Personal Statement

Dear friends,

I made a mistake for this blog since I did not read carefully the requirements of this week's blog post. I thought we are going to write a presonal statement to apply for a graduate program. I searched for schools and wrote one to apply for Department of Bioengineering, University of Columbia, as a master student. I am terribly sorry about my mistake. I will write another blog post about my biodata in the next few days.

Anyways, I post my personal statement here since I worked hard for it.

This is the website of the laboratory: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mechanical/mbl/


Personal Statement to University of Columbia, Department of Biomedical Engineering:

Since I was young, I have had a strong interest in science because it was always fascinating for me to read about new discoveries in science, and scientific theories to explain about nature, and the human body. In fact, the motivation for me to learn English was to read more science books. During high school, I was one of the top students in my math, chemistry and biology classes. Inspired by my biology teacher who encouraged her students to be biomedical researchers whose work could help to solve medical problems, I decided to pursue a career in Bioengineering.

Being an undergraduate student majoring in Bioengineering at the National University of Singapore has offered me tremendous opportunities to further explore many interesting aspects of bioengineering such as Biomaterials, Biomechanics, Tissue Engineering, and Imaging Technique. Among those topics, I have a strong interest in Biomechanics and I always want to study the mechanical properties of the human body by applying principles of biomechanics that I have acquired during the Biomechanics courses taken in NUS and University of Waterloo during my student exchange program.

In my vacation internship at Laboratory of Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering, Zhejiang University, I worked on a project about the regeneration of cartilaginous tissue which gave me a good understanding of the biological properties of cartilage tissue. That was when I started to wonder about the biomechanical function of cartilaginous tissue. During my 4th year in NUS, I really want to get a better understanding of the biomechanical properties of cartilage, which is not possible since my school places more emphasis on other research areas. Hence, I hope to do my master degree in a school which can give me an opportunity to take advanced courses about cartilage tissues and to do research about the mechanical function of those tissues.

After I successfully obtain my master degree I can imagine myself as a biomedical engineer working for a biomedical company to design medical devices to treat and cure human diseases. My strong and broad background in bioengineering and passion for it would help me make a contribution to the field.

During my search for a suitable laboratory for my master degree, I found the Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Laboratory in University of Columbia, working on my research field of interest. University of Columbia is a well-known university located in New York City, which is a very vibrant city that offers many cultural events. It would be an honor for me to live in such a beautiful city, and work hard to satisfy my curiosity in biomechanics in a school which can offer world-class research facilities.