How an Internship Earned this Student Patents

For computer science students seeking internships, there’s one experience that is prized above all others: real-world application of their knowledge. That was particularly true for Kartikay Garg, a final-year student at Indian Institute of Technology, when he was applying for internships.

“At school, we focus on theoretical concepts but not so much on implementation,” Kartikay says. “I wanted an internship where I could learn even more than I learned at school.”

That would be a tall order to fill for a dual major in mathematics and computer science, who had learned quite a bit in his years at school. So Kartikay turned to seniors at his school to learn about their previous internships with various companies. Over and over, he heard the same thing: go to Adobe. They told him Adobe was the one company that would give him the same kind of hands-on learning experience that full-time employees get.

Kartikay applied to the Media and Data Science Research Team in Adobe’s Digital Marketing business at Noida and was offered a position. When he started, he found that his learning experience would start on day one, when he was assigned to a project involving deep learning and working on features for Adobe Experience Manager. The big focus of his internship was what he calls “the reading order problem.”

“Imagine that you’re reading a document with two columns, with a text box between the two carrying additional informative text. You know that you have to read all of column one, and skipping the intervening text box, before moving over to column two, but a computer might not know that,” Kartikay says. “This causes a problem for scanned documents and paper-like forms when one needs to re-organize the content and present a logical flow of information – for example when you switch the screen from landscape mode to portrait mode or when consuming on screens of different sizes.”

Kartikay (right) with his colleagues.

By the end of the 12-week internship, Kartikay not only had a wealth of new knowledge; he had two approved patent applications for the solutions that his team had developed for the reading order problem. Through Adobe’s Patent Recognition Program, Adobe is proud to provide employees the opportunity to submit new innovations to the Patent Review Committee. By awarding patents on internally developed technologies, Adobe is able to strengthen the company, while at the same time providing inventors with the recognition that comes with an issued patent.

“When I started, I was not very familiar with deep learning and I was expecting a steep learning curve,” he says. “But with proper guidance from my mentors, I was able to perform at my best.”

The hands-on experience was remarkable, but the biggest surprise was the level of collaboration among team members. Everyone—from the most tenured data scientist to the newest intern—was empowered to play a role in regular brainstorming sessions and contribute to features that are now in production. Kartikay was also invited to lead an interactive session on insights he had gained in extracting maximum performance from Tensorflow for the teams in the Digital Marketing business unit. It didn’t matter that he was an intern; he was simply the person with the greatest knowledge on the subject.

“The way teams collaborate at Adobe is just on another level, especially when it comes to interns,” Kartikay says. “It was unique and far more satisfying than I’ve experienced at any other company.”

Interested in joining the Adobe team? Check out available career opportunities at Adobe_ or read more stories about Adobe careers._