Asking for correction of Personal Statement

Dear all,

I am now applying for phd programming and writing personal statement. As I am not a native English speaker, I am not confident in my writing. I appreciate if you would be willing to offer some suggestions or point out my mistake in writing.

Regards,
Dylan

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.” Zora Neale Hurston

Four years studying in Professor XXX’s research group in XXX, China, is eye opening. As a young adult studied in chemical engineering, I find the research in process system engineering attractive, the more I learn and the deeper I look into, the more difficult for me to get rid of.

It was my first independent project aroused my curiosity. At the time when I was senior undergraduate in 2011, I was assigned to work on an energy optimization project of hydrocracking unit of XXX Company. It has been widely accepted that the heat separation process is more energy efficient than cold separation process, but no systematic study has been published in this field. As I studied deeper, I found the hot separation process provides distillation section with extra heat by separating heavier substance in fluent at higher temperature. In order to achieve maximum energy saving, I formulated a model to calculate the optimal temperature of hot separation, and took it as a key point of the report. After the final report had been submitted, my proposal of separation temperature adjustment was approved, and later feedback showed the retrofit brought significant energy benefit.

Being allured by the joy of research and feeling of accomplishment, I applied for postgraduate program for master degree to continue my study. Judging from my previous academic performance of winning two excellent student scholarships and my bachelor thesis where I summarized the method, the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering offered me scholarship and admission for postgraduate study in Sun Yat-sen University.

Continuing along the research in postgraduate study, I elaborated and refined the early model into a more systematic method. By integrated hull reformulation (HR), which is a well-known method in disjunctive programming, I upgraded my model into a more generalized method for cross plants heat integration optimization. However, since the hull reformulation introduced large number of variables and constraints, the model solving turned out to be problematic, especially when it was applied in cases with relatively more process streams. With further study and research, I found an interesting alternative disjunctive programming formulation method. The alternative formulation was able to reduce the disjunctive model’s size for better performance in solution time. Though I tried to dig deeper into the formulation method, the graduation season of two years study was at gate, I graduated without obtaining a full picture of the method.

Indeed I am proud of my work and, given extra time, I could make my research more comprehensive and accepted. In future study, I would like to take this study as the basis and include its nonconvex and nonlinear study into the research. Although I am wary about my arbitrariness to stick to a specific topic, I am quite interested in process system engineering. As it is a special field connected science research and technology application, I am able to indulge my creativity while I have to discipline my thoughts to transform the invention into practical solutions.

After I received master degree and graduated in summer 2013, I found myself in dilemma between continuing my study directly and taking one year off school. Though it seemed that going for Ph.D. right after graduation was more preferable, I chose to take one year off and work in XXX Corporation. Taking a turn from student to a working people, I reasoned, is to obtain working experience as well as new perspective. Although my recent work, marketing research for refinery scheduling, is not closely related to my research, it gives me an insight into the field work and provides me with more understanding in oil refinery engineering. On the other hand, I keep up my previous study after work. As it is challenging to work at the day time and study at night, I focus more on my responsibility in CNOOC and manage to take the weekend to do the research. But since it is difficult for me to catch up just by working in the spare time, I seek to further my study in Ph.D. program.

The XXX's chemical engineering program is ideal for me to pursue Ph.D. study, mainly because of its world famous faculties and computer aided research in process system engineering. Dr. XXX’s published paper ‘Global optimization issues in multiparametric continuous and mixed-integer optimization problems’ introduced me to the study of the solution of nonconvex programming, and Professor XXX’s work ‘A rewriting grammar for heat exchanger network structure evolution with stream splitting’ enlightened me of special solution for stream splitting problem in heat integration. With Dr XXX and Professor XXX’s cutting edge of research and extensive knowledge in process system engineering, my Ph.D. study in UCL would be fruitful and enjoyable.

Moreover, XXX’s reputation is an important guarantee for successful funding application. As Chinese government is supportive to the oversea study in top universities, being admitted by XXX would largely increase the chance to secure the funding from China Scholarship Council. Besides, British Prime Minister Cameron’s recent visit to China brought benefit as he assured that there was “no limit” number of Chinese who could study in the UK. Therefore, it would be academically, financially, and politically beneficial for me to apply for Ph.D. program in chemical engineering in XXX.