Writing cover letter (a postdoctoral position)

I am writing to apply for the postdoctoral position at your department beginning in Fall 2011. I am currently in a doctoral program in the department of xxx, and will complete my PhD degree by

juin 2011.

As a PhD student at the University of , I taught a variety of Calculus courses and I made progress in my research, I collaborated and co-authored several conferences and international papers with researchers in different areas of Mathematics and computational Mechanics. I have also been invited to visit several departments in Europe, in Canada and in United States to work on the areas of mutual research interest. My doctoral dissertation was conducted under the direction of Prof. xxxx in the area of the stability of flows. My recent research focused on the development and the analysis of computational tools for Mathematical modeling of the stability of the viscoelastic flows and their transition to turbulence and for describing the numerical simulations. I believe my strong background in scientific computation and in fluid mechanics would be useful in your department. I also look forward to future opportunities to employ my expertise to other open-problems and questions in science.

Check out Strunk and White for good writing style.

As a PhD student at the University of , I taught a variety of Calculus courses and I made progress in my research. I collaborated and co-authored several conferences and international papers with researchers in different various areas of Mathematics and computational Mechanics.

This is very impressive, but it is uneventful.
My recent research focused on the development and the analysis of computational tools for Mathematical modeling of the stability of the viscoelastic flows and their transition to turbulence and for describing the numerical simulations. ---- so, what do you think about this?

I believe my strong background in scientific computation and in fluid mechanics would be useful in your department.------- What do you know about the department? Mention a few things.

I also look forward to future opportunities to employ my expertise to other open-problems and questions in science.---- This is too general, and if it is too general it is meaningless to the reader.

I hope you will add some sentences that say very specific, unexpected things. :-)