Friday 24 April 2020

Gratitude Chapter 1


The magical Math inspiration: Dr. A.R. Patil

It was 28.03.2014, almost 6PM, I was about to sign off my Cognizant PC and leave for the day. The mind was running in multiple thoughts, I was fully aware that I am not doing the right thing for me by staying with Cognizant, it was not about work or team but it's about passion. Finally, I returned from the gate of the Cognizant office to my desk. I signed in again reached to HR system and just clicked the option for separation. Well, in same time  I was applying for higher studies in Germany.  I had no response from any University but I had faith in me that I will make it.

I just come back home, it was around 8 pm and I started checking my Gmail. I was almost tired emotionally and mentally. Though I was positive, I had 1% fear if I could not make University then I am left with no other option than going back to farming or starting a new job search. Sometimes luck favors the brave, this saying was going to be True with me that day. I found there was an email from the University of Ilmenau, Germany that I have been selected for the Master's program in Signal Processing. I reread the same email, I  knew no bounds of that moment. I could not believe it but I finally come into senses that it's true. I started looking back, how it happened. I was part of Cognizant for almost 3 years, I tried to be a good Employee but my heart was rooted in Math and its application. This seed was planted by no other than the Great teacher ever I met in my life i.e. Dr.A.R.Patil. He was the hero for our batch, still, he is rocking person with humanity and brilliancy over math.
Well, I studied my bachelor in SGGS Nanded, during my bachelor I could not focus on any subject. Rather I spent time in community activities or studying for UPSC. Entire 4 years if I got interested in one subject, that was math. I stayed in the Boys hostel and Dr. Patil was rector that time. He was new to Hostel management. We came to know that he is having a Ph.D. from IITBITTB Mumbai is a kind of fantasy to many Engineering students. I was able to get his attention by solving the triple integrals problem in mathematics3. Then I came to know that, he is beyond the math. He was an accessible and humble person. Every hostel guy respected him as one of the guardians. His lectures were like a new Harry Potter movie for us. The class was full of students from all streams. People hardly used to get space in the class, so they are left with no option than sitting on the floor. Though it's Euler equations or Ring Theory, learning from him like the math legends is talking to you through him. The Gaussian equations, jacobian theory, or matrix theory were kind of listening poems to me. I had no idea when I will use it again but I learned it like Vedas from Rushis.

It was not only math, but he also taught us leading by example. I told him, there are fewer opportunities for our students to get UPSC guidance in Nanded. Then, we came up with "UPSC-Chapter", he was the first one to donate before Institute. I could not forget his trust in us when he used to give his debit card to us when we were working in summer for events or social things. He was never hesitant to give his brand-new car to take ill students to hospitals. He was the Friend for us to whom we could count in our difficult times. The "UPSC-Chapter" is one of the successful groups in the SGGS. The entire credit goes to him.


Well back to me, after Ilmenau, I got another admit letter from the University of Stuttgart in communication Engineering and Media Technology. I started my masters in Germany, during my first semester, I met again the Jacobin Theory, Ring Theory, calculus viola!! Dr. Patil is back in life again. I loved my master's degree. The passion to apply math continued, this gave me the opportunity to write the first web demo, which was the implementation of "tanh" function, hyperbolic tan. I  loved this stream. Then I did my internship at Bosch Sensortec, where I was part of the Step Counter algorithm team. Guess what? For the entire 6 months we were talking Gauss distribution, Fourier transforms, Euclidean distance. I could not thank enough Dr.A.R. Patil, the math was paying off. Out of nowhere, I decided, I will continue to do my career in the Machine learning field. I took my master thesis "Medical image segmentation using Deep Learning". The medical images are kind of hard to process as they are available in 3-D. I had zero idea, what is Deep learning and all, but I was having a rough idea that it's applied math and some understanding of image processing. Since it had math, so I was kind of relieved that somehow I will do it. I started learning deep learning. After studying 10+ hrs per day, I came to the conclusion that deep learning at the primary stage is nothing but the application of Convolution, matrix operations, calculus, guess what I just saw Dr. Patil guiding me in that Journey. I successfully completed my masters with good grades. Today, I realize the Deep Learning more than what I thought at my primary stage, but it's good to have that curiosity.
After my successful master's degree, I got selected in the Infosys data science team as a Senior Analyst. From day one till today in Infosys, I always see client problems in terms of my mathematical thinking. Learning new things always kept me looking at things differently. I completed another Nano degree in Machine Learning. I wrote my first paper in Infosys, which was nothing but applied math for image analytics.

Every time I have the opportunity to work on challenging tasks in machine learning, NLP, I always get back to my basic learning from Dr. PatilIndeed, those were magical days, and he was one magician teacher. Sir Simply Thank you!!

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