That 'edge' at Samsung
Winning the ‘Samsung EDGE’ competition was an unexpected turn in life. My team and I became overnight stars at IIT Madras. This redefined our purpose, gave us the much-needed motivation. This also opened up new opportunities in the form of a summer internship at Samsung R and D Institute, Bengaluru (SRI-B).
Over 12 floors of cutting-edge research justified SRI-B’s position as Samsung’s largest R and D facility outside South Korea. SRI-B, with some of India’s best engineers pushing the technology barrier, also has the distinction of filing the highest number of patents in the IT sector in India. It was a great honour to be part of such an organisation.
I interned with SRI-B’s multimedia services team (MMST). The Camera UI for every Samsung smartphone is designed by this team. Adding to this, they had major contributions to the Galaxy S7 and S8. This gave me a positive outlook about working here.
Unlike other companies where interns are made to do run-of-the-mill work, interns here are treated much like the employees. We got to work on a contemporary research problem, which the team would want to solve in the future.
In this way, you get to learn something useful while helping the team do the basic ground work in the area. It is a win-win situation.
Right from day one, I could feel the open-mindedness to approaching the problem at hand. This was facilitated by SRI-B’s work culture. Despite it being such a huge organisation, I felt as if I worked at a startup. Being a themed office, each floor was unique in its own way.
There was no fixed dress code, and the working hours were flexible. Apart from free food, there were great recreational facilities. Regular talks on tech and non-tech topics as well as one-on-one interviews with the MD kept the experience engaging.
The ‘huge’ food court also has an authentic Korean restaurant, which is pretty rare to find in India. Also, during the summer, SRI-B organised TechGlanz, a fest where each department showcased their recent products as well as discussed their direction of research in the future. This was extremely useful for employees as well as interns, to discover interesting activities within the company.
Towards the end of the internship, a ‘Eureka’ moment occurred, with my project demonstrating astonishing results as well as the scope for being used in future Samsung flagships. I was appreciated by the senior members of MMST for coming up with a good solution in just eight weeks. A research paper based on my work has been accepted in the International Conference on Consumer Electronics, a part of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, scheduled for January 2018. CES is the flagship event for the consumer electronics industry, where each manufacturer unveils their future plans. It is a huge opportunity for me to be the face of IIT Madras and SRI-B on such an international scale.
Anirudth. N is a third year student pursuing B.Tech, electrical engineering at IIT Madras, and interned with Samsung for two months
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