MOTIVATION LETTER
This essay was written in purpose to apply PhD fellowships in Quantitative Biosciences position 2017 offered by Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität, Munchen. I found this opportunity through DAAD website and furthermore on QBM website. When I read the announcement, I was sure that it was the course that would aptly suit my appetite. I eager to join this PhD position from biochemistry background. The degree and essential experiences which I will obtain are my chance to make a substantial progress in personal career and thus contribute to sciences development.
My name is Dewa Kresna. I have graduated my master degree at Bandung Institute of Technology with a major in Biochemistry on July 2016. As a student in Master program, the rigorous graduate curriculum placed a strong emphasis on individual research and intensive academic writing to prepare me for PhD-level studies. Moreover, after my research and study finished, I did poster presentation in International Conference on Mathematics and Natural Sciences (ICMNS) on 2-3 November this year. I also submitted related paper in there, that in the near future my first scientific paper will be published. Overall, I can say that I have 1.5 years experience on work with sampling and culturing microorganisms, DNA, protein and basic skill on computational and writing scientific article. My academic supervisor was Rukman Hertadi, Ph.D (rukman@chem.itb.ac.id), he recommended me to continue my study abroad.
My program master thesis was about expression and characterization of lipase gene isolated from Halomonas elongata BK-AB8. The aim was to produce lipase through heterologous expression using E. coli BL21 (DE3) as a host cell and to characterize its product properties with expectation to obtain a great specific lipase which is able to work in specific extreme conditions. The characterization was consist of common enzyme property measurements such as effect of pH, temperature, the presence of NaCl, metal ions, inhibitors, detergent and organic solvents, as well as in computational analysis, I determined the classification of lipase types through conserve sequence analysis and prediction its secondary structure, including active site and potential triad catalytic residues. Nevertheless, I cannot separate the crude enzyme purely and cannot determine its 3D structure due to limited instrument. So, even though just a prediction, I tried to determine the 3D structure of it through computational modelling assisted by many online computational applications.
In this opportunity, as a young scientist, with the availability of top-level research facilities offered, later I will have deep experiences to exploit and use many advance chemistry instruments well and appropriately. Therefore, I can conduct my future research with quantitative theory along with the experiment. Furthermore, I believe that by interdisciplinary research project, understand the key problems in bioscience from multiple perspectives, as well as a multi-faceted mentoring and professional skills programs, allow me to express my idea free and well regarding the complexity of interaction between cells which involves many disciplines such as biochemistry, structural biology, biophysics, bioinformatic, statistic and applied mathematics. That tools will provide bridge between biochemistry as my background and other related natural sciences. Other benefits that keep exciting me are that QBM not only provides transferable skills to improve students' communication skills, which is an important part to prepare for science as a competitive profession, but also has a work collaboration with leading scientists from Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU), München as well as from the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry and the Helmholtz Center Munich.
It is my dream to be part of a team that would pioneer in biomolecules especially secondary molecules which play a fundamental role on interaction and regulation within cells. Ever since I discovered my passion in medical biochemistry, I wanted to expand my experiences and skills regarding using advance instruments and quantitative approach techniques that will support my self to contribute more and give a significant effort to the offered project. That knowledge and collaboration will also potentially stimulate many qualified new thesis ideas such as diseases treatment, metabolisms, biomarker or drugs discovery.
I keen to join this school because besides the features that are what I always wanted, I see that Indonesia does not have a good standard of sciences security yet. I aware that to reach that goal, Indonesia must have at least facilities and human resources which is able to use facilities such advance instruments, for example advance LC, GC, NMR and XRD, so that later the standard of Indonesia's researches will be better. Largely, Indonesia as a developing country has poor chemistry research. Inevitably, that situation blocks Indonesia to have establish security in biochemistry research field for international standard publication. So, in this occasion, in the future, I plan to take a role as a qualified human resource to open research project at once provides training regarding how to use and exploit instruments well and appropriate in order to encourage and support Indonesia's researcher to be better. I have made a plan to learn deeply in developed country specially in chemistry field like German. After I finish my PhD degree later, I plan to continue to take related-postdoc in order to obtain experiences for about 3-4 years. Thereafter, I will back to Indonesia to join developing my country in science area. I want to be an independent scientist who makes a significant improvement in medical biochemistry research whatever in industry, university or research institution.
Additional information, during studying on bachelor and master program at universities, I contribute in plenty of related committees and extracurricular. Last year, I became a part of "The Fifth Gruber Soedigdo Lecture" committee as assistant in workshop of computational analysis of protein, and I also contribute as practical assistance in biochemistry, analytical, organic and basic chemistry laboratory. Moreover, as written in my CV, I attend in many science seminars. Those activities help me to be able to work as a team.
To sum up, I am at the beginning of my career path, but I have already attained a plenty of progress in it. I aspire to continue my study to take PhD in German in order to obtain knowledge, work-culture and skills to make further progress in personal career. My educational results, as well as experiences and leadership potential, prove that I am basically prepared to apply for PhD program. I believe I am an ideal candidate for this program and I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss my background in greater detail with you. Thank you for your consideration.
Yours faithfully,
I Dewa Made Kresna
Progress on the start of my career
This essay was written in purpose to apply PhD fellowships in Quantitative Biosciences position 2017 offered by Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität, Munchen. I found this opportunity through DAAD website and furthermore on QBM website. When I read the announcement, I was sure that it was the course that would aptly suit my appetite. I eager to join this PhD position from biochemistry background. The degree and essential experiences which I will obtain are my chance to make a substantial progress in personal career and thus contribute to sciences development.
My name is Dewa Kresna. I have graduated my master degree at Bandung Institute of Technology with a major in Biochemistry on July 2016. As a student in Master program, the rigorous graduate curriculum placed a strong emphasis on individual research and intensive academic writing to prepare me for PhD-level studies. Moreover, after my research and study finished, I did poster presentation in International Conference on Mathematics and Natural Sciences (ICMNS) on 2-3 November this year. I also submitted related paper in there, that in the near future my first scientific paper will be published. Overall, I can say that I have 1.5 years experience on work with sampling and culturing microorganisms, DNA, protein and basic skill on computational and writing scientific article. My academic supervisor was Rukman Hertadi, Ph.D (rukman@chem.itb.ac.id), he recommended me to continue my study abroad.
My program master thesis was about expression and characterization of lipase gene isolated from Halomonas elongata BK-AB8. The aim was to produce lipase through heterologous expression using E. coli BL21 (DE3) as a host cell and to characterize its product properties with expectation to obtain a great specific lipase which is able to work in specific extreme conditions. The characterization was consist of common enzyme property measurements such as effect of pH, temperature, the presence of NaCl, metal ions, inhibitors, detergent and organic solvents, as well as in computational analysis, I determined the classification of lipase types through conserve sequence analysis and prediction its secondary structure, including active site and potential triad catalytic residues. Nevertheless, I cannot separate the crude enzyme purely and cannot determine its 3D structure due to limited instrument. So, even though just a prediction, I tried to determine the 3D structure of it through computational modelling assisted by many online computational applications.
In this opportunity, as a young scientist, with the availability of top-level research facilities offered, later I will have deep experiences to exploit and use many advance chemistry instruments well and appropriately. Therefore, I can conduct my future research with quantitative theory along with the experiment. Furthermore, I believe that by interdisciplinary research project, understand the key problems in bioscience from multiple perspectives, as well as a multi-faceted mentoring and professional skills programs, allow me to express my idea free and well regarding the complexity of interaction between cells which involves many disciplines such as biochemistry, structural biology, biophysics, bioinformatic, statistic and applied mathematics. That tools will provide bridge between biochemistry as my background and other related natural sciences. Other benefits that keep exciting me are that QBM not only provides transferable skills to improve students' communication skills, which is an important part to prepare for science as a competitive profession, but also has a work collaboration with leading scientists from Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU), München as well as from the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry and the Helmholtz Center Munich.
It is my dream to be part of a team that would pioneer in biomolecules especially secondary molecules which play a fundamental role on interaction and regulation within cells. Ever since I discovered my passion in medical biochemistry, I wanted to expand my experiences and skills regarding using advance instruments and quantitative approach techniques that will support my self to contribute more and give a significant effort to the offered project. That knowledge and collaboration will also potentially stimulate many qualified new thesis ideas such as diseases treatment, metabolisms, biomarker or drugs discovery.
I keen to join this school because besides the features that are what I always wanted, I see that Indonesia does not have a good standard of sciences security yet. I aware that to reach that goal, Indonesia must have at least facilities and human resources which is able to use facilities such advance instruments, for example advance LC, GC, NMR and XRD, so that later the standard of Indonesia's researches will be better. Largely, Indonesia as a developing country has poor chemistry research. Inevitably, that situation blocks Indonesia to have establish security in biochemistry research field for international standard publication. So, in this occasion, in the future, I plan to take a role as a qualified human resource to open research project at once provides training regarding how to use and exploit instruments well and appropriate in order to encourage and support Indonesia's researcher to be better. I have made a plan to learn deeply in developed country specially in chemistry field like German. After I finish my PhD degree later, I plan to continue to take related-postdoc in order to obtain experiences for about 3-4 years. Thereafter, I will back to Indonesia to join developing my country in science area. I want to be an independent scientist who makes a significant improvement in medical biochemistry research whatever in industry, university or research institution.
Additional information, during studying on bachelor and master program at universities, I contribute in plenty of related committees and extracurricular. Last year, I became a part of "The Fifth Gruber Soedigdo Lecture" committee as assistant in workshop of computational analysis of protein, and I also contribute as practical assistance in biochemistry, analytical, organic and basic chemistry laboratory. Moreover, as written in my CV, I attend in many science seminars. Those activities help me to be able to work as a team.
To sum up, I am at the beginning of my career path, but I have already attained a plenty of progress in it. I aspire to continue my study to take PhD in German in order to obtain knowledge, work-culture and skills to make further progress in personal career. My educational results, as well as experiences and leadership potential, prove that I am basically prepared to apply for PhD program. I believe I am an ideal candidate for this program and I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss my background in greater detail with you. Thank you for your consideration.
Yours faithfully,
I Dewa Made Kresna
