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Top Student from India Conducting Research in Exclusive BAIS Summer Internship Program
By Keith Morelli
TAMPA (May 23, 2019) -- Someone special is here over the next month, participating in an exclusive internship program at the University of South Florida’s Muma College of Business.
Vaibhav Agasti, who is pursuing a technical degree in computer science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Information Technology at Nagpur, is taking part in the Summer Research Internship in Business Analytics, offered through the Information Systems and Decision Sciences Department.
“He is the top student from his institute,” said Kaushik Dutta, a professor with the department who oversees the internship program. “He has been selected through a worldwide search process based on academic performance and interest in research.”
Agasti is expected to graduate in 2020 and is here to work with the Business Analytics and Information Systems faculty and students.
“My experience at USF has been very positive,” he said. “The faculty here are very experienced and are experts in their respective domains. It is a pleasure to work with them.”
The Indian Institute of Information Technology at Nagpur is one of the Indian Institutes of Information Technology, established to facilitate higher education, research and training in various fields of information technology. It was created in 2016 by the Ministry of Human Resources Development and is committed to international recognition as a leader in information technology science and engineering. The institute’s vision, according to the institute’s website, is to be “the fountainhead of new ideas and innovations in information technology and science.”
It seeks to “create an ambiance in which new ideas, research and scholarship flourish and from which the leaders and innovators and IT-entrepreneurs of tomorrow emerge.”
That Agasti chose to take part in the fully funded summer internship at USF says a lot for the university and the Muma College of Business, Dutta said.
“His training will be useful for his future career,” Dutta said. “Currently he is working on research related to household identification for mobile advertisement along with myself and a PhD student. This work will be valuable for potential publication in top journals.”
The USF Summer Research Internship in Business Analytics program lasts eight weeks, from May 15 to July 15 and includes a four-week residence on the Tampa Campus from May 20 through June 20.
The internship program is designed to introduce students in leading undergraduate computer science programs around the world to the evolving world of business analytics and information systems and is completed in two parts. The first part is a residency in the Muma College of Business, in which the student engages in research activities and participates in face-to-face discussions with faculty and other students, and the second part is continuing research work at the student's home institution.
Agasti will be encouraged to work on developing a conference-quality paper by the time he completes the internship back in India. The program is designed to be beneficial to students who intend to continue their studies in the field of business analytics and information systems. And that’s what Agasti intends to do.
“I want to pursue higher education after my graduation,” he said, “and this internship will help to enhance my problem-solving skills and my knowledge about the research side of things.”