Hey there! I’m Advait Mehla, a final-year undergraduate from the Physics department. I’m still figuring out my exact niche, but I am broadly interested in experimental astronomy with a preference toward instrumentation. I interned at the LIGO Lab in Caltech under the guidance of Prof. Rana Adhikari in the summer of 2023.
Brace for a long-winded set of ramblings that inevitably turn into a travel blog near the end. I clearly got ahead of myself while writing this.
Some background about myself – I am passionate about astronomy and love the night sky. Being a part of Krittika helped me explore the field more through some projects early on and brought me in contact with many amazing seniors doing research. Before my internship, I worked on a long-term project related to the Daksha space telescope at STAR Lab in the Physics department. I found the prospect of contributing to a state-of-the-art mission like Daksha quite fun, and my work primarily involved extensive simulations and data analysis. Through several electronics lab courses in the core EP curriculum, I felt increasingly attracted to working with hardware in a lab environment and building things. Therefore, I decided that I would try to secure an internship that combines both of these interests, involving the development of instrumentation for astronomy or a related field
From conversations with professors and seniors, I quickly realized that this would be challenging. COVID ensured that our batch had minimal hands-on experience, and my profile was full of computational work. All I had was the experience of the EE lab courses and my enthusiasm. On top of this, experimental projects are usually harder to come by, because 2-3 months are not enough to make meaningful progress, and hardware work obviously can’t be continued remotely. With this in mind, I figured out that I had to apply to every opportunity that I came across and make the most of the little experience that I had. And thus began the dreaded internship saga.
The Internship “Season”
Unlike the structured season conducted by PT Cell, the schedule for research interns is all over the place. Programs are usually the simplest way to get an internship, and they all run on different timelines. MITACS is one of the earliest, with its deadline in mid-September and results in December. Caltech SURF is the last, with the deadline in February and decisions in April(!). This means you constantly live with anxiety for six months or more. It also means you get access to a wide range of opportunities and aren’t restricted to the first place that says yes, unlike your corporate friends. There is always room to get something better suited to your interests, and this is something everyone should try to make use of. I applied to 5 programs, was admitted to three, rejected by one, and withdrew from another. This meant that I had to refuse a couple of offers after initially accepting them, which feels terrible and is something you need to handle delicately and as early as possible to allow them to replace you. You can also inform the professor beforehand that you’ve applied to another program and are awaiting decisions. Academia is full of different opportunities, and most professors understand that students at this stage try to apply wherever possible.
The Selection Process
I was finally admitted to the LIGO-SURF program at Caltech, a subset of the larger SURF program that has ~25 interns who work within the LIGO research group. This involves a wide variety of projects, most of which are astrophysics and data analysis related, but Indian interns have to apply through a different channel and are only taken in for experimental work. A form for this is floated by IUCAA Pune on their website. They ask for two references and the usual SOP, CV, transcript, etc. IUCAA scans through these applications and selects a handful that are sent to the experimental LIGO group at Caltech for further scrutiny. I filled out this form in December and received an email in February that informed me that I was selected for the next round and had to solve an assignment. After this, I was called for a short interview in which they asked me about my prior projects. By early March, I was informed that I had been accepted! With 2.5 months to my start date, a new and even more nail-biting quest to acquire a US visa began. This part warrants a whole rant in itself. After a lot of anxiety, I finally received my visa a full 10 days before departure, and I could finally register that this was happening.
(Note: the process above is entirely different from the Caltech SURF program, which requires you to find a professor to mentor you and work out a research proposal with their assistance.)
The Work
I was to work at the LIGO 40m lab (a 100x scaled-down version of the actual observatories) – one of the coolest workplaces on campus, which is already a fantastic place to work. It was built in the 80s, with the proposal of the LIGO experiment to detect gravitational waves. Its purpose was to demonstrate the cutting-edge tech needed to realize the insane final goal of detecting ripples in space-time that are 1/1000th of the size of a proton. It now serves as a test bench to prototype future upgrades. The lab is thus a cool mix of brand-new and ancient equipment worked on by hundreds of people over the decades, which my inner nerd enjoyed. It was fascinating to work at a place that is the foundation of one of the most significant scientific discoveries of our lifetimes and learn about its intricacies.
My work involved building hardware for and implementing a reinforcement-learning based nonlinear control system. A long-term goal for my mentor is to find ways to control the quantum fluctuations of the 40 kg test masses at LIGO, which is usually infinitesimal for a macroscopic object but actually contributes to noise at the current sensitivity of LIGO. This project was intended to be a barebones demonstration of the techniques involved with a classical system. The problem chosen was to control the temperature of a seismometer at the lab. I had no prior experience in ML or controls. Thankfully, I had a co-intern tasked with dealing with the RL side while we both learned controls together, and I worked on designing and building hardware. This work exposed me to many unique considerations made while designing low-noise electronics and the general quirks and problems of working with hardware. The work culture of my lab was quite relaxed, and I could come to work whenever I liked as long as stuff got done. This taught me how to set goals for myself and stay motivated, as I was primarily working on my own, with a meeting once every two weeks with my mentor and some online correspondence other than that. I had to learn how to solve problems independently and figure out how to navigate setbacks. After some stumbling around, I began to enjoy the freedom, and this cemented my desire to pursue graduate studies. My overall experience was great as I learned a lot of practical skills and managed to achieve most of the goals we set for the summer.
The experience of interning at Caltech is unlike any other, as the campus is bustling with people during the summer, with over 800 interns residing there as a part of a dozen different programs, including SURF. This allowed me to meet and interact with people from all over the world, working on super interesting projects in all sorts of fields ranging from rocket propulsion to genetic engineering and anything else you could imagine. They also arranged regular lectures, workshops, and other events for the interns, which meant there was never a dull moment during the summer. Having so many people around was the best part about Caltech, as many people feel a little lonely during their interns because most universities are quite deserted in the summer. Additionally, being a LIGO intern came with a bunch of perks, like a funded visit to Hanford, Washington to one of the actual LIGO sites!
Life in Cali
Located in the quiet town of Pasadena, the relatively tiny campus is just an hour away from Los Angeles, full of its beautiful beaches and dozens of iconic landmarks. For the first time in ages, I had a work-life balance that skewed towards life, and I made the most of this by traveling as much as I could with the friends I made there. We made a formidable bucket list of things to do that we fervently ticked off every weekend. These included art museums full of trippy pieces, hikes, lazy days at the beach, and occasionally even just walking aimlessly downtown. This region’s geography is unique, with a long coastline, barren deserts, lush forests, and lofty mountain ranges all crammed together. It felt like all the extremes of India were compressed into this tiny area, and it made for some unforgettable sights. I discovered that I enjoyed hiking quite a lot and went on several trips to the neighboring Angeles National Forest. Unlike most parts of the US, LA surprisingly has excellent public transportation within the county – even better than Mumbai in some ways. It’s also relatively safe during the day once you get desensitized to all the crackheads doing weird shit, but always try to travel in a group.
/Wherever you go for an intern, I highly recommend traveling as much as the stipend permits and making the most of this opportunity to explore a new part of the world on your own. If you stay holed up in a room like we often do in IITB, there would be nothing differentiating you from your corporate friends working in sad places like Gurgaon and Bangalore. Seeing them question life decisions is a great experience, especially because you will question yours when you hear about their salaries next year (true story).
Generic Advice
For some final words of advice to future research enthu kids – remember to plan out your internship season early by identifying a few fields you want to work in and reaching out to seniors who did similar stuff. Don’t overthink this part – this is the first of many opportunities to try something new – you may or may not end up liking it, and it is easy and common to switch to something different later – as long as it isn’t too different :P. Academia is very flexible. Keep track of deadlines and persistently remind your recommenders about the same – missing a deadline is the worst feeling in the world, and these are very rigid. This is something that you definitely don’t want to procrastinate.
Your job is to optimize your chances by giving the applications your best. If things don’t work out in the end, there are plenty of other opportunities within India which you can secure and are often equally prestigious. Remember that good research can be done anywhere, and not making it to one of these programs is not the end of the world. The selection processes for many of these programs are infamously random, and very often, not getting through is just due to awful luck. So remember to improvise, adapt, and overcome to make the most of this kickstart to your academic journey.
