Cover letter for phd application

Hey all,

This is my first post here so I am a bit unaware how posting here works. I wrote a cover letter for a Ph.D. application in an European university. I took a lot of advice from several people but I also wanted to further cross check quality of my letter. I also would like to learn the difference between a cover letter and a letter of motivation (or motivational letter). There are many examples for motivational letters online but pretty much all are aimed for Master's degree applications and thus look a bit childish to me. I am unsure what to write for a Ph.D. application. I'd love some suggestions in that subject as well. Also, would it be okay if I included some "motivational" sentences into my cover letter and send it as a whole to cover for both the cover letter and the motivational letter. There maybe some grammatical mistakes in my letter, I still didn't properly proof read it so don't mind them.

Thanks in advance for looking into this.

Dear Sir or Madam, (I am still unsure how to start the letter, some of my friends suggested "to whom it may concern")

I am writing to apply to University of AA for the Ph.D. project on "BB" topic.

In 2013 June, I graduated from Electrical and Electronics department of CC University with a Bachelor of Science degree. After my undergraduate studies, I remained in the same university to pursue an academic carreer and earned my Master's Degree in 2016 January.

During my graduate studies, I worked in a passive radar project in conjunction with DD Defence Ind. Inc., as a signal processing specialist. My task was to process the output of the receiver structure, to detect various targets/clutters, and to improve already existing methods in the literature. Within this project, me and my advisor Prof. EE wrote several papers and introduced a novel inverse method to improve performance of radar signal processing techniques. Then I wrote my Master's thesis on this topic as well. With our novel approach, we were able to increase the range resolution of an FM radio signal based passive radar system by about 40\%.

In addition to this, I worked on image processing methods for medical applications. My tasks were to apply neural networks and image segmentation algorithms for detection of cancer cells in a microscope image for pathalogical purposes. As part of this project I used several libraries in different programming languages, most notable ones are neural network library Caffe, image segmentation method SLIC and briefly Java based Weka.

Throughout my graduate studies, I took as much image and signal processing courses as possible. Most notable ones for me are, signal/image compression methods, adaptive filters, frequency-time analysis such as Wavelet theory. Some other notable courses I took are neural networks, estimation and detection, and random processes.

I also worked as an assistant for several signal processing courses. I helped introduction of a lecture with the topic of signal processing applications for android devices. I was the coordinator assistant of the lecture for 3 semesters and arranged all laboratory work for the undergraduate students.

In one of my internships, FF Defence Ind. Inc., I started working with radar system engineers. My tasks were to learn basics of radar signal processing and write Matlab codes for demonstration. At the end of my internship I wrote a research report about through-the-wall detection of humans using radar concepts, namely Ultrawideband Radars.

I am very interested in the "assisted living", "intelligent homes/workspaces" concepts and especially remote sensing technologies. Due to my research topics and the courses I took, I believe I will be a useful addition to your team and I will enjoy a lot working in your research project as well.

Sincerely,
Me