Summer Internship with EI DuPont — Abhijit from IIT Roorkee
Wildcard Entry for: – 10th August 2012
Name of the intern: – Abhijit
Institute: – IIT Roorkee
Organization interned with: – El DuPont India Private Limited
In the future, when I will look back at my internship in DuPont, I think I will be calling it a lucky break for me hopefully like what James Cameron does about ‘Terminator’. Ever since the second half of my second year, when I started understanding about polymers and polymer companies and R&D etc., I wanted to spend at least one of my summers working at a major multinational polymer company and to see the live transformation of an idea into a profit-making product.
The best I found was the DuPont Knowledge Center at Hyderabad and I was determined to do an internship over there at least once before completion of my degree. Neither my professors nor I had any contact at DuPont and so perplexed on what to do, I started mailing almost all the IDs on internet ending with @ind.dupont.com from September till March when finally one fine day, I got a call from my to-be guide who took a brief telephonic interview and discussed the internship details with me. And this is how, after a number of attempts by my seniors and even my super-seniors in the previous years, I finally got to be a part of one of the largest and most dynamic science driven companies in the world, EI DuPont Nemours Pvt. Ltd.
DuPont was founded in 1802 by a Frenchman who had emigrated to US with nothing but a secret recipe to make high quality gun-powder. One thing led to another and by the beginning of 20th century, DuPont had grown into one of the largest companies in the world, well poised to bring in one revolution after another. Nylon, Kevlar, Teflon, Freon, neoprene rubber, genetically modified crops, pesticides/insecticides, etc., which were invented at DuPont are today an integral part of our civilization. In fact, the space suit worn by Neil Armstrong had 21 layers in it, 20 of which were made from DuPont polymers.
The place where I interned was DuPont Knowledge Center, one of the seven research stations of DuPont all around the globe. Research on materials, biotechnology and engineering systems is undertaken by a team of around 400 scientists/associates in Hyderabad. One of the best things about my internship was the fact that I was working on a live project. This meant that the project was a part of the company’s plans and the company would be interested in commercializing it if it gave satisfactory results. I always had this feeling while I was working that I was doing something big and hopefully, if some day one of the products I was working on actually comes into the market, I will be as proud as a father who sees his new-born kid.
My work involved processing and characterization so I had to work with different departments for different work. The most important thing I learnt during my internship was the ability to divide a major problem into easily solvable chunks and prioritizing the key elements to ensure work happens smoothly even if there is some obstruction. In short, I learnt how to do a project. My approach on the first day was to read as much as I could which by the last day had changed to read as smartly as I could. And at DuPont, it’s important because time is the major constraint even though almost infinite resources are with you. When the same property can be obtained using 10 different instruments, it becomes important to have sound logic behind choosing the right method. And this is what I saw everyone at DuPont was doing. In limited time, a lot of work was getting done and the key reason was that every step was taken only after a solid reason for it was found to exist. The habit of attaching ‘why?’ at the end of every assertion in my mind I acquired during my work is something I would never like to forget in my career.
DuPont has a set of core values — two of them which I would like to mention are Safety and Respect for people. There are 10 different types of gloves to wear on top of your nitrile gloves and aprons, masks are a must. Protocols like these have resulted in zero accidents in the past 5 years and the worst remark during a safety audit is not more than lack of labels on dustbins. Respect for people is also something I admired about DuPont as I don’t remember even a single person losing his cool and speaking rudely in front of me. Also, whenever I made a mistake, people would prefer explaining to me and how to avoid it rather than escalating the whole issue. I think this speaks volumes about the character of the company and why the company has the most talented people in the industry.
DuPont is full of IITians. IIT Roorkee is the least represented IIT (it seems I was the only one) and hopefully this will change soon with a full-fledged Polymer Engineering undergraduate program running at IIT Roorkee. I had a lot of preconceived notions about working in core polymer field. Most of them were replaced by a feeling of admiration and a sense of belonging by the time I completed my two and a half months. Still being two years away from graduation, it’s hard to know right now what I will do in the future but I surely would have this as one of the best options in front of me.
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