Scholarship / Statement of Purpose GKS Food Science Major [2]

Statement of Purpose

Throughout my time at the research lab at CIATEJ I worked for a solution to reduce the ratio of obesity in Mexico by providing fructans coming from Agave leaves as a prebiotic to treat this metabolic problem. I do believe we can treat this growing problem throughout the globe.

With this previously mentioned, I am really interested in doing my research in prebiotic, probiotic or a high nutritional value ingredient that can help with the prevention or treatment of metabolic syndromes such as obesity, diabetes, increased blood pressure conversely even providing higher nutritional food to people that does not suffer these aliments.

The subjects that will help me to obtain my goal of study would be Food Biochemistry as this is crucial to understand completely how to work with the research to improve food as a syndrome treatment or nutrient value, Bioengineering because of the importance in the control of fermentation processes, Food Microbiology due to the possible microorganisms that can affect the quality of prebiotics and/or probiotics and finally, Food Toxicology since it is important to evade risks for the consumption of high value ingredients.

I want to enter a research lab to assist in different as early as possible so I can get more experience to aid my study objective in the future. Adding to this, I believe teamwork is crucial to reach the best objectives in an efficient way so I will try to get a study group with my classmates to make a review of subjects seen at the Major, this can help us to exchange ideas, points of view and getting a better fellowship.

I believe that making this thesis will aid me not only in finding products that have potential to be used as treatment for metabolic syndromes as I did with my past research but to completely prove how can we use them in the food industry making them have a higher value proposition.

Scholarship / Reasons and motivations to study in Korea (education studies) [2]

a big growth of biotechnology

Since I was very young, I always had the desire to learn about all the living things with whom we coexist furthermore, when my knowledge and myself began to mature along with learning about Microbiology, I began to reproduce the idea that we can develop an indirect relationship with many of these living things in which we get something useful in exchange of providing something useful to the other side.

My main motivation to apply to this program is learning the culture and ideology of Fermentation and Food Biotechnology in Korea since I do believe the concepts and objectives of this subjects are in some way different with the ones we have here, at Mexico. This gets related with an objective I have the intention to obtain with the help of this scholarship, which is to unify and make a connection with the Korean and Mexican principles of Biotechnology so we can obtain continuous improvement of processes used at different industries in Korea. Another motivation for me is to get a better quality of life since in Mexico, the amount of job opportunities available for a Biotechnology Engineer are quite low besides that, the salary offered is not enough for the daily expenses needed at this day.

I studied a major of Biotechnology Engineer and a Quality Systems specialty subsequently, the research experience I have been at CIATEJ where I worked in two projects, the first one was the analysis of the concentration of biosurfactants extracting it from halophile bacteria, the activities I made were growth promotion of this species in a flask inside a shaker as well as conservation of new colonies for future use after that I took samples of the biomass in various tubes so following that remove the liquid phase via centrifugation so that hexane could be added and after a few seconds of shaking the biosurfactants could be present, the samples where then given to another researcher for a concentration analysis, the purpose of this project was to see if these bacteria could be used for large scale production of biosurfactant and get biodegradable cleaning products making a solution to the reduction of high pollution due to the usage of this common product. The second project consisted in the extraction and drying (via sprayed drying) of the juice coming from Agave waste used for mezcal production, the powder was reconstituted and filtered for the analysis of concentration of fructans via HPLC, the objective of this project was to take advantage of this waste providing good amounts of fructans that could help in the digestion for many people specially in obesity on kids where this is a significant problem in Mexico. The first professional experience I had was at Crickex in which this company objective was the production of powder made from crickets to provide a cheaper and more sustainable source of protein where my responsibilities were to carry out environmental and nutrition tests to crickets so that we could get bigger crickets and in consequence more amount of powder as well as a higher nutrition value. My most recent professional experience was a Pisa, a very important pharmaceutic company in Latin America, I was in the quality control laboratory for cephalosporin and penicillin medicine and my activities there consisted in the analysis of environmental microbiology control applied to the production lines as well as in the controlled area when I had to make sterility tests using the filtration method with the help of a Steritest System for raw materials and final products of both types of medicine besides that, I made the endotoxin test via turbidimetric method of both medicine types.

The reasons I have to study in Korea are because Biotechnology in the country is getting a lot of support and in consequence a big growth too. The technology advancements that Korea has I feel that this country can bring a solution to many global problems we all have. Lastly, I began learning Korean as a hobby but with time, by meeting Korean people as well as learning about the culture, I got in love with the country and got me wanting to learn a lot more of Korea and I believe the best way for this is living there.