BS (Data Science)
Being good at building bridges, Prateek Ganguli believes, is only half the job. You also have to know how to get the contract to build one. The point, borrowed from a German saying he came across, is less about bridges than about life: being good at something is only part of the equation. You also have to be willing to put yourself out there, talk to people and create opportunities for your work to be seen.
It is an unexpected practical philosophy from someone whose academic journey has taken him through two bachelor’s degrees, internships at Google Summer of Code(GSOC) and the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), multiple research projects and publications, and eventually to a PhD in Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But for Prateek, technical ability has never been the whole story.
When the IIT Madras BS Degree in Data Science and Applications appeared in the news in 2020, Prateek was already pursuing B.Tech in CS at the University of Calcutta. With his university classes online, he saw an opportunity to use the extra time to learn something that could complement his existing degree. At one point, the schedule became particularly ambitious. He had final examinations at both universities while simultaneously working on Google Summer of Code. His own verdict on that semester is: “I don’t know how I survived that.” The experience, however, taught him how to manage a demanding workload without allowing one commitment to become a backlog. Weekly assignments, quizzes and exams required a level of regularity that later proved useful when he began taking on internships and research alongside his studies.
His academic interests evolved along the way. Initially, Prateek imagined himself working in industry. His Google Summer of Code experience reinforced that idea: he enjoyed collaborating with a team, working towards milestones and seeing tangible progress. Eventually, however, he began wondering whether doing similar work repeatedly might become monotonous. He considered an MTech, prepared to take GATE, and only during his final year discovered a different possibility through his research experience at ISI: a direct PhD in the United States. He began applying, and UNC Chapel Hill turned out to be the right fit.
Today, that curiosity has taken him into a very different kind of engineering problem. His work spans Cyber-Physical Systems, Formal Methods, Machine Learning and Real-Time Systems, with publications in international conferences across 2025 and 2026. He has also collaborated with General Motors on Automotive Networking research, worked as a Teaching Assistant at UNC, and contributed to the academic community as a reviewer and repeatability evaluator at conferences including ICRA and ICCPS. But many of the opportunities that shaped this path did not begin with having perfect qualifications. They began simply because he was willing to put himself forward.
That is also why Prateek is wary of the tendency among capable students to wait until they feel “ready” before putting themselves forward. They may want their skills to be stronger, their projects more polished or their CV more impressive before approaching a professor or applying for an opportunity.
His own experience suggests a different approach: start the conversation, ask the question, take the opportunity, and let the experience show you what you need to learn next.
He applies the same thinking to research.
“Good writing comes from reading good writing and research is no different. Reading strong papers helps you understand how ideas are developed and communicated, shaping how you eventually write your own.”
Prateek’s journey has never followed a straight line. A second bachelor’s degree led to unexpected opportunities, industry gave way to research, and a chance conversation with a professor eventually took him from Kolkata to Chapel Hill. Perhaps that is what his bridge analogy was really getting at. Being good at what you do matters. But sometimes, the opportunity begins with something much simpler: putting yourself out there and asking to build the bridge.
~written by Shambhavi Shekhar
