Hi everyone,
Today I want to share a little bit about my internship as an MSCS student at the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
Choosing the right company for YOU
There are many things to consider when choosing your first job. What are your core values? What are you unwilling to compromise on? What gets you fired up every morning? To me, it is working in an innovation powerhouse that is truly making a difference in the world. I have always wanted to work on cutting-edge technology and use it to impact the greatest number of lives in a positive and ethical way. In my opinion, it is not a good idea to change your core values to what you think the company wants to see. In fact, when you interview for a company, you are also interviewing the people and the culture within. Contrary to popular belief, I believe that interviews are often more about finding a ‘culture/aptitude fit’ than they are about technical competency. For your first few years in the industry of your choosing, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having supportive mentors and teammates to help you learn the craft. I am fortunate to say that my time at Ford, and now at ASML, has allowed me to work with some of the most brilliant minds.
Why I chose ASML
During my second semester at Boston University, I was ecstatic to receive an internship and a full-time offer from ASML, one of the most innovative companies in the world, an absolute juggernaut in the semiconductor industry, and Europe’s highest valued tech firm. I chose to join ASML over other offers for mainly two reasons.
First, ASML is the sole manufacturer of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines. These machines are needed to mass produce the most advanced microchips. A microchip (also called chip) is a compact flat piece of silicon that contains a collection of electrical circuits. A microchip the size of a fingernail has billions of transistors, so one can’t even imagine how tiny the features on a chip must be. It’s difficult to imagine life before microchips. They’re at the core of all the technologies we use to work, travel, keep active, and entertain ourselves – anything from vehicles to smartphones, MRI scanners to industrial robots and data centers. The chance to help drive global technical growth and Moore’s Law (the observation that the number of transistors in a chip doubles approximately every two years) ahead is a dream come true for me. Second, since microchips are used in almost every electronic device we use today, I knew that my work at ASML would positively influence all domains in tech at its core. I was excited to work on new challenges and start a new chapter in my professional life.
My internship experience
My internship is in Wilton, Connecticut. It is ASML’s largest research and development and manufacturing site in the U.S., with expertise in mechatronics, alignment and sensor technology, and world-class optical fabrication. I am a part of the Data Science/Machine Learning team. Since I have little experience in the field of data science, I am making sure to ask a lot of questions and invest a lot of time outside of work learning the fundamentals. My work has allowed me to apply high-performance computing and deep learning algorithms to improve the fault tolerance of complex systems. I am also looking forward to taking on projects involving Kubeflow and deploying machine learning (ML) workflows on containers running on Kubernetes.
Key Learnings
Starting your career signifies taking on a lot of new challenges. These challenges can bring about self-doubt and, at times, make you feel like an imposter. Remind yourself that no one knows everything about everything. What matters is how willing you are to continuously learn and grow. From my experience, working on challenging tasks outside of my comfort zone and learning things along the way has been such an enriching and rewarding experience.
Additional advice
Many times, we do not get our dream internship. It can be disheartening, but it is important to learn how to face the reality. It may surprise you, but you can find a lot of exciting opportunities in places you would not expect. . My advice is to never go into your internship with a negative attitude. Although you may not like the work profile or you wanted another role, you may end up working on different projects and truly enjoying it. You may even meet some great mentors to help you on your career path. As long as you are willing to learn and embrace new opportunities, you will have a positive internship experience!
About The Author:
Aditya Pal
MS in Computer Science
Graduate School of Arts & Sciences