Journey of mechanical to physics and profile building for applying abroad | Physics After Engineering blog

नमस्ते! I am Ankul Prajapati, a physics connoisseur and final year mechanical undergraduate from SV National Institute of Technology, Surat. After completing school I always wanted to study pure physics and become a theoretical physicist but my own put a condition that if I get IISc or IISER then only will choose physics for undergraduate otherwise will go for engineering and then complete higher study in physics. Unfortunately, I couldn't able to score well in JEE Advance and finally decided to choose Mechanical Engineering at NIT Surat as most of the physics aspirant do, who don't get pure physics at the undergrad level. Till first year I was not aware that in future, engineering degree would not be accepted at most of the institution for physics master or PhD. When I got to know all the scenario, somehow I able to manage and started searching for opportunities to the student like me. In the second year of BTech spent more than 50% time sitting in front of a laptop and doing research and finding my interest. For this followed a very simple method and would recommend to everyone. At the very first you need to realise your prime area of research interest, to find out this you can target top colleges in the world and their detailed research area with impact. If you find something interesting, go in-depth and read about the ongoing project and associated faculty research papers, thus you will be having all fields exposer and a point where the scientific world is working right now.

After realising my interest in astrophysics and cosmology, joined the applied physics department at my own institute for a project under the supervision of a professor. After spending the whole one year realised that it's not my cup of tea because of lots of data analysis work involved in astrophysics. Later on, I explored my second area of interest that is Quantum Technology and continuing same. At the end of the first year, I thought let's see if some student chapter can help me in building the profile but found useless. This was the time when I thought to found an own research organisation and finally with 4 other students founded a research group named Bose.X (https://www.bosex.org/about-us) \\more detail can be found on site\\. And currently, it is consisting of 25 core members.

Time was passing very fast and one thing always bothered me that is very fewer achievements according to the age, as I have seen many other countries' students doing great even in school only (Hunger for achievements). Fortunately, in the second year of course, during winter, I got selected for a course by Indian Academy of Science where I met many renowned scientists including Royal society of London fellows. And this was the turning point as few of them suggested to write research papers to get selected at the top physics institute and the day onwards, I started working my own with other junior friends under Bose.X group. In the second year again could not get a physics internship and joined at Cryogenic Engineering Centre IIT KGP, where I had the opportunity to work on semi cryogenic rocket engine, the obtained results are already published in reputed Journal and International conferences. The same result presented at an ISRO conference and this was my first conference. I believe in practicality and self-motivation. In this conference when I didn't find any undergraduate student got a very high thrust of motivation which was fueled after meeting with Missile Woman Dr Tessy Thomas and Brahmos CEO Dr Mishra. During the third year, I continued in quantum technology and worked on quantum dot-based photovoltaics and presented a few papers in international conferences. After the third year I was expecting to get an intern abroad but due to funding issue could not. So decided to be in India only and get selected for three internships (IUCAA, IISc and BARC). According to project and area of interest, I decided to go for IUCAA where I worked with Dr Joydeep Bagchi (Lead discoverer of farthest known supercluster Sarswati). Knowing the need of next-generation technology I continued my research work in quantum dots based devices such as solar cell and qubits, the computational results and study have been presented at International Conferences and published in Springer Nature also. Most of the work has been done independently under Bose.X. 

Now the time came when I have to decide whether to go for direct PhD or Master. As I was not fully ready for writing Physics GRE so I left with only European and Australian institutes. Before applying for the next degree I was having a total of 8 research papers (5 Conf + 3 Journals) so I was quite confident about the selection. And finally, till date got acceptance from the Sapienza University of Rome (QS Physics world ranking 34) in nanophysics and expecting to get an offer from Max-Plank integrated PhD program (IMPRS). My other backup plan was to join IIT Bombay for one year as a research assistant (already confirmed). Most of us don't have enough research experience in profile so joining RA is always a safe option and gives us a better opportunity. Forgoing abroad building profile is very important, I would suggest to be very precise about the area of interest and work with professors or independent if you can and try to attend some conferences with results, the path will be automatically generated. I think there are already articles for test preparation and procedure so refer to those. 

Bose.X - It is an independent scientific research group where people collaborate, learn and grow together to help them in scientific endeavour. It was founded in 2018 by me and Shashwat Singh (third-year mechanical undergraduate at SVNIT). It provides proper training for research which can be turned into innovation and later on techniques for scaling the ideas, along with this framing India's educational policy and building a think tank through which they can prepare themselves to tackle future challenges. Students of different disciplines who want to do research in any field, but are unable to find proper guidance or suitable background for the same. This group binds such people together and provides all information about conferences, essays and competitions which are being held every year to encourage young researchers. In this way overall development of an individual takes place. Currently, our major research work is focused on different emerging technologies and fundamental physical problems like Quantum Engineering, Nanoscience and Renewable Energy etc. Its long-term vision is to provide training for research, innovation and commercialisation (TRIAC), and ultimately work for creating multiple Satyendra Nath Bose and C V Raman like scientists for India as the name of the group indicates. (https://www.bosex.org/about-us).

For my research papers, you can google the full name. 

Thank you for reading (sorry for grammatical mistakes if any)