IITD Bootcamp Week 2

For those who didn’t read my last post (link here!), I was recently selected for a Change.Makers Bootcamp hosted by the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. The following post talks about the second week of the camp.

Week 2

In the second week, our training sessions began. IITD has a huge workshop with tools like laser cutters, 3D printers and water jet cutters. This is called the MakerSpace (link!). This place is…alive and expensive. The entire workshop is decorated with projects people made themselves. Interactive LED displays, a light table that changes based on the sound it interacts with, racecar chassis, 3D printed toys and what not.

We had Computer Application Design (CAD) training for two days. I managed this in those sessions:

In the MakerSpace training we were taught how to use the water jet cutter, the laser cutter, the 3D printer as well as an assortment of power tools like welding machines and power drills.

Computers have gotten so strong. There’s a piece of code or program for anything you can think of. And to think that all of that is made by actual people- people who have studied the same things I probably will- is baffling and amazing all at once.

On one day, there was also a tour of the Kusuma School Of Biological Sciences. I didn’t understand much of the stuff we saw because I’m not really into biology. But, the applications of biology I saw were so novel. There were many inter-disciplinary labs. Like biostatistics- that’s the first time I’ve even heard the word. Biology extends so much farther than medical, and it’s a shame that angle isn’t taught much in schools. We saw a cryo-electron microscope (worth rs 5Cr!) that took such insane pictures. We were introduced to calorimetry for drug analysis as well.

We were taught to work by a way called double-diamond development. And then work in spirals.

So, first two weeks were more training and research oriented. My team members and I had a good idea about what we wanted to do, and a bad idea of how we wanted to do it. We had started on some parts of the project as well. Week 3 was a lot more hands-on and execution related. A future blog will talk about week 3 and different facets of our project.