Mars Colonization Program-Microsoft
My journey and experience with Microsoft in Engage 2020, in the Mars Colonization Program, in association with Ace Hacker.
Table of Contents
- What is Microsoft Engage
- How Did I Qualify
- Overview of the Program
- A Learning Experience
- Results
- Tips
- Important Links
What is Microsoft Engage?
Microsoft Engage is a program created by Microsoft engineers, in association with Ace Hacker, for students to work on projects with live interaction and help from engineers and mentors at Microsoft. Students can be a part of this program by qualifying through Codess, Codefunfo, or through the Engage qualification test itself. In 2020, the projects were based on the theme ‘Mars Colonization’.
How Did I Qualify?
Codess is a community for female coders initiated by Microsoft. It was established to explore ways to promote gender diversity in the engineering field. I learned about Codess through seniors in my college, IIT Kharagpur, who told me that it was a great way to get into Microsoft, and contribute to eradicating gender disparity in STEM, especially for second and third year undergraduate female students.
I took the Codess application test from the application portal sometime in mid-February 2020. The test was an easy one, and only consisted of around 5 multiple-choice coding related questions which I had to answer to get into the next phase of selections.
The next phase consisted of an hour long online test in the beginning of March, which consisted of multiple-choice questions mainly related to data structures and algorithms, with more focus on sorting and searching algorithms. I had done a basic course on the same in my previous semester, and I found the questions to be of easy-mid difficulty. After around two weeks, I received another mail of my acceptance into the Microsoft Codess Mentorship program — Engage 2020. Needless to say, I was pumped!
Overview of the Program
The Mars Colonization Program in Engage 2020 began in mid-June, and was scheduled to end in mid-July. I was subjected to a month of Microsoft awesomeness, with sessions on leadership, interviews, brainstorming calls with my mentor, and more! Here is a brief inline of events and sessions that took place during the program-
- Introduction to Engage 2020
- Introduction to Artificial Intelligence Concepts
- Ask Me Anything Session on Azure Machine Learning
- Problem Solving Using AI Agents
- Introduction to Git and GitHub
- Career Building Session
- Crack the Microsoft Interview
- Introduction to Big Data
- Culture at Microsoft
- Mentor- Mentee Sessions
- Assignments
- Final Submission
1. Introduction to Engage 2020
The program began with a session by Bhasker Shrotriya, a University Recruiter at Microsoft, and Vivek Shangari, Chief Geek at Acehacker. We were taken through the schedule of the program, the events, and the problem statements. We were briefed about what was expected from us and what we were getting out of the program. Our mentors were soon to be allocated to us, and we were told we could make teams for our project submission.
The problem statement was explained to us. We had to build one of two projects in one month -
- Navigate the Mars Rover-
Help the Mars Curiosity Rover find the shortest path between two points while avoiding obstacles on the way.
2. Entertain the Crew -
Engage your Crew by Using Minmax algorithm to build an unbeatable Tic Tac Toe game powered by AI.
We would be evaluated on a number of criteria -
- Uniqueness of Solution
- Technical Achievement
- Code Quality
- Relevance to Theme
Assignments would be given to us every week to judge our learning further.
2. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence Concepts
This session was taken by Vivek, who introduced us to AI, basic AI concepts, AI agents, agent functions and programs, the concept of rationality, performance measures, and percept sequences. The session was finished with us coding a simple game using AI agents, and binary search algorithms.
3. Azure Machine Learning
A session on Microsoft Cloud and AI was taken by Harsh Thakur, Senior Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft. He took us through cloud computing concepts, usage of AI and the cloud in real world problems, digital transformation and AI, and also did a demo to show the importance and necessity of the cloud.
4. Problem Solving Using AI Agents
A recorded session on graph theory, path-finding algorithms, shortest distance algorithms, with an explanation of their properties, working and time complexities, was shared with us. The video also looked at real world applications of graph theory.
5. Introduction to Git and GitHub
An introduction to Git and GitHub concepts was given by Piyush Masrani, Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft. The session covered the concepts of version control, Git, GitHub, basic terminology, commands, GitHub flow, and an account walk through.
6. Career Building Session
A session career building, and what it means to be career ready, was taken by Deepak Pratinidhi, Partner Director of Engineering at Microsoft. It focused on the goals of Microsoft as a global organisation, its mission, worldview, culture and solution areas. It also gave insights on the kind of mindset young aspiring professionals should have with regards to their career, focusing on leadership, driving clarity, and delivering success as the key qualities.
7. Crack the Microsoft Interview
In an extremely detailed and enlightening session on how to crack the software profile interviews for many MNCs, most importantly, Microsoft, Chirag Mishra, software engineer at Microsoft, took us through the crucial steps of an interview. We were explained what tech companies look for, what the interview is based on, how to prepare for interviews, and how to deal with situations during an interview, and a comprehensive action plan for students.
8. Introduction to Big Data
In a session on Big Data, Harsh covered many concepts ranging from what big data is, types of big data, predicted growth of big data in the coming years, the use cases of big data and the ways we can analyse big data. The session was concluded with a demo on the importance of the relational database system in these times with the advent of big data.
Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.
~Tim Berners-Lee, Founder, World Wide Web
9. Culture at Microsoft
In a much coveted sneak peek into the culture and growth ideals at Microsoft, we were given a talk by Sonia Sahgal, University Recruiting Leader at Microsoft, and Charumathy Srinivasan, Partner Director of Engineering at Microsoft. They spoke about the growth they have undergone at Microsoft, the work they do there, the importance of cloud applications in today’s scenario, and how the workplace culture is at Microsoft.
10. Mentor -Mentee Sessions
Apart from these amazing sessions that kept coming our way, my team, a group of four, working on the pathfinder project, had regular sessions with our mentor, Richa Agarwal, who was super helpful, and with us through every step of our journey, from conceptualisation, to application, debugging, upgrading, until the submission deadline.
11. Assignments
Assignments were held weekly during the program, to evaluate us based on our learning from the sessions, and to test our general understanding of the project and the skills required. Two of the assignments were coding based, which were standard based on the skills taught and learned. The other two were subjective questions, which lead to a lot of thought provoking discussions and theories by my teammates and I. In case you want to take a look at the assignment submissions I made, I have uploaded them as stories on Medium too.
Assignment 1 -Biased Data in AI
Assignment 2 -Ethical AI in Self Driving Cars
12. Final Submission
After a month filled with a ton of learning, fun, knowledge sessions, brainstorming sessions, night outs working on the code, debugging, deploying it, and learning a bunch of new software on the go, I was almost sad to see the program end with the final submission in the last week of July. We successfully completed our project, along with additional functionalities, and submitted it four minutes before the deadline (if you’re not living on the edge, are you even living? xD). We added supporting documents with high level and low level diagrams, code explanations, and algorithmic control flows.
A Learning Experience
All in all, it was a wonderful one month experience working with Microsoft, learning new things everyday, engaging with my peers, and attending the informative and thought provoking sessions. I’d like to thank Microsoft for this amazing opportunity! Apart from the technical knowledge gained, I also developed a bunch of other skills, such as leadership, teamwork, efficiency, and punctuality. The benefits and guaranteed outcomes of hardwork and dedication was also a great learning in this program. Looking forward to further innovating and discovering. Last but not the least, a shout-out to my amazing teammates who worked till the very end to get our project up and running -Nikita, Jagriti, and Gauranshi. You guys rock!
Results
The results came in the second week of August, and to our surprise, we placed 4th amongst all 4-member teams! It was a wonderful surprise and we felt like all our hard work paid off. A few weeks after the results of the program were out, I received another mail with an offer to intern at Microsoft in the summer of 2021, owing to my performance in the program and interaction with my mentor. I was beyond delighted. I look forward to doing some groundbreaking work and learning from the best at Microsoft. Cheers!
To read more about the project, and the functionalities we added and the software we used, go ahead and this article.
Tips
Some advice for all the students attempting Microsoft Engage based on my experience -
- Attend all the sessions arranged and make full use of the concepts being imparted by the engineers.
- Always submit assignments on time.
- Be sure to take initiative, ask questions and participate actively.
- Meet regularly with the mentor assigned and learn from their experience.
Important Links
- Codess
- Microsoft Engage -Mars Colonization Program
- Pathfinding.js in Microsoft Engage
- Code Brewers -Pathfinding.js
