IPCV is my big hope and dream
To whom it may concern,
I grew up in a small, working-class town in a rural area in Vietnam, where I had no idea of automation and advanced technologies till one day I watched The Asia-Pacific Robot Contest in 2005. I was immediately obsessed by the little robots and wondered how people could create such intelligent creatures that could act accordingly as expected. Hence, I set my goal to attend HUST, the university representing Vietnam in this contest for many years. To actualize this goal, I focused on studying Math and Physics and achieved the Second Prize in the Math Contest in Hai Duong province. With hard work and determination, I gained top score in the national entrance exam and was admitted to the Talented Engineers Program at HUST, which was for top 1%. This made the very first milestone in my way of following my passion.
I was first intrigued of computer vision in the visit to the Embedded Systems and Reconfigurable Computing (ESRC) Lab in 2015. A moving object detection algorithm implemented on FPGA captivated me when moving cars in a video was detected rapidly with green windows. Immediately, I wanted to make the similar system and to work in this lab. I studied Digital Electronics Course to learn FPGA and got grade A, which qualified me to have an offer in ESRC Lab. After one semester of intensive training in VHDL, we proposed a human detection algorithm using HOG implemented on FPGA and submitted it to the LSI Design Contest in Japan. We were one of the 12 best teams chosen to the final round and got Fighting Sprit Prize. Beside technical knowledge, this contest helped to hone my skills in planning and decision making.
To have more experience in image processing and computer vision, I have worked as a researcher assistant in two projects, which is rare experience for undergraduate students. The first one is "Dynamic adaptation methods for video streaming over HTT/2" Project in ESRC Lab. My duty is to propose novel algorithms to optimize the quality of users' experience. So far, I successfully proposed a novel adaptive streaming method for streaming VR videos to tackle the requirement of high bandwidth by using Server push, Priority and Termination features of HTTP/2 protocol. To attain such achievement, not only did I investigate a variety of science papers, but I also created my own algorithm and analyzed the experimental results to prove that my proposal was superior to predecessors. I realized that analysis and synthesis are equally critical when compared with technical expertise. Armed with computer vision background and research experience, I had put them into practice by joining the second project, namely "Gesture recognition for self-driving car using deep learning", at Taipei Tech in Taiwan for three months. In this period, I collaborated with a Ph.D candidate to implement a new convolutional neural network based on SSD model to detect small hands. With 66.41% of Average Precision on Oxford hand dataset, this model outperforms other state-of-the-art counterparts.
Besides research works which occupied most of my time and efforts, I also managed to perform outstandingly in my degree. I planned carefully learning schedule and spared time to assimilate all the knowledge introduced in subjects by doing homework and projects. Moreover, I also organized a study group which helped me more deeply understand by discussing with my friends. Intelligent and diligent, I received outstanding records in the courses I took, and my overall GPA is in the top 4% of our department. Because of this dominant performance, I was admitted into many international exchange student programs in Taiwan, Korea and Singapore which boosted up my self-confidence and awareness by joining cultural and technical projects with international students.
There are three main reasons for why I choose IPCV as a program of study. First, I was attracted by your program in terms of the master knowledge and the international environment. IPCV offers Track 1 which focusses on many applications of computer vision and devices to capture images, much of which I am interested in and thirst for. In addition, in IPCV, I have a golden chance to study in "University of Excellence" PPCU, "Campus of International Excellence" UAM and "Campus of Excellence" UBX, in which I can study in professional environments. Moreover, living in other cultures would be a wonderful experience because I would see "normal" things with another perspective. Second, I am confident that my strong academic background and living abroad experience as I mentioned qualify me for your program. The next important reason is that IPCV will help me realize my plan of making a system that can find missing people via images. Wars have been separating millions of families and many people get lost in dispersions. With the knowledge of IPCV, I want to make a system to find them which receives two groups of images, one consists of images from the relatives and another includes images from people who find the lost ones. It predicts the images in two groups which are of the same person, then notifies to related people. Finally, I am willing to help your university be more international by being a bridge connecting your universities and HUST, where many outstanding students are studying.
In conclusion, as I always long for expanding my horizon and knowledge, IPCV is my big hope and dream. And I do believe that my academic abilities which are well illustrated through my background together with my strong motivation qualify me for your program.
I am looking forward to hearing good news from you.
Yours faithfully,