Research Experience
Research Projects I have undertaken
May 2024 - Present
Fraunhofer-Institut für Angewandte Festkörperphysik (IAF)
Pursuing master thesis in the topic of Classical and Quantum algorithms (QAOA) for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, under Dr. Thomas Wellens and Vanessa Dehn. Studying NP Complete problems like MaxCut and Max3SAT and investigating the efficiency of solutions using QAOA.
August 2023 - March 2024
Fraunhofer-Institut für Kurzzeit Dynamik, Ernst-Mach Institut (EMI)
Worked as a student research assistant (Hilfswissenschaftler or Hiwi in short) in the Risk Management and Structural Protection Department (Abteilung Risikomanagement und Baulicher Schutz). Assisted the development of a demonstrator for quantum computing approaches for resilience analyses of network structures, under Dr. Christoph Brockt.
May 16 - May 27 2022
A.T.S.O.A. 2022, ARIES Nainital
Attended the ARIES Training School in Observational Astronomy 2022 (ATSOA https://www.aries.res.in/atsoa2022/), conducted by the Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciencES (ARIES). Topics related to telescopes, optical data analysis techniques, star formation and evolution, galactic and extragalactic astronomy were covered during the school.
As part of this training school, I also completed a project on Data Reduction and Photometric Analysis of Blazars. In this project, our group analyzed image data of the MRK 501 blazar, obtained from the ARIES 1.3 m Devasthal Fast Optical Telescope (DFOT), using BVRI Johnson-Cousins filter. Photometric analysis (aperture photometry) was done for the blazar image, from which the apparent magnitude of the blazar was obtained and its light curves were plotted. The image cleaning as part of pre-processing was carried out using the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility (IRAF) software, and the processing and post-processing tasks were performed using the Dominion Astronomical Observatory PHOTometry (DAOPHOT) software.
January 2021 - August 2021
J Karthik, et. al. "Topological data analysis and Comparison of physical parameters of different forms of Graphene." Int. J. of Computational Materials Science and Surface Engineering.
Abstract: Different crystallographic forms of graphene were investigated for their physical properties using reported experimental crystal structure data and molecular dynamics study. We find interesting changes in the values of certain physical parameters and also three-dimensional spatial variations specifically for Young’s, Linear and Shear moduli of graphene. The simulated strength of the graphene in different forms are compared with experimental values for further insight into the graphene to establish structure-property relation. Topological data analysis has been carried out using a two-dimensional plot that is generated using platon using cif files of different forms of graphene.
Worked on this project from January to August 2021, under the guidance of Prof. R. Somashekar, University of Mysore
Article Published on: 22 December 2022
DOI: 10.1504/IJCMSSE.2022.10052084
https://www.inderscience.com/info/inarticle.php?artid=127980
[UPDATE as on 31.04.22] : Reviewers' comments received.
[UPDATE as on 27.06.22] : Article Accepted for Publication.
October 2020 - December 2020
Project Experience
Learned basics of Molecular Dynamics Simulations using LAMMPS (Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator) while working towards the project "Stable amorphous system using Kob-Andersen type binary Lennard-Jones mixture with a Yukawa potential".
The project could not be completed due to health issues during the time.
Summer Project (Astronomy)
May 2020 - August 2020
Developed a pipeline to compute the ephemeris of any heliocentric object given three observations of the object. It involved principles of Celestial Mechanics and Numerical Analysis. This project was preceded by a set of tutorials on basic Astrophysics, which covered topics like photometric image reduction, exoplanets and gravitational waves.
In this project, I learned Celestial Mechanics & intermediate Python programming. I mastered NumPy, MatPlotLib, SciPy and AstroPy packages and also became competent in working on Github. The whole team communication was done in Slack.
Paper Presentation
February 2019
Presented a paper on "Analysis of Electrical Parameters of Commercial SiC Schottky Power Diodes through Different Models" with Dr Santosh Kumar (Assistant Professor in Physics, Department of Education in Science and Mathematics, RIE Mysore) and Navya Jose (M.Sc.Ed.Physics, RIE Mysore) during National Science Day (NSD) 2019 at RIE Mysore.
Abstract published in the conference proceedings of NSD 2019.