Jauhar | September-November 2010 - Jamia Millia Islamia

STUDENT ZONE | DIFFERENT STROKES
Photonic future
Engineering graduate Waiz Karim decided to make a career out of studying light.
And won the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship.
18|Jauhar | September-November 2010
He’s humble, down-to-earth, and
doesn’t mind admitting to his fears.
For instance, fear of an approaching
canine, as this interview progressed.
But underneath is a deep determination to surge
ahead in life, and clarity about how to achieve it.
Waiz Karim, a graduate in engineering (electronics
and communications) from Jamia Millia Islamia,
New Delhi, knows his future is in photonics, a newlyemergent
area pertaining to the study of light, and
his path has been illuminated, thanks to the coveted
Erasmus Mundus Scholarship.
Waiz has been selected for a two-year postgraduate
course in the European Union, as part of which
he will spend one semester at the Institut Fresnel,
Universite Paul Cezanne Aix-Marseille III, France,
and another semester at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology,
Universitat Karlsruhe. Where he spends his
third semester will be decided on the basis of further
specialisation that he chooses — Photonics, Biophotonics
or Nanophotonics. The scholarship will cover
his travel, living expenses and tuition, along with insurance
cover.
A brilliant student with a no-nonsense track
record since his Indian School Dammam and DPS
Mathura Road days, Waiz can’t stop praising
Jamia and its engineering department for its
academic rigour and its atmosphere for learning.
He says, “Jamia has the best engineering department
in the NCR, after IIT. There’s complete independence
to do what you want.” It’s for this reason,
says Waiz, that his classmates have got good placements,
or have gained admission to IIMs or done
well in GATE. Waiz, too, was selected by TCS, and
to a few programmes in the US, but the interdisciplinary
approach of the photonics course in the EU,
where he would be rubbing shoulders with experts
from diverse backgrounds, appealed to him more,
as did the prospect of travel.
Those temptations notwithstanding, Waiz is
clear that he wants to come back to India to apply
his learning here. As in the case of Jamia, the issue
of “freedom” is paramount in his mind. “The free-
dom and opportunities that you get here, you won’t
get anywhere… Photonics is in a nascent stage here.
In any field, those who join in the early stages are
at an advantage.”
The excitement of mingling with people from diverse
backgrounds has led Waiz to do some
groundwork, such as touching base with his
prospective classmates. And also to do some reality
checks on living conditions and climes on the Net.
But at the thought of the Europeans’ love for
canines, the beam that seems to have permanently
settled on that face vanishes for a split second.