Shouvik Ghosh

My undergrad years have been crucial not only academically, but also psychologically. From being a naive student to working on numerous impactful projects, I have evolved as a student. During my high school days, my perception of "purpose in life" was to seek happiness. I used to do things that would make me happy, like purchasing the latest games or the trendiest attires or trying to score high in exams. However, I always felt a void which none of these activities could fill. Fortunately, I stumbled across Casey Neistat's Youtube channel and his definition of "purpose in life": to be useful, honourable, compassionate and keep on creating something new; instantly resonated with my conscience. With this rooted in my mind, I commenced my bachelor's degree.

During my freshman year, the AI industry boomed and terms like GAN's and CNN's flooded the student community. A brief lookup on these topics and the impact it can cause to society piqued my interest. This, combined with the relevant coursework, sparked my profound curiosity in the field of neural computing. Hence, I rigorously explored various domains and expedited this process by joining NextTech Labs, a QS award-winning student-run research lab. Here, I was involved in peer teaching and mentoring my juniors. I felt that the research environment at my university wasn't at its forefront. With the support of my peers, I started a weekly colloquium on recent trends to promote students' involvement in research. Furthermore, I conducted independent research as well as participated and won numerous hackathons and competitions. This motivated me to the next step: being useful and giving back to the community.

Over the course of the next two years, I actively searched for internship opportunities that matched my interests, intending to make the world a little bit better than the day before. The research experiences at The University of Auckland, IIIT Delhi and now at Veritas, were much more enriching compared to just reading textbooks or completing online courses. Through these experiences, I arrived at the realization that happiness is merely a byproduct of usefulness.

I believe that I would be a good addition to the hackathon environment and I would try to contribute and try to bring about a change, however small it might be.