BENGALURU: A student from the International Institute of Information Technology - Bangalore (IIIT-B) has bagged a prestigious residency program with tech giant Google, which also comes with a pay cheque of Rs 1.2 crore per year. He is one of only 50 people in the world and around 5 in the country to have been selected for the program this year.
Aditya Paliwal, 22, was in the Integrated MTech dual-degree programme of five years from 2013 to 2018 and will be heading to New York to take up the position. Called the AI (Artificial Intelligence) Google Residency Program, it is for a period of one year with the option to converting it into a full-time placement, said Aditya.
Asked to comment on Aditya winning the residency, R Chandrashekhar, dean, academics, IIIT-B said, “Aditya was one of the bright students at IIIT-B. He has bagged the Google residency, which involves a sum of Rs 1.2 crore for that period.”
Speaking with Express, Aditya said, “I was interning with Google last year and during that time I discovered this program through internal groups. I am more inclined to research but was not sure of doing a PhD immediately. The program was a good compromise and a balance between research and industry. Plus, it is in the domain that I was interested in - AI.”
Aditya further said, “After the one-year period, one can leave the program to pursue a PhD, extend the program or convert the residency into a full-time job. However, the extension of the program and job conversion is bound to be based on your performance.”
Asked about what he was expecting from the program, Aditya said, “We will be working on state-of-the-art research and on writing as many research papers and get interesting results. As of now, I do not know what exact domain I will be assigned to. I am, however, looking forward to meeting people from across the globe and senior researchers and scientists.”
Hailing from Mumbai, Aditya completed his schooling and class 12 there before heading to Bengaluru. As a child, Aditya was always fascinated by computers. “I was always into experimenting and doing different stuff with computers. So studying computer science was a natural decision,” he said. His parents run a business.
Other people from the country who were selected for the program are from IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIT Rourkee and IIT Hyderabad. The program was started in 2015.
Information about it on the firm’s website highlights that the selected individuals will be “embedded alongside distinguished scientists and engineers from an option of research teams, choosing placements within the Google Brain team, Perception, Natural Language Understanding or Google AI.”
Prof Muralidhara V N, an associate professor at the institute who taught Aditya, said, “Aditya was very good at coding and is a very dedicated student. He also participated in the ACM ICPC World Finals twice. This is a prestigious and international programming contest. Only a few teams from the country participate in it every year.”