Sammendrag
Drishti Sen shares her experience from her internship at The Arctic university of Norway UiT.
Drishti Sen shares her experience from her internship at The Arctic university of Norway UiT.
No wonder, Norway has always seemed fascinating from my school days. Pictures of the aurora dancing over the starry night sky, and an explanation of why this country goes days without the sun and experiences the longest nights – almost felt like a figment of imagination. As a final year student pursuing Integrated Master of Technology in Applied Geophysics from IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, India, when the opportunity came to pursue an internship at the prestigious UiT Norway, that too at the intersection geoscience and computer science, one can only look forward to
I worked on developing a GUI using Python codes for automated mineral quantification of the seafloor massive sulfide mineralization using the SEM-EDS mapping technique under the guidance of Prof. Sabina Palinkas, Prof. Carly Faber and Prof. Dilip Kumar Prasad. My day would begin early in the morning with a mug of hot coffee and a toast with the most iconic Norwegian brown cheese, followed by a pleasant walk to the Department of Geoscience where I would spend my day writing, running and refining codes, meetings with supervisors for regular updates and instructions, and brainstorming sessions on how the product can be further improved. The sight of snow-clad mountains, and cruise ships through the windows is a distraction I can only ask more for. Occasionally, I would also walk down to the Department of Computer Science, as the project rightfully demands a multi-disciplinary collaborative approach. I also got the chance to visit the lab where the SEM images are taken.
Coming from a geoscience background, this internship opened the door for me to explore coding for varied tasks, mainly: image analysis, ML-powered image segmentation, and interactive GUI development. While I struggled initially with such new concepts, the availability of right resources and guidance provided me with a very good understanding of the work that I was doing and it further made me confident to come out of my comfort zone into the unknown and face new challenges.
Outside work, I had the exquisite opportunity to explore a range of Norwegian delicacies: salmon, whale meat, potato flatbreads, and ice creams. I also visited the Polar Museum and the Arctic University Museum of Norway, inside them a living history of the Norwegian lifestyle. In a fast changing world, Norway makes you take a pause, and appreciate the highly advanced country still deeply rooted in its rich culture and heritage.
The weather in Norway is also something to experience. When I landed at Tromso in the last week of September, I was greeted by gusty winds and drizzle at 3 degree C. Helge, our coordinator during the internship drove me from the airport to our accommodation while also giving a tour of the campus. On the morning of my return on 23rd November, the temperature was at minus 10 degree C. It was the last day of the year with sunrays at Tromso.
Helge dropped us at the airport as we proceeded to catch our flight back home with a once in a lifetime experience.