A student of Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) Akshath Sharma has made India proud by being the only student from the country to bag the prestigious Cambridge International scholarship. He has been offered to complete a direct PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cambridge, U K, starting this Michelmas Term 2015.
Around 80 students are selected to offer the scholarship on the basis of academic merit. He is the only Indian to have been inducted directly after his B.Tech, with the requirement of a Masters degree waived. He has been awarded full-funding, under the sponsorship of the Cambridge International Scholarship.
What the professors have to say?
VIT University senior professor Dr Satyajit Ghosh said, “A limited number of students from around the globe are selected for this scholarship for which thousands of applications are made including the students of IIT’s but only a small proportion is awarded to Engineering students but it was Akshath they chose”.
Akshath’s thesis
Further adding Satyajit Ghosh who taught and mentored, Akshath’s thesis entitled “A novel geo-engineering application to mitigate cyclones over the Bay of Bengal” said “This is not only a first for VIT University, but is also a spectacular achievement by any standards”
About Akshath and his experience at VIT
Akshath also led VIT’s Team Vimaanas project to international limelight in the USA, secured the second rank in the BTech Mechanical Engineering programme year with a CGPA of 9.64. He thanked VIT by saying that VITs Project Based Learning (under the FFCS scheme) enabled him to work on a research project a full year in advance culminating in the Final Year Project.
“VIT gave me the complete freedom to choose whichever field I wanted to do research in from the first year itself.” The fully flexible credit system within VIT allowed me to choose the professors I wanted study and work with, and the system of project based learning (PBL) courses allowed me to conduct research parallel to the conventionally taught courses,” he says.
Akshath's view upon selection
After being selected for the scholarship he was of the view that he wants to finish his PhD within the stipulated time of three years. What is more challenging is that he will be joining directly as a PhD candidate (without a Masters degree) and he further has a desire to try his hand in academic research on successful completion of Ph.D degree at Cambridge.
