Champion, Poster Presentation, BUBT Brainstorming Week

My love for astronomy has always been obvious to people around me. Friends, classmates, even random acquaintances somehow knew that space was my thing. It probably started back in 2007 or 2008, I honestly do not remember the exact year. What I do remember clearly is one word, সূর্য গ্রহণ (Shurjo Grohon) (solar eclipse in Bengali).

That day is burned into my memory.

My mother pulled me out of my room, handed me a piece of an old X ray report, and told me to look at the Sun through it. Then she sat down and started drawing the Sun, Earth, and Moon on muddy ground with a stick. She explained what was happening in the sky while drawing those shaky circles. I only understood one thing. The Moon was standing between the Earth and the Sun.

But my brain refused to stop there.

Why does this even happen?

How can a rock in space block something so massive?

Why does the sky change in the middle of the day?

That moment lodged itself into my mind like a Trojan Horse. Silent, persistent, impossible to delete.

Years passed. I started web development around 2013. People naturally assumed I would become a typical software engineer. Keyboard, coffee, dark room, the whole stereotype. They were not wrong, but they were not fully right either. My love for astronomy never faded. It just waited patiently.

Once I got proper internet access, things escalated quickly. I discovered an endless universe of blogs, articles, research papers, and books on astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. I went deep. Very deep. I joined online communities focused on astrophysics, astronomy, and astrophotography. One of them was TNSSRO, The Night Sky Space Research Organization, where I worked closely with enthusiasts from Bangladesh and India, mostly from the Bengal region.

University life started. Assignments, exams, deadlines. Still, there was one quiet dream sitting in the background. I wanted to do at least one real thing in astrophysics. Something that would leave a mark on my journey, even if it was small.

Then came April 2024.

After winning in the IoT and Hardware Mode at Brainstorming Week, something inside me shifted. That win gave me confidence, hunger, and a slightly dangerous level of motivation. I felt like, if not now, then when.

But here is the part I rarely talk about.

Around that same time, life became chaotic in ways I did not expect.

A lot of things happened at once. Plans fell apart. Trust was tested. Some people I genuinely thought were friends slowly revealed themselves as opportunists. Situations I expected would bring support instead brought pressure, disappointment, and distractions. What should have been an exciting period of growth became emotionally exhausting.

Mentally, I was drained.

I disappeared for a while. I left home just to breathe, to get some fresh air, to give myself a soft reset. I stopped showing up. I stopped responding. I had zero interest in competitions, projects, or achievements.

Everything felt heavy.

And then my friends stepped in.

Somehow, Sohel Ahmed Joni, Rabiul Rahat, and Nishat Tasnin managed to reach me. They refused to let me disappear completely. I told them I did not want to participate in the Brainstorming Week. They did not listen. They registered on my behalf, and even paid the registration fee themselves.

Still, I did not feel ready.

I called the coordinator of the Brainstorming Week, Sudipto Chaki sir, and asked if there was any way I could skip the participation. I was honest with him. I told him I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and not in a state to compete.

Instead of dismissing me, Chaki sir listened. He motivated me. He guided me. He insisted, calmly but firmly, that I should try. Not for winning. Just for myself.

That conversation changed something inside me.

That night, I wrote the entire code in one go. No overthinking. No perfection chasing. Just pure focus. One night. One flow. After that, I designed the poster in the next six hours, running purely on caffeine, exhaustion, and stubbornness.

That was the birth of A Hybrid-DL Model for analyzing dark matter distribution.

This time, it was not just curiosity. It was discipline. Long nights reading papers. Revisiting physics I once struggled with. Writing code, breaking it, fixing it again. Questioning my own assumptions more than anyone else ever could.

Deep down, I believed the project deserved at least a place in the top five. I tried not to expect more, because expectations are dangerous things.

When the results were announced, my heart froze.

First position.

I did not shout. I did not jump. I just sat there, smiling like an idiot, trying to process what had just happened. It felt unreal. Almost unfair, like the universe quietly nodded and said, fine, you earned this one.

That win was not just about a position.

It was something deeper.

For years, astronomy had been a passion that lived mostly in books, forums, late night rabbit holes, and endless curiosity. This was the first time it became something tangible. Something real. Something that existed outside my imagination.

It felt like closing a circle that had started years earlier with a child staring at the Sun through an old X ray sheet.

The kid staring at the Sun through that X ray sheet finally managed to do something meaningful with that curiosity.

I still do not know where this path will take me. Maybe nowhere. Maybe somewhere extraordinary.

But I know this much.

That solar eclipse did more than block sunlight that day.

It planted a question in my mind that never left.

And after all these years, I am still chasing the answer.