Personal Statement
Program: E E (Automatic Control)

For twofold reasons I am sincerely grateful to my father who is also my

mentor. First, it was he who distilled in me the impulse to adore those

who can achieve success from apparently impossible situations. When I

was plunged into great despondency for failing to gain admission into

the nation’s most prestigious university at the college entrance

examination, my father told the story about how General Wellington who,

driven into a mountain cave, drew inspirations from a spider which was

patching up its web and re-organized his troops to defeat Napoleon. My

father made me convinced that I could be a successful person in my own

right.

Second, I owe my heartfelt gratitude to my father for the academic

interest that he cultivated in me. An electrical engineer himself in

the field of industrial control, my father influenced me by encouraging

my childhood interest in electricity. Unlike many other parents who

simply buy their children electric toys and leave them playing with

those toys, my father not only bought me many interesting electrical

toys but also explained the inner workings that produced the sounds and

the movements of those toys. As I grew up, he continued his

enlightenment of me with his regular “professional lectures”

concerning the more sophisticated electrical appliances in our daily

environment. His education persisted until I chose to major in

electrical engineering during my undergraduate program and came to

regard it as a lifelong career objective to which I would dedicate all

my intelligence and energy. From the undergraduate education I received

at the Information Science and Engineering Department of Shenyang

Institute of Technology, I derived useful knowledge from a wide variety

of foundational courses in industrial engineering that included

Analogical Electronic Circuits, Digital Electronic Circuits, Principles

of Microcomputer, Electrical Power and Electronics, Single-Chip

Microcomputer. In those courses, I achieved full marks or the highest

scores in the entire grade.

My theoretical understanding of automatic control came with my studies

of classical control theories embodied in such courses as Theory of

Modern Control, Theory of Automatic Control, Procedure Control, and

Computer Control. I also came to develop a relatively thorough

understanding of feedback control and some methods of system design.

With those understandings, I tried my own hands at designing and

experimenting with a closed-loop feedback system. However, as I delved

deeper into my studies, I came to discover that the classical feedback

-based control theories could no longer meet the requirements posed by

modern large-scale and complicated systems. Their challenges could only

be answered by some database-based, intelligence-oriented theories.

Therefore, I purposely self-studied some courses exclusively offered to

graduate students—Artificial Intelligence, Neural Network, Self-

Adaptive Control, etc. Although the theories incorporated in those

courses could by no means work out all the problems in modern control,

their effectiveness in improving production efficiency made me all the

more determined to devote myself to the studies in control theories.

Various forms of control theory depend heavily on computing tools as

represented by mathematics. Without exaggeration, I can say that both

mathematics and computer application are precisely the subjects in

which I excel. On account of my distinguished mathematical talents, I

represented my institute to participate in the National Undergraduate

Mathematical Contest in Modeling in 2000 in which I proposed an optimum

solution to a steel procurement and transportation plan. In this

contest, I won third prize in the whole Liaoning Province. In addition,

I self-studied a number of advanced courses like Fuzzy Mathematics and

Discrete Mathematics which further widened my horizon and called my

attention to the possible trends of automatic control in the future.

One of the most important achievements in my undergraduate program is

that I spent one year and half doing coursework in the computer

specialty as a subsidiary program in order to develop my comprehensive

abilities and to improve my computer skills. In those compulsory core

courses that are generally acknowledged to be fairly difficult even for

computer majors, I achieved the highest scores in my class in Data

Structure and Operating Systems. By undergoing systematic trainings, I

have become quite familiar with computer hardware structure, working

principles, and software programming debugging. I have also made

independent efforts in program development by means of VB, VC, Foxpro

and Delphi.

While attentive to studies in control theories, I also attached great

importance to the application of theories to practical problem-solving

processes because all theories must be put to the test of practices.

Since the very beginning of my undergraduate program, I have closely

followed the leading international and domestic academic journals in

the field of automatic control and the important research papers

published in those journals. As a sophomore, I started to help my

father with some of his design projects. In the control system that he

designed for a cement mixer, I introduced a programmed single-chip

computerized controller which, after debugging, was put into

application and received very positive comments from the user. For my

graduation project, I designed The Automatic Monitoring System for

Detecting the Temperature and Humidity of a Tobacco Plant. With the

help of a PC and a single-chip microcomputer, I designed a 3-phase

system in connection with the concentration-distribution system.

Demonstrating obvious practical values, the system can conduct

automatic monitoring of the environmental parameters in the four

workshops of the tobacco plant. At present, I am working on an

automatic assembly line in collaboration with an industrial control

company. I am very proud to say that my overall undergraduate studies

have proved immensely fruitful. In terms of the ranking of scholastic

aptitudes, my ranking is top tenth among a total of 148 students in my

grade and I have been award scholarships for quite a few times.

Even a most cursory survey of most factories in China would reveal that

the overall level of automation in China’s industrial sector is rather

low. Even when there is a limited number of “advanced” systems, they

are mere copies of foreign models that are on the point of being

outmoded by international standards. This indicates how China lags

behind international levels of advanced technology. As we all know, the

most important factors in automation are system modeling and analysis.

It is essential to ensure, through analysis, the stability and optimum

effect of the system even when there are many uncertainties. In this

regard, we need cutting-edge technology and mature theories. Under such

circumstances, I have developed the idea of seeking further studies in

the United States where I can learn advanced and systematic knowledge

about large-scale systems. In this way, I will be able to make in-depth

studies concerning the mathematical models of the systems when I have

the opportunity to face those increasingly complicated large-scale

systems. Those studies will enable me to find out possible solutions to

problems.

The Institute of Industrial Engineering of Purdue University enjoys a

high academic status in the United States. The Automatic Control

Specialty in the Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering

covers a wide range of programs in Artificial Intelligence, Neural

Network, Robotics, the Modeling and Analysis of Large-Scale Dynamic

Systems, etc. The application of those important fields of knowledge

will ultimately produce important impacts on the technological advances

in automation and control. Those fields are also the areas in which I

am very interested. I would like to apply for a Ph.D. program in

automatic control. As a matter of fact, Purdue University is also the

university from which China’s leading scientist Deng Jiaxian

graduated. That is why it attracts me so much. A Chinese proverb says,

“If you come to the most commanding height, you will have the greatest

vision.” I believe this axiom applies to my case perfectly. By “the

most commanding height”, I mean that an education at Purdue University

will endow me with the most advanced theories and expertise in my

chosen field. By “the greatest vision”, I mean that I will develop

international perspectives that will enable me to look ahead into the

future and keep up with the latest developments. My greatest

expectation from the prospective degree program is that I can build up

a firm foundation for a fruitful career in system designs.