During my first year of my master’s course in Physics at IIT Kanpur, I was selected for the prestigious ISTernship programme (May 2019-July 2019). ISTernship is a research internship organised by the Institute of Science and Technology (IST), Austria. Though I am more inclined towards experimental Physics in the field of optics, I do enjoy programming quite a lot. Thus, I had applied for a Computational Physics project under the guidance of Prof Chris Wojtan, a professor affiliated with the Computer Science department. This would be my first international internship and so I was both excited and nervous at the same time!
Upon reaching the Institute, I was thrilled to see the cosy accommodation I had received at the institute’s guest house. From the window, I could see a pond with ducks and hills in the background. After interacting with my supervisor and the group members, I started reading articles on various computer graphics projects (simulating soap bubbles, water waves, fabrics, techniques like spring-mass systems etc) before settling upon “Simulating Surface Water Waves: An Analogy with Schrodinger Equation” as my internship topic. The project involved using Python (matplotlib and pyqtgraph package) for simulating surface water waves and studying their advection. A comparison was made with the Schrodinger equation which was later incorporated into the wave equation for surface water waves to study the dispersion phenomenon. According to this theory, a wave packet (group of waves) would spread out while travelling as each wave has a different speed. The simulation was carried out for a Gaussian wave packet.
Several lectures, meetings and workshops were held at the institute which made it feel like a lively, interactive research centre. Two of the big events were the ‘Young Science Symposium’ and ‘Open Day.’ In the ‘Young Science Symposium’, people got to know the work being done by the other research groups of the institute. Several speakers from different parts of the world gave a glimpse of their ideas. The ‘Open Day’ was primarily focused on the school children. There were fun science exhibits that would stimulate creative scientific thinking.
IST is located in the town of Klosterneuburg, which is situated on the outskirts of the capital city of Vienna. It would take about half an hour to reach prominent places in Vienna. Vienna is known for its musical and architectural heritage. On weekends, I would go exploring the city, attend classical music concerts, take bike tours and hike the woods, enjoying nature. If you like books, make sure to visit the “Shakespeare & Company” bookstore, the only bookstore selling English books in Viena. As opposed to the culture in India, people would spend weekends away from academics and indulge in hobbies to rewind. Sports constitute a significant part of my life so I enrolled at a local table tennis club in Klosterneuburg (ASV Klosterneuburg). People at the club were very welcoming and the coach (Fabrizian Pokorny) would give valuable inputs for improving my game. Being the captain of my home institute’s team, I wanted to stay in touch with the game.
Towards the end of my internship, I decided to bike along the Danube cycle trail from Linz to Vienna in 3 days. Click here to know more about this trip. On the whole, it was one of the most memorable trips I made and would highly recommend students to apply for the ISTernship and consider IST Austria for their graduate studies. The students are treated with a lot of respect.
The above videos are simulations in Python using pyqtgraph library. The first video is for a wave packet following the dispersion relation of a free particle given by the Schrodinger equation. The second video is for surface water waves given by the deepwater dispersion relation.
On subsequent pages, there are photographs that document my stay in Klosterneuburg and sightseeing in Vienna.
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