PhD cover letter

Dear all,
this is a great forum. I want to apply for an PhD Position and hope you can give me some feedback on my cover letter.
Thank your very much,
Energy_Cat

Dear NAME,

I am writing to apply for the position as a PhD student in "something with energy and politics". I study mathematics at the XXX university and will graduate XXX.

I got interested in questions of energy supply and climate change early on in my youth. With great attention I followed for example the political discussion about nuclear power and read newspaper articles about melting ice sheets and the increasing frequency of severe storms.

In my mathematical studies I specialized in Numeric and X. I continued to seek climate related topics and took classes at the YYY University about numerical methods in climate modeling. In the course of this specialization I gained considerable experience in programming. For my diploma thesis I implemented a numerical algorithm to solve partial differential equations on surfaces via the closest point embedding method and finite volume schemes. For this project I used C++ and Python.

When I started to study mathematics, I choose Environmental Technology as a minor, where I learned about the chemical details of pollutions caused by fossil fuels and possible counter-measures. Moreover, I took classes on Climatology and Meteorology. I also learned about the economical and social consequences of climate change, as the growing number of climate refugees and the challenges of rising oil prices.
A key experience was a two week expedition the LLL Research Station in North CCC, where I had the opportunity to see retreated glaciers first hand.

The last year I really enjoyed the self-organized work on my diploma thesis and to immerse myself in the topic.
In the course of my work as a student teaching assistant I became confident in presenting and discussing in front of larger groups.
When I helped at scientific conferences in ZZZ I found the international scientific culture very compelling. Therefore, I decided to pursue a scientific career.


I have spent one year in the USA and TTT, respectively, where I found it very stimulating to meet people from different cultures and to learn about their values and perspectives. During my US-exchange I obtained fluent English skills, which earned me the designation of Presidential Scholar for outstanding academic achievements with the top GPA of 4.0.

Besides my studies, I have engaged myself in voluntary work. I participated in my local Amnesty International group, where we organized public viewings of movies and donation campaigns. For the last two years I have been tutoring an FF girl to help her getting her high school diploma.

I find the model-driven approach taken by your group very convincing. The transition to a sustainable energy systems relates, among other things, to economics, resource security and the global political power system. This shows the complexity of the topic. In order for politicians to make sound decisions they need transparent and unbiased means to estimate the outcome of their possible actions, which can only be achieved by mathematical models.

This PhD position matches my skills and interests perfectly.
I am confident that I would make a valuable contribution to your research group.

Thank you for considering my application, and I look forward to hear from you.

Kind regards,
ME