Hi there!

🚀 About Me

🎓 I am Nilotpal Chakraborty, a 3rd 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 BS 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.

✈️ Outside the world of tech too, I enjoy pushing myself to develop new skills. I am an avid traveller, having travelled throughout India and some places in North America.

📚 I make it a point reading books on personal development & financial literacy. My favorite ones are The Bhagawat Gita in the genre of personal development and Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki in the genre of financial literacy.

🏅 Awards

📝 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)