🎓 I am Nilotpal Chakraborty, a 4th year PhD student of Engineering Mechanics at Virginia Tech. I am working in the Laboratory of Transport Phenomena for Advanced Technologies, supervised by Dr. Rui Qiao(https://me.vt.edu/people/faculty/qiao-rui.html). I plan to graduate in late 2026. Prior to this, I earned a Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering (first class with distinction) from NIT Tiruchirappalli, India, in 2020.

👨‍💻 I have been doing research on Computational Fluid Dynamics since my undergraduate. Some of the projects I've worked on required use of commercial codes which I really enjoyed at first. However, as the problems I was working on got more novel and complex, I started writing my own code. That is when I realized that I was enjoying programming, as it is very close to math, my favorite subject. In 2020, I interned at IIT Madras working on extending features of FEST3D, an opensource computational fluid dynamic solver written in Fortran 90 for solving the Navier-Stokes equations on structured grids using state-of-the-art finite-volume methods. Apart from writing code for my academic projects, I got my first opportunity to write production level code when working at Zeus Numerix, a company specializing in defense applications. There, I got familiar with software design, OOP in C++ and version control. I never looked back ever since. Since the start of my PhD in 2022, I've made sure I enrolled in at least one programming-intensive course every semester. This has helped me build strong foundations in OOP, software design and ML apart from the following languages: Fortran, C++, Java, Python, C and MATLAB. Because my PhD requires me to present my ideas to the audience most of the time, I've developed a habit of spending a lot of time preparing for my presentations. This led me to this idea of making a portfolio website for myself where I can paint a broader picture of what I do. I recently started contributing to Open Source Projects and have contributed to two, SPHinXsys and awesome-portfolio-websites. I am really enthusiastic about learning new technologies like Machine Learning and Quantum Computing.

I feel the way science and enginering is studied today force order which is very antithesis of life which by natures is chaotic. Try to enjoy this chaos by trying my hands on anything that I find interesting: psychology, history, anatomy of body, effect of the food on mind, purpose of human life, etc., etc., etc. My goal in life is to explore and not follow instructions. If you're someone who reasonates with this idea, get in touch!

• 📝 Pratt Engineering Scholarship for outstanding academic achievement (August 2022).
• 📝 Rolls-Royce Doctoral Fellowship for outstanding incoming PhD students (https://eng.vt.edu/admissions/graduate-admissions/funding/internal-fellowships/rolls-royce-doctoral-student-fellowship-program.html) (January 2022).
• 📝 Shastri Research Fellowship by Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (http://www.shastriinstitute.org/) (April 2019).
• 📝 Mitacs Globalink Research Fellowship (https://www.mitacs.ca/en) (January 2019)
• 🥇 1st prize in Sangam, a product-based competition at NITT's techfest, Pragyan (March 2019)