DAAD-WISE Internship Experience: Researching Photonics in Germany

I had the opportunity of working at the Abbe School of Photonics in Jena with Dr. Frank Setzpfandt.

Jena was a wonderful place for me to do my internship. It was a small town but it was very beautiful and offered a perfect environment for doing research. It was heavily student-centric since about 25% of the population were students. Personally, I did not face any problems in adjusting to life over there since everything was very well organized. The public transport was excellent and even the Mensa’s were very well placed across the city. Everything was very easily accessible and there were no problems with travel within the city.

I was initially worried about going to a country which spoke a completely different language and had a different culture than what I was brought up in. However, I found out that there was no need to worry. The people I was working with were very warm and welcoming. There was no such language barrier that I had imagined since everyone spoke English. Of course, outside of work, I did face some issues with communicating with other people, but they were not so serious. I got my city registration work done without any problems and day to day activities such as shopping, eating out, etc. were also not a problem.

I also traveled quite a lot and I felt that this experience gave me a lot of confidence in terms of being able to live anywhere on my own. I felt that I matured a lot during this internship since for the first time in my life I had to cook for myself and manage my money. Meeting different people was also a great experience and I really appreciated the cultural diversity that I could find in Germany. I was able to make a lot of new friends and learn about different cultures and places.

Overall, I really enjoyed the experience and I feel that being in a different lab environment really helped me strengthen my knowledge in my field of interest. My internship was very hands-on and required an equal amount of experimental and simulation-based work. I felt that it really helped me understand the experimental process better since I explored both sides of the work. The lab environment was very nice in the sense that there was no stress or competition. Everybody helped each other a lot and the scientific collaboration that occurred benefited everyone. My PhD guide helped me a lot when I first started and I was able to learn a lot of new things.

My professor was quite happy with what I had accomplished in 3 months and agreed to support me in my future endeavors. He was a great person to work with and I interacted with him on a daily basis which was very productive for my internship. After doing this internship, I feel much more confident in pursuing a career in research.