BS (Data Science)
Hardik Sharma’s journey has a slightly unusual sense of direction: it took him away from home before eventually bringing him back to it. He began in Himachal Pradesh, joined the IIT Madras BS Degree in Data Science & Applications in its very first batch, discovered research along the way, and eventually returned to IIT Mandi, this time as a PhD scholar. What began as an unfamiliar academic path had turned into something he hadn’t originally planned. When Hardik joined the programme in January 2021, Data Science was a new world to him.
The early years came with their share of difficulty; lectures demanded more attention, and unfamiliar concepts took time to settle. But gradually, something else began to change. He found himself approaching problems differently, looking for multiple ways to solve them rather than stopping at the first answer. Over time, the degree was doing more than building his technical foundation – it was developing a research mindset. Hardik describes his early years as a time when he stayed largely within his comfort zone. Eventually, he decided that waiting wasn’t going to get him anywhere. In 2023, he began sending cold emails to professors across IITs and NITs. He sent hundreds of them. One eventually led to his first research internship at NIT Hamirpur.
That first experience opened up a direction he hadn’t considered seriously before. During his research internship at IIT Mandi, Hardik learnt how research is conducted, how papers are written, and what it meant to work alongside professors on actual research problems. By the final year of his BS Degree, he had begun to see research not simply as an internship experience, but as a path he could pursue.
His work since then has given that decision considerable weight. At IIT Mandi, he worked on infrared spectral learning and chemometric modelling, contributing to research that led to publications in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement (2025, 2026). He also worked with the AI Institute for Secure and Ethical Artificial Intelligence at the University of South Carolina, exploring the robustness of large language models. His work in computer vision and AI-generated content detection has also earned him top rankings in international challenges, including DeepID 2025 and NTIRE 2026.
For a student pursuing a standalone online degree from Himachal Pradesh, finding these opportunities required some initiative. Hardik gradually realised that he couldn’t wait until he felt fully prepared before reaching out.
“Don’t wait until you have completed everything. Start with whatever you have and give it a go.
Look at professors’ Google Scholar profiles, see what their PhD students are working on, and reach out to them through LinkedIn or email. Even if you feel underqualified, you can start with foundational work like data collection, cleaning or annotation. Once you’re in that environment, you’ll learn much more.”
He further added,
“One of the biggest advantages of the degree is that you can manage multiple things alongside it. I was able to take up research internships for longer periods while continuing my coursework, unlike my other colleagues. For me, the flexibility wasn’t just about convenience; it gave me the space to explore research while continuing my degree.”
Today, Hardik is pursuing his PhD at IIT Mandi, still leaving his long-term options open between academia and industry. His journey from Himachal to IIT Madras and back to Mandi may look neatly planned in hindsight. But it wasn’t. Sometimes, coming full circle isn’t about returning to where you started, It’s about returning as someone who can see possibilities there that you couldn’t see before.
~written by Shambhavi Shekhar
