Amit Kumar Jha is my peer and a close friend. Ours is a private engineering college and we who bagged seats here were the 'average performers' of the JEE. But Amit was different from the rest. He was an achiever - whose achievements were so much more dearer because of his family's financial background. 

Our institution, like so many others in the country, followed a daily routine and forced us to mug-up guide books. I was bored, scared and started to feel like my fellow classmates were turning into machines - hungry for a job right from the first semester. But even in my mental paralysis, I realized I had a closely knit group of friends and together we could create an environment we needed to save ourselves.

Amit was the ring-leader and we started the SPIE (The international society for optics and photonics) Techno India Student Chapter to converge bright research minds in one place. We organized many optics outreach awareness programs in schools, especially targeting students from marginalized sections. 

Amit was elected as the president of the SPIE Techno India chapter for the 2015-2016 and served the group with his full dedication.

Amit created various small and large projects using the 3D hologram, the Lissajous figure generator, small optical instruments for demonstrating basic ray optics and wave optics etc. All such models have been used in our outreach programs and exhibition for school students lacking laboratory facilities. Under his leadership, the Foldscope awareness program developed by Prakash Labs, Stanford University (read our story) and the open-source litter of light project experienced a significant growth with positive effect in large scale outreach programs.

Born into a financially weak but supportive family, Amit has been a proud survivor throughout his childhood. He built his own fast robo car at the age of 8 with wasted cans and toy motors. 

Amit has worked as a project trainee in the prestigious Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, India under Prof A.N. Sekar Iyengar in the Plasma Physics Division. During the period of his internship he was successful in developing solvers that could run a real-time simulation for jerk and kadji equation. 

His current research interests lie in design and modelling of integrated optics circuits using the semi-analytical matrix method. He has been associated with this work for the past one and a half year and is working under Dr Rajib Chakraborty and Mr Saikat Majumder. The current research applies the matrix method to two newly proposed structures, namely- photonic spot profile converter for horizontal light coupling and bridge structure for vertical integration on SOI platform. The spot profile converter can have extensive sensing applications, especially for examining living cells using a slot waveguide. The bridge structure, on the other hand finds application in routing optical signals in optical communication industry.

The above mentioned research could grab the chance of coming out as an undergrad paper. Having co-authored it myself, I can state that our paper was accepted as an oral presentation in the largest optical conference in the North America known as SPIE Optics + Photonics, 2017 to be held in San Diego. 

As mentioned before, Amit’s financial status does not let him to attend the conference and present his paper. His father being a humble teacher of a school for poor kids earns only Rs 3,000 (46.49$ approx.) per month. His luck never favored him before and being an atheist he believes in his effort to the fullest. But this time, it is impossible for him to self-finance the trip. 

We are his close friends are trying to pay his registration fees by gathering our pocket money which itself is a whopping amount of $350. Leaving ou, we do not have any other source to pay for his trip at this moment as our institution has not agreed to help us. Therefore, we are  reaching out to you for a cause that matters to us.