Graduate / PhD Statement of Research Interests: physicist going into Neuroscience [13]

Dear EssayForum members,

I have finally completed my STORI and it was a lot harder and took a lot longer than expected. I would like to let you know that I am not completely happy with it, therefore I would be glad if you could give me as many tips as possible. I read in the forum a post by EF_Kevin saying that one should stick to a theme. I tried to do that by sticking to the Romania - education theme.

So far all that has been asked for the application is a statement of research interests or motivation letter and a tip: "As a tip, just make clear in your statement of research interests or in your letter how you can contribute with your background." Here it is:

Dear Prof. Dr.

After doing both my bachelor's and master's degrees in physics I decided to take a break from academia in order to get a better grasp of organization and leadership. Together with a good friend I am Managing Partner for a startup in some country. I very much like running a company, yet I could never get the thought out of my head, that the most enjoyable part of my working life was scientific research, especially neuroscience. It was such a nag that I decided to do a PhD, and the neuroscience department at some university seems to be the perfect fit.

It was at the university of xyz that I was first exposed to research; in the Acoustics Group I measured the ground impedance of lawn, gravel and pavement, among other materials, and some of these measured impedances were used in the revision of the ANSI S1.18 standard.

My interests in acoustics and signal processing led me to develop an invertible audio coding algorithm which uses psychoacoustic phenomena (such as spectral and temporal masking) but also takes advantage of the signal conversion in the cochlea from a mechanical wave to neuronal firing. The research was part of my bachelor thesis: "Audio Coding Using Spectro-Temporal Masking" under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ing. XYZ. My research rewarded me with considerable knowledge about hearing and audio processing, and my thesis greatly improved my programming and Matlab abilities.

Following my bachelor thesis my focus turned to hearing research. During my internship at the xyz university, I analyzed the implications of simultaneous reflection masking, where a test reflection is masked by the direct sound. The study, involving both normal listeners and hearing impaired subjects, investigated the effects of binaural reflection enhancement and binaural reflection suppression. We successfully proved that the latter seems to involve mechanisms that are robust to auditory-internal noise-floor and hearing-impairment. The results were presented and published in the proceedings of the International Symposium on Auditory and Audiological Research, Helsingřr, Denmark, 2008.

The completion of my master of science thesis and interdisciplinary courses such as "Neurocognition" and "Biophysics and Neuronal Physics" strongly sparked my interest in neuroscience. In the thesis "Functional MRI Activation Maps in Response to Interaural Time and Phase Differences", directed by Dr. xyz, I used a Siemens Sonata 1.5T fMRI scanner to record neuronal activity in normal hearing patients. The data, analyzed with SPM5 in Matlab, was used to investigate the accuracy of the Jeffress model of sound source localization in the human auditory brain stem and auditory cortex. Of all the topics that I have had the opportunity to research, I found the study in the human brainstem and auditory cortex to be the most rewarding.

I have been very fortunate to have such wonderful opportunities during my tenure as a student and researcher; technical discussions, using logical thought to solve problems, teamwork and independent work, presentation of my achievements and my continual education have provided me with immense pleasure. Teaching is also something I very much enjoyed, both as a tutor and as a capoeira instructor. I thus came to realize that a PhD is the one thing that embodies all of the above, and I would very much like to be an original contributor to knowledge.

I am very interested in studying the brain using imaging methods such as fMRI, ERP and MEG, since these methods allow studying interactions of neural populations rather than single neurons. Neuroscience sub-fields that attract me are perception (e.g. auditory or visual), consciousness, attention, awareness and plasticity. In particular I am very interested in Prof. McAlpine's Neural Coding of Complex Sounds group. One of his publications has been a strong source for my master's thesis. Although my research so far dealt with perception I do not want to limit myself to this, and the one extra year of preparation at UCL is perfect for me to discover areas of neuroscience with the help of courses such as Advanced Neuroanatomy, Pain or Neurobiology of Behaviour. By the time I finish my PhD I hope to already have found a position as a postdoctoral fellow, and eventually I would like to lead my own neuroscience research group.

The reason I choose to apply to the neuroscience PhD program of xyz is my background as a physicist. My training has helped me develop strong statistical methodology such as statistical signal processing and statistical modelling, both of which are extensively used in neuroscience. Although having done some neuroscience courses, I still feel that I need to prepare more to get a better grasp of the field, and the extra one year is perfect for that. I am confident that your department can benefit from my enthusiasm, diligence, and analytical thinking. Applying theory to find new ways to approach a problem and derive a solution that produces worthwhile data is one of the most beautiful things a researcher can experience, and I would be very happy to share this joy with your institution. All that I need is an opportunity and an opening.

Thank you for taking the time to read my application.

Best Regards,