internship as well as optionally explaining the rationale behind your choice of mentors,
- b. your main strengths for doing research in AI/ML/data science, and
- c. your challenges in getting access to good mentors and a research ecosystem.
- The SOP must be in pdf format, at most 2 pages in length and use at least 10pt font.
Contact Us
For any query please send an email to IKDDOffice@gmail.com with subject "[Uplink]: email subject"