Hey guys, can someone check my motivation letter? it is the first draft and i wonder how it looks like, actually all i want to learn is whether it reflects my enthusiasm and desire to work on that field or not.
Dear Prof. XXX
I am writing this letter to express my interest for a doctoral position within your research group and I would consider a position strictly related to your research topics.
I earned my bachelor's degree in chemical engineering and have recently completed my M.Sc. in the XXX at XXX, where I completed my thesis under the supervision of Prof. Dr. XXX. My research focused on obtaining iron-resistant E. coli mutants by direct manipulation and investigating the molecular mechanisms of iron tolerance. Throughout my graduate studies, I had the opportunity to gain hands-on experience for a wide variety of techniques which include physiology by HPLC, transformation, cloning and transcriptional analysis tools such as quantitative real time-PCR and DNA microarray.
As a second-year undergraduate student, I noticed that I have more interest on biotechnological studies rather than other aspects of chemical engineering and decided to pursue my educational career in this field. However, because the department lacks of courses related with biotechnology, I followed the weekly seminars and lectures in the department of bioengineering, which reinforced my interest in biotechnology. Unfortunately, it was not enough to educate and improve myself and this is the reason why I pursued a master degree. After being successful in Academic Personal and Graduate Study Entrance Exam and in interviews, I was accepted to XXX which is one of the most reputed universities and one of the best biotechnology graduate programs in XXX.
During my graduate career, I have developed special interest in the field of metabolic engineering. My interest had begun when I was preparing a review about lycopene production in Escherichia coli and through this experience, I've come to realize the importance of producing foreign metabolities in a variety of host organisms. Besides, metabolic engineering caught my attention not for only this reason, it can also be used in improving the productivity or yield of an industrially important product which is also one of the main objectives of a chemical engineer. In some aspects, metabolic engineering resembles with chemical engineering since one has to look at the bigger picture along with struggling with details and in both cases, the goal of the researcher is to engineer (designing, synthesising and analyzing) metabolic/chemical pathways to produce the desired product. Therefore, I strictly believe that in the future, as technology grows, metabolic engineering will be rival to synthetic organic chemistry and world will be in need of researchers who are specialized in this field. It is this background that attracted me to the Ph.D. project in "Optimization of the metabolic flux toward xanthan biosynthesis in Xanthomonas campestris".
In the long run, my career goal is joining a reputed university in XXX as a faculty member. This is why doing a Ph.D. is so important for me. In XXX, there are a few biotechnological companies and resources devoted for research and development is little, if any. Besides, even working in the R&D department in a company does not offer an independent research. I also feel that it would diminish my desire against science. Briefly, job market would offer nothing attractive to me. On the other hand, as a faculty member, I would have the chance to spend my most of time carrying out research and teaching.
To sum up, I am very interested with this position and I believed that this is the correct position for a person like me since my enthusiasm and academic background provide me ability to solve biotechnological problems by applying both science and engineering principles. Additionally, this position is amazing opportunity for improving my knowledge and learning new techniques in this field.
Please find attached a copy of my resume and academic records. I look forward to hearing from you. Feel free to contact me if you have any further questions or concerns.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Yours sincerely,
