Someone be sure to tell Spud that there is another essay update so he is assured that I am not forgetting about this. Also this time I am not posting the requirements.
Here you are then:
Perhaps the best explanation of why I want to be a graduate student or what I hope to accomplish is that I would to be a "mad scientist". Probably not adhering to all of the mental images that the term likely conjures, but I believe the fundamentals of expression accurately describe what I wish to achieve. If you take mad to me crazy and the moniker to be applied by some observer, it precisely defines the response I expect to get from some portion of society.
Already I have in many ways achieve a status that is in line with the label of "mad scientist". As an undergraduate engineer most of my work is in fact based in science, and I am already accustom to accusations of insanity from many of my peers. Entering college I played football for Virginia Tech. Very quickly I was labeled as loopy because I decided to not only tackle the considerable challenges presented by Frank Beamer and Company but also all of those offered by Bradley as well. I had decided before begining my collegiate experience that I would persue a double major, covering both Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering. In fact I entertained the idea of adding a major in Economics to mix as well, but by this time I could hear my true calling in life.
That calling was then and still is to be that "mad scientist". In light of this I dropped the inconsequential past times I had taken on to more thoroughly persue my new addiction. I had become utterly consumed by Electrical Engineering; so much so, that I now consider my Computer Engineering degree as a support degree for my EE aspirations. After I had taken leave of Beamer's squad, I dove, head long, into Electrical Engineering. To those who say that I quit football because I couldn't balance the time demands of sports and school, I display my life since that point.
Since actively rejecting the status of deranged sportsman, I have worked in two nationaly recognized research labs, become involved in various Engineering clubs, increased my GPA and course load, and gotten engaged, all of which demand a considerable time investment. However, it was my work in the research labs that fueled my desire for graduate work the most. I worked in the Autonmous Systems and Control Laboratory (ASCL) on the second floor of Whittemore for a year following my departure from the ranks of student-athletes.
In the ASCL I ment a group of young "mad scientists", lead by a very kind man, who is also thoroughly outside of the normal thought processes of mankind. During my time with these folks, the ASCL was developing self contained autonmous submarines for the purpose of mapping underwater environments. To see why I keep refering to insanity, consider the idea that these grown men are attempting to seriously build a boat that swims through the water, guiding itself. This is the sort of thing that science fiction is made of, but much more importantly this is the sort of thing that has the potential to completely the change the world. This just one example of the taskes Electrical Engineers have taken on that both seem far too difficult to complete and have the power to completely alter the world in which we live. In short this the sort of thing that the average person would call someone crazy for attempting.
At the ASCL I was one of those crazy people tackling a new chanllenge that might not have a solution, and I loved it. For a long time I have dreamt about being in a research lab somewhere sitting on the forfront of science and perhaps the world as we know it. I got to live that dream at the ASCL. I was mostly involved in the more down to Earth tasks involved in keeping the dream machines operational, but I knew that the advances made in this small lab had application far beyond the depths of some murky lake. I was aware, just as the other members of my asylum, that the techniques developed there could and would be apply to all kinds of things, many of which we can not image. Perhaps the ASCL will one day deliver tansportation that is fast, effiecient and driveless, or maybe the techniques will be the key to unlock housemaid robots that don't walk through a coffee table. Either way, the ASCL is making a difference in the world and the people there are doing exactly the kind of work that I have dreamt about.
While working in the ASCL a professor convinced me to give some thought to an area of Electrical Engineering that I had never really considered before, communications. Previously I had felt disconnected from the disciple, having a larger interest in making systems make intelligent decissions. However, it seemed like a good idea to experience a new area of a major I had grown to love. So I wished the world of path finding submarines well and continued on to a new world know as the CWT.
The Center for Wireless Telecommunications (CWT) is were I meant the technology that is the fulfillment of my short life's dream. I mentioned earlier that I have wanted to work as a researcher for a large portion of my life, but I negelected to mention that I wanted to develop a system that senses its environment and reacts intelligently. This is what drove me to look at the ASCL in the first place; it is also a brief an simplified definition of Coginitive Radio.
Now if the staff of the ASCL is crazy, there is not a sufficent term to describe the insanity of the members of the CWT. These people are trying to develop a systems that senses its wireless environment and then proceeds to design the best possible means of communication given the information it has gathered, all without the aid of a human brain. If you have seen the movie "Terminator", this is the system SkyNet would use to talk to is drones. It's a system that opporates in an imaginary world (in that humans can not directly sense radio waves) and produces a useful result.
What a result it is, though. The CWT as already made a Coginitive Radio that can avoid jammers and remember the clever things it thought off in the past. Now the only work that's left is developng smart communication systems that never lose connecton, systems that don't interfere with other users of the specturm at all, intelligent networks that update and maintain themselves without need of human supervision, and that's just a few of the things currently being developed. Also that limits the field to communication applications.
On of the biggest advantages of the CWT Coginitive Radio system is that thinking bit is seperate from the radio bit. That means that the part of the Coginitive Radio, the Coginitive Engine, could be apply to other situations and is independent of the radio used.
This technology already has the potential to complete revamp the entire communications infrastructure of the world, let allong what could be done if the Coginitive Engine was applied elsewhere. This is exactly the technology that I've always wanted to be a part of.
The members of the CWT fulfill my definition of "mad scientists"; they are developing the sort of thing only heard in science fiction. If they were biologist Coginitive Radio would be renamed Frankenstein. People look at the work they are doing and just shake their heads, knowing that it can never work, knowing that these people are crazy for trying. This is the spirit of Electrical Engineering, pasted down from manic Maxwell, flaky Faraday, and (one of my heros) twisted Tesla. This tradition of thinking radios follows in the footsteps of the man that originally brought us radios. Tesla is still viewed as being insane because of how far from "the box" he thought, and that is exactly how I would like history to remember me.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
Essay Update Again
Many thanks to all of you that contributed. Even the "need more emphasis on desire to be mad scientist" comments proved helpful. So here is the latest update, again with instructions include so you all know what I have to do with this essay.
Applicants are asked to provide a 3 - 4 page, double-spaced personal statement which includes the following:
* Why do you want to undertake graduate work?
* What do you expect to derive from your program of study?
* If you have a concentration in mind, briefly outline your interests in this area.
* What do you expect to contribute as a student and subsequently as a member of the profession?
Since the 19th Century Electrical Engineers have changed the world more than any other group of professionals. Almost all of the advances of the modern age are in some way based on the work of Electrical Engineers, including the use of electricity, radioes, and computers. I have experienced some of the cutting edge of this group during my work in some of the research labs at Virginia Tech. I have so far worked in both the Autonomous Systems Control Lab at Virginia Tech (ASCL) [check name] and the Center for Wireless Telecommunications at Virginia Tech (CWT). Each lab focuses on a different aspect of the broad and influencial field of Electrical Engineering. The ASCL workes on autonmous aquatic vehicles, where the CWT workes on cognitive radios.
In my work at the ASCL I worked on developing a submarine that sensed its environment to decided how to move through it based on a set of mission goals, as discribed by the operator. At this lab I worked more as an outsider offering help to Graduate Students, but the level of inaction with the Graduate students was enough to pick up a falvor of Graduate student life. Most of the work I did her was support of the research projects going on in the lab by mantaining and reconfiguring the hardware of the submarine, however in this work I saw first hand the sort of research projects that were going on within the lab.
In the CWT I take on the role of a "Junior Graduate Student" in many ways. Once again I am working in support of the various research projects of the labs, but the nature of these projects is different. There is not a heirarchy of work in CWT; rather, all the work done in the lab is of a higher level. I am more connected to research done in this lab, more involved in the research. I have already started to consider taking on my own research project within the lab, much in the same way that the true Graduate students of the lab do. Within the CWT I have advanced the experience gained from the ASCL to come closer to life as a Graduate student, with a little more freedom and responsibility that than of an undergrad.
In both of these labs I was experiencing life as a graduate student, but more importantly to me I was advancing a life long dream. In both cases of my lab work, I was helping to design systems that sense their environment and react in a useful way. This is what I wanted my life to be about for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I viewed Engineers as the people that made science useful to people; since then I have not experienced anything that would make me reconsider this view point. As I continued my education I discovered Electrical Engineering, a profession that has made the largest impact in research history and certainly has the potential to continue reshaping the world for decades to come. I became enthralled with the idea of creating systems to take care of the work that I didn't want to consider.
This combine with my interest in working a research lab on the leading edge of knowledge, drives me to my goal of acheiving a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering. I know that this is the best way to achieve my goals of changing the world. Already in my work in the ASCL and CWT I have experienced systems that have the potentail to impact the entire world. The implications of developing even a submarine that can autonmously map waterways or a radio that can intelligently navigate a wireless specturm are endless. Beyond even that, though, I see the possibility of extending the knowledge gained through these endevours to impact everything. If I can help to master the techniques required to design systems that can dynamically access various bandwidths to provide efficient and durable usage of the wireless specturm, I believe those same techniques can then be extended to design a system that, given a clearly defined task, can go on to gather all the required information and provided a efficient and reliable way of completing its goals.
These systems will certainly change everything that they can be integrated into, providing a more "optimal" outcome with least effort from humans. This will allow humans to spend their time and effort on more difficult problems or tasks that are less clearly defined. Naturally all of this is decades away, but these are the exciting possibilities of the work I would like to do in Electrical Engineering. Part of the sucess of computers is based on a concept know as abstraction, the separation of outcome from implementation; I believe abstraction can be applied to some of the cutting edge research being done in communications and controls to provide general thinking systems.
Applicants are asked to provide a 3 - 4 page, double-spaced personal statement which includes the following:
* Why do you want to undertake graduate work?
* What do you expect to derive from your program of study?
* If you have a concentration in mind, briefly outline your interests in this area.
* What do you expect to contribute as a student and subsequently as a member of the profession?
Since the 19th Century Electrical Engineers have changed the world more than any other group of professionals. Almost all of the advances of the modern age are in some way based on the work of Electrical Engineers, including the use of electricity, radioes, and computers. I have experienced some of the cutting edge of this group during my work in some of the research labs at Virginia Tech. I have so far worked in both the Autonomous Systems Control Lab at Virginia Tech (ASCL) [check name] and the Center for Wireless Telecommunications at Virginia Tech (CWT). Each lab focuses on a different aspect of the broad and influencial field of Electrical Engineering. The ASCL workes on autonmous aquatic vehicles, where the CWT workes on cognitive radios.
In my work at the ASCL I worked on developing a submarine that sensed its environment to decided how to move through it based on a set of mission goals, as discribed by the operator. At this lab I worked more as an outsider offering help to Graduate Students, but the level of inaction with the Graduate students was enough to pick up a falvor of Graduate student life. Most of the work I did her was support of the research projects going on in the lab by mantaining and reconfiguring the hardware of the submarine, however in this work I saw first hand the sort of research projects that were going on within the lab.
In the CWT I take on the role of a "Junior Graduate Student" in many ways. Once again I am working in support of the various research projects of the labs, but the nature of these projects is different. There is not a heirarchy of work in CWT; rather, all the work done in the lab is of a higher level. I am more connected to research done in this lab, more involved in the research. I have already started to consider taking on my own research project within the lab, much in the same way that the true Graduate students of the lab do. Within the CWT I have advanced the experience gained from the ASCL to come closer to life as a Graduate student, with a little more freedom and responsibility that than of an undergrad.
In both of these labs I was experiencing life as a graduate student, but more importantly to me I was advancing a life long dream. In both cases of my lab work, I was helping to design systems that sense their environment and react in a useful way. This is what I wanted my life to be about for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I viewed Engineers as the people that made science useful to people; since then I have not experienced anything that would make me reconsider this view point. As I continued my education I discovered Electrical Engineering, a profession that has made the largest impact in research history and certainly has the potential to continue reshaping the world for decades to come. I became enthralled with the idea of creating systems to take care of the work that I didn't want to consider.
This combine with my interest in working a research lab on the leading edge of knowledge, drives me to my goal of acheiving a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering. I know that this is the best way to achieve my goals of changing the world. Already in my work in the ASCL and CWT I have experienced systems that have the potentail to impact the entire world. The implications of developing even a submarine that can autonmously map waterways or a radio that can intelligently navigate a wireless specturm are endless. Beyond even that, though, I see the possibility of extending the knowledge gained through these endevours to impact everything. If I can help to master the techniques required to design systems that can dynamically access various bandwidths to provide efficient and durable usage of the wireless specturm, I believe those same techniques can then be extended to design a system that, given a clearly defined task, can go on to gather all the required information and provided a efficient and reliable way of completing its goals.
These systems will certainly change everything that they can be integrated into, providing a more "optimal" outcome with least effort from humans. This will allow humans to spend their time and effort on more difficult problems or tasks that are less clearly defined. Naturally all of this is decades away, but these are the exciting possibilities of the work I would like to do in Electrical Engineering. Part of the sucess of computers is based on a concept know as abstraction, the separation of outcome from implementation; I believe abstraction can be applied to some of the cutting edge research being done in communications and controls to provide general thinking systems.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Grad School Essay Update
At this point I've jotted down a few notes about my grad school essay. I've included the instructions for the essay to provide a framework to judge my notes. Comments are welcomed, perhaps even encouraged. I tend to use run on sentences in the style of many of the great authors, who I am definitely not, so I was making an effort to avoid such. If you feel this is a mistake let me know. Also if there are any points I should elaborate on, that would probably be more helpful.
Applicants are asked to provide a 3 - 4 page, double-spaced personal statement which includes the following:
* Why do you want to undertake graduate work?
* What do you expect to derive from your program of study?
* If you have a concentration in mind, briefly outline your interests in this area.
* What do you expect to contribute as a student and subsequently as a member of the profession?
It's always been a dream of mine to attend graduate school. For my entire life I've had a love of learning that drives to continue my education. In my life I will get my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, if for no other reason than to gain all the knowledge that I can. I've know that I was going to be an Engineer for a long time now. After I came to college and started my Engineering education, I've become entranced. I feel as though I have found exactly what I was made to do. Everything about this career field seems to be a perfect fit for me. I could not at this imagine at this point a life that did not involve me working as an Electrical Engineer, and I know that a large part of that work is continuing life long education. Graduate work will not fulfill this goal, rather it would provide a sturdy foundation for continuing the pursuit of that goal.
I hope to expand my knowledge
Applicants are asked to provide a 3 - 4 page, double-spaced personal statement which includes the following:
* Why do you want to undertake graduate work?
* What do you expect to derive from your program of study?
* If you have a concentration in mind, briefly outline your interests in this area.
* What do you expect to contribute as a student and subsequently as a member of the profession?
It's always been a dream of mine to attend graduate school. For my entire life I've had a love of learning that drives to continue my education. In my life I will get my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, if for no other reason than to gain all the knowledge that I can. I've know that I was going to be an Engineer for a long time now. After I came to college and started my Engineering education, I've become entranced. I feel as though I have found exactly what I was made to do. Everything about this career field seems to be a perfect fit for me. I could not at this imagine at this point a life that did not involve me working as an Electrical Engineer, and I know that a large part of that work is continuing life long education. Graduate work will not fulfill this goal, rather it would provide a sturdy foundation for continuing the pursuit of that goal.
I hope to expand my knowledge
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