Scholarship / Motivation letters for Erasmus Mundus scholarship [NEW]

Hi all, the following is my letter of motivation to apply for Erasmus Mundus scholarship. Please help me revise it. Any comments are welcome

My education and career milestone

I have been working for one of a leading software outsourcing company (IFI solution) in my country -Vietnam- for more than 2 years. It offers me opportunities to work with partners and customers from various nations such as England, China and Italy. One of my senior Italian managers really impressed me because she was capable of detect potential issues and tackle problems even she did not fully comprehend the relevant technical field. I realize that being successful in industry does require not only the insight into technical background but also the other skills, including managerial ones. This realization has urged me into action to come up with a master plan for my career development by applying for Erasmus Mundus scholarship in International master of industrial management (IMIM). I believe that this program will equip me with the essential skills to pursue my personal career and also contribute to my country's technology, which has much un-awakened potential.

I always have been attracted by scientific and technique matters since I was a child. Especially, I have much interest in robot when I read about it in the first time. "Doraemon", which is a famous manga in Asia, inspired me to pursue automation career in future. In this book, I could see many magical things such as people can go anywhere they want just by a door or a take-copter can help us flying like a bird...However, I think the biggest miracle in this book is the cat robot "Doraemon". This robot is not only operate as human but also able to think. When I grew up, I realized that all these things are fictions but I believe that human can make these come true with the power of science in someday. It motivates me to select the major Industrial Automation in Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Hanoi University of Technology (HUT), the best University of Technology in Vietnam for my under-graduate study, as well as to spend my life career with automation. Studying in HUT, the more I learn and research, the more I love to discover mysteries of controlling. Knowledge seems to be never enough so that I decided to study for higher education by enrolling on a graduate program at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST). Consequently, I was accepted and granted with the scholarship for 2 years to follow the English speaking master program in NTUST.

I understood that basic academic subject such as mathematics and physics are essential in shaping my background in future major. Therefore, when I started to study at university, I always tried to equip myself with a solid background of these subjects. In fact, I have learnt mathematics in classes for gifted pupils of mathematics since junior high school. During high school, I was in informatics mathematic specialized class of Chu Van An high school, which is one of the oldest and most famous schools in Viet Nam. I often was selected to attend mathematics contest among schools in Hanoi as well. Learning mathematics provides me with strong ability of adapting to undergraduate program immediately.

By 2009, I conducted a research on another field of robotics - Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) during my time at NTUST. This field is considered as the initial step to make robot fully autonomous since it answered the fundamental questions: What does the world look like and where am I? SLAM is, therefore, defined as the problem of building a map without prior knowledge; while at the same time determine the location within that map. By using the robot equipped with an omnidirectional camera and laser range finder, a 3-D color map of the real indoor environment could be produced while the robot position also was kept tracking with good accuracy. As the result, my work was submitted and accepted to appear on to 43rd International Symposium on Robotics, 2012 under the title as "3D Model Reconstruction of Corridor Environment by Data fusion of Laser range finder and Omnidirectional Camera".

In 2011, I came back to Vietnam and begun to work for IFI solution until now. This is a really big challenge because I must work in the area of telecommunication, which is new to my knowledge. After two months of training, I was assigned as the leader of system verification team which are responsible for evaluating the software quality embed in Base station controller, base transceiver station and other entities of telecom system. As the result, this job provides me with practical experiences in term of management skills. In fact, being a leader, I need to come up with plan for testing and supervise team members to acquire the target in timely fashion. However, there are still many rooms for me to improve myself, including quality management. Therefore, the Master's program offered by a consortium of accredited European universities (The Technical University of Madrid, The Politecnico di Milano and Heriot-Watt University) would give me a precious chance to obtain the remaining essential skills for me to pursue my career. Furthermore, thanks to living in different cultures and studying at different learning environments, the program will enable me to learn more about European cultures, making friendship and professional relations with excellent students or enterprises in industries, not only from Europe but also from all the corners of the world. From my perspective, these kinds of connection, within classes, between current students and alumni, among alumni, and between alumni and industries serve as a very helpful channel for the exchange of viewpoints, knowledge and experience sharing, consultancy and cooperation in large-scale projects. Being part of this network will be very valuable to my future work.

Nowadays, we are living in a dramatically globalizing world and outsourcing is one of the fundamental manifestations of the globalization. It is considered as a crucial mean for organizations to reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, and improve their competitive advantages, thus enhance the overall performance in supply chain. Despite its benefits, outsourcing is also required strong management skills; especially it creates risks that should be managed properly to fully beneficial for organizations. In 2005, a Basel committee or banking supervision's Outsourcing in Financial Services provide guidance which is often recommended to management to perform risk assessment of outsourced service providers. Whether the risks are adequately considered or not is an opening question. In my future research, I want to investigate such risk assessment process and develop risk reduction mechanisms to tackle a given risk or risk areas. By bringing an independent view and a broad understanding of the outsourcing relationship, I believe this research can help organization manage risks related to such arrangement.

In conclusion, I would like to reassert that IMIM from Erasmus Mundus Program is a real milestone in both of my education and career. There are definitely challenges awaited but I strongly believe that I will overcome any obstacle through my well-prepared background and my will power. I am very much obliged if you give me the privilege of pursuing this master's program in your reputable schools.