STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

The value of higher education is to make men aware of what was and what is, to incite
them to probe into what might be."Otto Keppler
Having studied in a Technical school, I started learning electronics from my high school days.
On completing my senior school with good grades, I registered for Applied Electronics &
Instrumentation at Rajagiri School of Engineering And Technology, Kochi which is a premier
institution in India. My undergraduate program has given me a strong background in the
fundamentals of various electronics subjects like Industrial Instrumentation, Control
engineering, Digital electronics, Computerized Process Control, Microprocessors,
Mechatronics, Artificial Intelligence etc
My first project was Vane Type Anemometer, a device for real time calculation of Wind
speed. The wind speed was obtained by using an apparatus consisting of a mechanical fan
which can absorb the wind and convert it to corresponding analog voltage. A PIC
microcontroller was used to convert this analog signal to digital and to compare it with the
standard wind speeds. This project gave me in-depth knowledge in analog circuits,
instrumentation design, PIC microcontroller programming etc. My team also won the best
project award for college level project expo.
Later as a part of my main project in eighth semester, I did a project titled, Field Area
Measuring Mobile Robot. I was involved in the kinematics, mechanical design, PCB design
and layout of the project. Robot can develop the floor area for an unknown environment it
traverses. This system would address the issues of identifying the usable area of a building
and calculate the resultant area of the path it covers. It has obstacle avoidance abilities with
which it is able to steer away and trace regular shapes like rectangle, square etc. It measures
the area of a regular shape using an adruino duemilanove microcontroller along with an
obstacle avoidance system and validates its effectiveness through different test scenarios.
I was always an active member and organizer of various college and inter collegiate clubs
especially Instrument Society of India. Apart from classroom education I always dedicated
time for social services such as hospital visits, orphanage visits, tree census campaign
conducted by Cochin Corporation. I was also privileged to attend a ten day internship in
Fertilizers and Chemicals Travancore, Cochin, India where I gained technical skills in
operating DCS, PLC etc and designing P&I Diagrams. I have also attended workshops on
Industrial Automation Tools (PLC, SCADA, VFD). I have also taken an emphatic seminar on
Robot Kinematics as a part of my undergraduate course.
I have realized now that just an undergraduate degree alone will not impart the specialized
exposure to reach higher levels in the current technological market. Moreover my country
needs more technical personnel who are not only quantitative but qualitative as well. So to
achieve these goals, I intend to study in the best universities. Additionally having identified
Control Systems and Robotics as my areas of specialization I believe it is best pursued in US.
All these factors coupled together make US the first and foremost choice for pursuing my
masters.
I have no doubt that University of Texas, Arlington embodies all these factors impressively.
Its research areas include Systems and control, Solid-state devices, Circuits and systems,
Digital and microprocessor systems etc which contains the program potential expected by an
MS aspirant like me. Thus I hope to be positively considered as a worthy and commendable
student for your renowned University.
Manu Aleyas