Uplink Internship Program 2026

Objectives

Building on the enthusiasm from both mentors and interns for the past UPLINK editions, we have launched UPLINK 2026 on Sep 28, 2025. Note that the application deadline has been advanced to Oct-10, 2025.

Notable features of UPLINK 2026

  • This year we are facilitating an interaction session with the UPLINK Faculty mentors and the shortlisted candidates. The purpose of this interaction session is to provide a forum to Faculty mentors & students to interact in-person and discuss their interests. The final UPLINK Faculty mentor assignments will happen after incorporating the inputs from the faculty & shortlisted students based on their in-person interaction session at CODS.
  • 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. This support is capped at 2.0 Lakhs INR per faculty mentor.
  • We plan to support about 11 students in the 2026 edition.

Application Process

  • To apply for the internship, a student must fill the 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.
  • Mentor Interaction Session at CODS 25 to be held in Pune between Dec 17-20, 2025.

Faculty Mentors

As in previous years, the 2026 edition will feature as mentors faculty members from top academic institutes in India working on cutting-edge AI and Data Science topics. We will announce the 2026 list of faculty mentors on Sep-28, 2025. Stay tuned.

Uplink Interns 2026

This year the response for Uplink was overwhelming. We received around 700 applications from close to 350 different institutions across India. There were many excellent applications. Unfortunately we were able to select only 11 of these as the Uplink interns for 2026. Congratulations to the selected candidates.

Intern Mentor Topic
Namrata Dey
(Central University of Jharkhand)		 Arjun Bhagoji
(IIT Bombay)		 Towards Simultaneously Robust, Private and Fair Machine Learning Models
Akshit Salhotra
(Delhi Technological University)		 Ashutosh Modi
(IIT Kanpur)		 1. Investigating Multi-Step Reasoning in LLMs via Logit Receptors and Latent World Models
2. Modeling and Evaluating Multi-Task Sign Language Understanding: Translation, Topic Modeling, and Lexical Detection
Jahar Kumar Paul
(Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute (RKMVERI))		 Chirag Jain
(IISc)		 Development of fast algorithms for identifying bubbles in pangenome graphs
Silajeet Banerjee
(Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute)		 Harshad Khadilkar
(IIT Bombay)		 Deploying an AI browser agent in the real world
Kumar Aryan
(Central University of Jharkhand)		 Krishna Pillutla
(IIT Madras)		 Differentially private synthetic data generation
Debeshee Sen
(Heritage Institute of Technology, Kolkata)		 Leelavati Narlikar
(IISER Pune)		 Exploring Splice Sites
Ritisha Saha
(Institute of Engineering and Management (IEM), Kolkata)		 Shaon Chakrabarti
(NCBS, Bangalore)		 A Generative-AI approach to inferring single-cell circadian clock phase
Christi Mariam Thomas
(Model Engineering College, Thrikkakkara)		 Shweta Jain
(IIT Ropar)		 Bi-Stage Fairness in Influence Spread over Networks under Uncertainty
Shweta Yadav
(Rajiv Gandhi Institute Of Petroleum Technology)		 Sriparna Saha
(IIT Patna)		 A Mechanistic Interpretability Pipeline for Evaluating Poem-to-Image Generation in Diffusion Models
Yadynesh D Sonale
(Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing, Kancheepuram)		 Vineeth N Balasubramanian
(IIT Hyderabad)		 Multimodal Perception and Reasoning in Foundation Models
Yash Amit Kulkarni
(Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Kondhwa, Pune)		 Vineeth N Balasubramanian
(IIT Hyderabad)		 Multimodal Perception and Reasoning in Foundation Models

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 Oct-10, 2025.
  • 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.

Timeline for Uplink 2026

The time for all deadlines is 23:59 IST.

Oct-13th, 2025Applications open
Oct-31st, 2025Applications closed
Nov-07,2025 Candidates selected for in-person interaction have been notified via email.
Dec-17-20,2025Mentor Interaction session at CODS with shortlisted candidates
Apr 15, 2026Selected interns announced on Uplink webpage
May 1, 2026Internship starts
Jun 15, 2026Midterm feedback
Jul 31, 2026Internship ends
Aug, 2026Final presentations

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, 2026.
  • The student must be available full time (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, 2026 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. Otherwise your application will be rejected. 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 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"

IKDD : ACM India Special Interest Group On Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining