Awards

For the 2024 edition, we are excited to announce the Best Uplink Presentation Award.

Winner

Aryan Sahu, (BITS Pilani, Goa Campus)

Mentored by Sriparna Saha, (IIT Patna)

Multimodal comment based Dataset

Runner-up

MS Varun, (PES University)

Prathosh AP, (IISc)

Machine Unlearning in Generative Models

The awardees were selected by an independent jury. We thank the jury members for their time and effort.

• • Kalapriya Kannan, Intuit
  • Maneet Singh, Mastercard
  • Tejas Indulal Dhamecha, Microsoft

Objectives

Building on the enthusiasm from both mentors and interns for the 2022 and 2023 editions, we are launching UPLINK 2024 on Feb 10. Note that the application deadline has been advanced to Mar 1 instead of Mar 10 as in the two previous editions.

Notable features of UPLINK 2024

• 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. 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. If the paper gets published in a CORE-A conference, IKDD will support the conference registration for one of the authors.
• We plan to support about 12 students in the 2024 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 1, 2024.
• 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 faculty members and data science researchers from top institutes across India have graciously agreed to be mentors for the 2024 edition. Please click on internship title for details and prerequisites

• • Animesh Mukherjee [IIT Kharagpur] Mitigating Bias in LLM based ASR Systems
  • Ashutosh Modi [IIT Kanpur] Deep Models for iSign
  • Mayank Vatsa [IIT Jodhpur] Fingerprint and Iris Presentation Attack Detection
  • Palash Dey [IIT Kharagpur] Election Prediction
  • Prathosh AP [IISc] Machine Unlearning in Generative Models
  • Preethi Jyothi [IIT Bombay] Adapting Speech Recognition Systems to Accents
  • Richa Singh [IIT Jodhpur] AI enabled Nutritional Status Assessment
  • Shweta Jain [IIT Ropar] Fair Allocation of Delivery Orders on Graph
  • Srikanta Bedathur [IIT Delhi] Adversarial Attack and Defence on Temporal Graphs
  • Sriparna Saha [IIT Patna] Design of Recommendation Systems using LLMs
  • Tanima Dutta [IIT (BHU) Varanasi] Metaverse Gaze Intelligence: Transformative Human Interaction and XR-Accelerated AI Training
  • Vineeth Balasubramanian [IIT Hyderabad] Machine Unlearning in Domain Adaptation

Uplink Interns 2024

This year the response for Uplink was more overwhelming than ever before. We received more than 900 students from close to 300 different institutions across India. There were many excellent applications. Unfortunately we were able to select only 15 of these as the Uplink interns for 2024. Congratulations to the selected candidates.

Intern	Mentor	Topic
Sayan Paul (National Institute of Technology, Durgapur)	Animesh Mukherjee (IIT Kharagpur)	Mitigating Bias in LLM based ASR Systems
D Hansaraj (Indian Institute of Technology Patna)	Ashutosh Modi (IIT Kanpur)	Deep Models for iSign
Kishan Pipariya (Pandit Deendayal Energy University, Gandhinagar)	Mayank Vatsa (IIT Jodhpur)	Fingerprint and Iris Presentation Attack Detection
Nidheesh Gorthi (Indian Institute of Information Technology Kottayam)	Mayank Vatsa (IIT Jodhpur)	Fingerprint and Iris Presentation Attack Detection
Moturi Venkat Satya Karthik (Indian Institute of Information Technology Kottayam)	Palash Dey (IIT Kharagpur)	Election Prediction
MS Varun (PES University)	Prathosh AP (IISc)	Machine Unlearning in Generative Models
Tejas Agrawal (BITS Pilani, Goa Campus)	Preethi Jyothi (IIT Bombay)	Adapting Speech Recognition Systems to Accents
Sadiq Siraj Ebrahim (Jadavpur University)	Richa Singh (IIT Jodhpur)	AI enabled Nutritional Status Assessment
Diya Shah (The LNM Institute of Information Technology, Jaipur)	Richa Singh (IIT Jodhpur)	AI enabled Nutritional Status Assessment
Vibulan J (Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing, Kancheepuram)	Shweta Jain (IIt Ropar)	Fair Allocation of Delivery Orders on Graph
Aryan Sahu (BITS Pilani, Goa Campus)	Sriparna Saha (IIT Patna)	Design of Recommendation Systems using LLMs
Molleti Durga Nagababu (Kakinada Institute of Engineering and Technology, Andhra Pradesh)	Tanima Dutta (IIT (BHU) Varanasi)	Metaverse Gaze Intelligence: Transformative Human Interaction and XR-Accelerated AI Training
Suryansh Talukdar (VIT Bhopal University)	Tanima Dutta (IIT (BHU) Varanasi)	Metaverse Gaze Intelligence: Transformative Human Interaction and XR-Accelerated AI Training
Arnav (K L University, Hyderabad)	Vineeth Balasubramanian (IIT Hyderabad)	Machine Unlearning in Domain Adaptation

Timeline for Uplink 2024

The time for all deadlines is 23:59 IST.

Feb 10, 2024	Applications open
Mar 1, 2024	Applications closed
Apr 1-15, 2024	Candidates notified
Apr 15, 2024	Selected interns announced on Uplink webpage
May 1, 2024	Internship starts
Jun 15, 2024	Midterm feedback
Jul 31, 2024	Internship ends
August Last Week, 2024	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.
• A scanned pdf of your most recent academic transcript / grade card from your institution clearly mentioning your program of study and CGPA.

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, 2024.
• 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, 2025 AoE), IKDD will provide a grant to the faculty member towards supporting registration and travel expenses for attending the conference. If a paper gets accepted in a CORE-A conference within the same 18 month cutoff period, IKDD will support the conference registration for one author. The faculty member will be free to decide who among the authors will register and/or attend the conference.
• IKDD will have no stake in the IP generated 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, duration of study, and CGPA right at the top of your resume., Additionally, list 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
  • your motivation and what you expect to gain out of this internship as well as optionally explaining the rationale behind your choice of mentors,
  • any technical skills or experiences that strengthen your candidature to work on the internship problems offered by your choice of mentors, and
  • 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"