Personal Statement

Helen Keller is the person I admire most in that she accomplished what was apparently impossible for an ordinary individual. Her spirit of challenging her own limitations and seeking constant breakthroughs has become my lifelong inspirations, giving me continuous spiritual power and enabling me to realize that one should endeavor to achieve progress in life and fulfill the value of one‘s existence the way Helen Keller did, though incessant self-analysis, self-understanding and self-challenge.

I grew up in GuanShu Province, an area in the relatively isolated Western region of China where conditions are harsh. When I realized that I lagged behind my classmates in learning English in the high school, I immediately availed myself of many English magazines in which I immersed myself. My remarkable progress in English studies soon produced concrete results: in the National English Olympic Contest for High School Students, I won the second prize, an unprecedented event outside majors cities in China‘s developed regions. When I entered university as No. 1 student in my Province in the National Entrance College Examination, I found myself surrounded by top students from different parts of the nation. Once again, I lagged behind my classmates. The poor conditions at my hometown had even prevented me from actually operating a computer! However, the indefatigable spirit in the innermost recesses of my mind told me that I should have the courage to compete against those elites and to prove my latent capacity. Within only one semester, I mastered the DOS operating system and my score was the highest in my class. My courage to challenge my own limitations was also manifested in my undergraduate graduation design. I deliberately chose to focus on the subject of database that I was not particularly good at. My motivation was to improve on my inadequacies exactly by means of dedicated efforts to this subject which was my weakness. To my pleasant surprise, I discovered that I have both strong interest and tremendous potential in the field of database.

This graduation design, entitled Data Transformation in Heterogeneous Database, was part of a research project called the Inter-Application Technology of Heterogeneous Database incorporated in the xxxx and xxxxx Plans." In previous researches, direct programming approach was employed to realize data transformation, that is, first reading out the documents from the source diagram and, with the transformation of the data type, inserting the transformed data by creating a new diagram in the target database. Simple as it was, this approach is low in efficiency and its deficiencies are obvious in the transformation of huge amounts of data. By consulting the technical manual of the Power Builder, I discovered how to transform data in batches by means of the data store methods. In this way, the speed of data transformation was significantly improved. Where the data store failed to support the transformation of the source diagram that lacked the primary key, I retained the original programming method, which ensured both efficiency and comprehensiveness. This project won me positive comments from my advisor and built a solid groundwork for my subsequent graduate studies. In September this year, I attended an international conference called the International Business in the Era of Trade Globalization, at which I presented my academic paper entitled Building CRM Based on Data Warehouse. The paper describes the structure and the functions of the data warehouse in CRM and the future of its application in China. Experts at this conference evaluated this paper as professional and thought-provocative.

In the course of my graduate studies, I have accumulated a wealth of working experience. In xxxx, I was chosen to participate in the xxxxx Company‘s development of xxxxx. I was in charge of the Test Case Design. In 2000, I took part in the development of the xxxx Management System of the Institute No. 1 of China xxxxx Industry Corporation headed by my supervisor of Master‘s Program. The entire system was based on the Windows NT Platform, with SQL Server 7.0 as rear-platform database server and Power Builder as foreground server for the development of application programming. I was also responsible for directing an undergraduate in her graduation design in which I helped her complete her research project Online Test System by the application of ASP technology. In participating in those activities, I frequently encountered challenges and difficult problems. Again and again, my indefatigable spirit prevailed and my ability in research and in creativity has been significantly improved. Moreover, by working in close collaboration with my colleagues and solving difficult problems together, I have cultivated a deep-rooted awareness of team spirits.

Currently, I focus on data warehouse and textual data mining. My motive in choosing this research field is based on the belief that the technology of data mining and knowledge discovery will become a new technological hotspot in the wake of the network. Present theories and methodologies in China are coupled with serious limitations and relevant products have not emerged. As little experience has been accumulated in this field so far, any research efforts on this technology will be challenging. In China, the technology of data warehouse and data mining is just entering its initial stage of research and development. By contrast, as the absolute leader in international IT, the United States is already in possession of relatively mature theories and technology in this field, apart from many successful cases. Those are what China should learn from and creatively borrow, therefore I desire to pursue Ph.D. Program in computer science at the University of Southern California. This will help me transcend the differences in technology and in academic environments between China and the United States. I plan to assimilate the valuable experiences and successful theories accumulated by the United States in developing the highly influential typical data mining systems (such as Enterprise Miner by SAS, Intelligent Miner by IBM, and Set Miner by SGI) and, by incorporating my previous research experience, propose my own solutions to certain technical problems under the guidance of my future supervisor. Upon completing my degree program, I will return to China together with the research achievements I will have acquired and make contributions to the development of Chinese data mining products.

I am fully aware that in my future research I will come across many more technical challenges such as the web-station data mining, biological information mining or genetic data mining, textual data mining, etc. But I will remain undaunted because I will continue to draw spiritual power from Helen Keller. I will endeavor to be instrumental to society in my own way.