Graduate / The road I chose. SOP Review for PhD Computer Science with Specialization in Artificial Intelligence [4]

Dear Friends and Reviewers,

Please help me to review my writings. Structure, grammar, content and anything you find can help to develop my essay.
I would appreciated your help.

Thanks & Regards,
Raymond

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

The right path

In our early childhood, many of us want to be an awesome scientist, who can advance the development of the world. However, with the passage of time, a large proportion of us have given up this dream. Truth is, "two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference". My heart still go on. Through maturity and experiences gathered from everyday life, I have an unwavering conviction that not many fields of human endeavor can elicit the magnitude of change on the world the way Artificial Intelligence has, and potentially would. It is my ambition to contribute immensely to this advancement hence I have majored in Computer Science and decided to pursue a PhD's degree in Computer Science as I believe it is indeed a field that has the capacity to solve problems of the present and the future.

As soon as I entered the university, I was admitted to work as a research assistant in Laboratory of Machine Learning and Data Analysis for my programming skills trained in my high school. From then on, I started to learn relevant knowledge of machine learning by myself. During the period of self-study, I have read extensive papers and books in the area of artificial intelligence, and attended Stanford University's Machine Learning course through Coursera (I got full marks and received the course certificate).

My first research project was started in the second term of my first academic year. As still a freshman, I applied for and presided over the science and technology innovation project titled "Comparative Study of Graph-based Semi-Supervised Learning" in our college. In this project, I worked as the main-investigator. I played a part in conceiving the method that merges multiple kNN graphs into a single mixture graph. Besides, I solely conducted all the experiments to compare our method with other methods on four facial datasets. I also wrote the original manuscript, which markedly improved my writing ability. As the first author, my first paper was published on <Algorithms>. I was then just a sophomore student. Based on above work, I was assigned the project "Semi-Supervised Classification using Multiple Clusterings". In a brief period, I have solely conducted all the experiments and written the original manuscript. The paper was eventually published on <Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis>.

Having acquired rich exposure to artificial intelligence, I start to devise algorithmic procedure to solve specific problems. I assisted in devising a driving behavior detection system based on smartphone's build-in sensor. The corresponding paper was published on <International Journal of Communication Systems>. The highlight of my previous research was to predict gene expression value in cancer from the perspective of functional annotations. I designed the whole algorithm process. Specifically, I proposed to utilize autoencoder to capture primary functional expression pattern, and to use non-negative linear squares to weight neighborhood genes. Then I solely conducted experiments to corroborate the correctness of our method. The corresponding manuscript is currently in my preparation.

Apart from rich research experience, I am also interested in taking part in academic contests. After a period of programming training, I won the first prize (top 1%) in the sixth Collegiate Programming Contest in Chongqing. In addition, I was designated as honorable mention in The Mathematical Contest In Modeling in 2016. As for academic performance, although my overall GPA may not be as high as some applicants', my major courses show a consistent positive. For instance, with my deep interest and endeavor in artificial intelligence, I got a high score of 98 in the course of <Artificial Intelligence>.

Although my education and research experience so far have given me a good foundation in the field of Artificial Intelligence, the most important thing I realized was the fact that I needed to gain more exposure in an excellent research environment by pursuing an advanced degree. Nanyang Technological University is a world-class research setting replete with renowned faculty. By working under the guidance of distinguished faculty at NTU, I am sure that I will be able to continuously contribute to the development of Artificial Intelligence. I am also sure, after sufficient training of the PhD program at NTU, I can be a top-tier researcher one day.