First Ever

 There is always a first time for everything for everyone. That's true for me as well. For the first time someone walked on the path of research with me and successfully completed her PhD in a given span of time. Wow. Hats off to her consistency, hard work and dedication.

Let me take you way back in 2017. One fine day in Sep-2017, one young girl entered my office. She was patiently waiting for me, as I was surrounded by many students at that time. After the gang of students left my office, she entered like an energetic storm and said "I am your JRF, I need your signature" while handing over a piece of paper to me. As the text on that contained hardly a few words, I read it in no time and requested her to take a seat. Before giving her my signature, I wanted to know more details about her thoughts, proposed work etc. Within no time she briefed me about her  thoughts, ideas and entire flow of work, as if she had been waiting for this moment to arrive. I was thoroughly impressed with her at the first go itself. After listening to all her narrations, details (I never wanted to kill her enthusiasm), I took over and briefly explained to her about my research. I then mapped my work with her innovative ideas through which we connected immediately. I signed on the dotted lines and since then we are together. On 8th July 2021 she defended her PhD and we were on Cloud-9. I sometimes wonder whether all this was meant to happen, or if it was just a mere coincidence. I am just overwhelmed about the fact that one of my first PhD students is now finally a Dr.

Her entire journey from JRF-SRF-PhD was beyond amazing.  Being a mom, wife and JRF all together, learning story-telling, writing articles, earning grip on English, understanding new technologies etc. was tough and challenging but she did it with a lot of enthusiasm and consistency. This journey includes writing many research articles (few published, many rejected), one international and one national patent, 4 Microsoft Azure "AI 4 Earth" grants, 1 grant from "Sakal Foundation", 2 book chapters, 2 conference papers and uncountable number of memories.... wow. Dr. Archana set an example for many girls / young-moms who are into research and proved her "time management" skills always in this journey, which in itself is something to learn from her.

My "First Ever" experience has been so unique that I felt like writing immediately about it. All the best to Dr. Archana for her future endeavors.

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