Tanya Kushwahaa and the beginning of my SoHPC 2022 journey …
My delightful journey from New Delhi to …
Hello and welcome to the first blog post of my life! I am Tanya Kushwahaa from the capital of India, New Delhi. I am 22 years old. I have just finished my Master and looking forward to start my PhD, starting October. Let me tell you how it all started. I was always into science and basic questions about the origin, existence and end of different objects were intriguing for me. It started with a Venus flytrap and photosynthesis process in the third standard and I ended up in studying the different processes in the stars and the Universe, by the final year of my high school. My interest in astronomy and aim to be an astronaut are the reasons I chose to study Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics in high school.
I finished my high school in the year 2017, and went to Hungary for my Bachelors in Physics. During my Bachelors, I was taught many courses but what really grabbed all my interest were the two semesters of C programming course. It was the very first time I learnt about coding and enjoyed coding so much, that soon felt, coding is the thing I would like to include in my future studies and projects. Keeping this in mind, I applied for Master programs which consisted of a major part in both Physics and Programming. In 2020, I started my Master degree in Physics and Computational Physics in Besançon, France. During the two years of my Masters, I developed my coding skills in Python, FORTRAN and Matlab. My favourite courses among all were the Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence courses. I started as a beginner and now I consider myself an intermediate Python and FORTRAN programmer, who may not be able to solve a problem immediately but know how to think and proceed to find solution of a problem. My coding skills have opened many opportunities for me and I expanded my network with different astronomy groups in Hungary, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. This has connected me to different people, cultures, languages and cuisines. I believe Science is a great tool to bring humankind together. On the way to explore one new culture, I will start my PhD in October 2022 on “Exploiting GAIA data and understanding the galaxies’ past histories with machine learning” at the Cardiff University in the UK.
Well, I do not have any specific hobby, The most I like is to be around people because that’s when I learn the most. Besides this, I like cooking, playing, dancing, and everything in short. I have always loved sharing my culture and learning different cultural practices.
Why SoHPC 2022?
After finishing my Masters, I was looking for summer internships. One day my Master coordinator sent us an email with the SoHPC 2022 program. The email was in French and I was too lazy to translate from French to English but automatic Google translate did its magic and translated the email. I thought it is a French program and did not plan to apply. Soon after reading about the program and its projects, I realised that I have found my summer internship for this year. I liked several projects but unfortunately most projects required C/C++ as pre-requisite. One project which took my attention was Neural networks in chemistry – search for potential drugs for COVID-19. I enjoyed AI course so much that I decided to keep this project as my first preference. This project is basically the application of Neural Networks on the SARS-CoV-2 molecules to select potential drugs for COVID-19. The subject is very new for me and I hope to learn many things during the SoHPC 2022 about which I will update you in my next blog.
What are my expectations from SoHPC 2022?
I have a lot of expectations from the program and from myself as I want to learn advanced computational skills, increase networking with PRACE and learn about the future projects. But let’s be realistic, the most I expect from my participation in the program is to improve my coding skills and write efficient codes, learn coding with MPI and GPU programming, and learn to use computer clusters, which would help me greatly in my PhD research. Other than this, I would like to connect more people, especially females to join HPC, SoHPC, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), in general. I would like to spread the motive of SoHPC, i.e., to inform, engage, and inspire everyone, especially the youth, to work more towards advanced computing and STEM, through my blog posts.
So, here is the end of my first blog post. Feel free to ask any questions about my journey, the SoHPC 2022 program or my ongoing work in the comment section, at the bottom of the page. See you in the next blog post with interesting results on my SoHPC 2022 project!
Congratulations!
Keep up the hard work!