Statement of Purpose

Statement of Purpose The Age of Technology is here, and is here to stay for an indefinitely long time. The numerous machines that surround us are being empowered not only to perform strenuous tasks, but also to make crucial decisions by predictive analysis. The field of Artificial Intelligence is just in its initial stages, but has already made our lives easier. Although machines with decision-making abilities allow us to focus on addressing more complex challenges, there is still some margin for error. Mistakes can be catastrophic in critical applications and directly affect acceptance of artificial intelligence applications. I envision myself as a research professional in Artificial Intelligence, contributing to preclude such occurrences, and believe that pursuing a graduate degree in Computer Science in your prestigious college will be the perfect path for me to start working towards it. I have always been curious about technology. A perfect 100 in Mathematics in my engineering entrance test owing to my excellence in building good logic allowed me to choose the college and course I wanted. Computer Engineering in V.E.S. Institute of Technology, one of the finest colleges in Mumbai University, which in turn galvanised my interest in software development. I soon developed interest in finding solutions to intriguing problems. The knowledge and experience I have gained in my under-graduation study years, will be helpful to develop further in the field. I had plenty of opportunities in my undergraduate curriculum to apply the theoretical concepts learnt, and develop programming and analytical skills while working on solutions for difficult problem statements. In my final year project, “Smart Environment”, we simulated a distributed and intelligent multi-agent system running on common household appliances, with the aim of increased collaboration, user friendliness and, most importantly, power conservation. We achieved that using the Java Agent Development Framework, which provides a homogeneous set of APIs independent of the underlying network and Java version. The highlight of the project was an algorithm which reacted to environmental conditions derived from simulated temperature and motion sensors and their intensity controllers, and decided the power and operation levels of different appliances, keeping power conservation in mind. All designated agents were capable of initiating communication and responding intelligently. Being a simulation project, we developed a GUI in Java Swing to control the environmental parameters and record responses and behaviour of the system. We finally documented the results in the form of graphs for analytical study. Our project was popularly acknowledged and appreciated in the college project exhibition. “Optical Character Recognition” was another noteworthy project I had undertaken during my undergraduate course. The project, as the name suggests, comprised extracting text from an input image. MATLAB well suited our needs to apply image processing concepts of region identification, segmentation and template matching. While through considerable study we gathered that existing research on the subject suggested neural networks as a more efficient and prolific method, due to time constraint we had to adopt template matching technique. Overall, throughout my four years of undergraduate course, all implemented projects helped me widen my knowledge base and my programming skillset by learning new libraries and frameworks. To broaden my perspective and to experience professional approach of Software Development Lifecycle in a multinational organization, I then joined Accenture. Being assigned a role of a Quality Analyst, I was fortunate to work in many areas of Quality Assurance. Starting as a Functional Analyst of a CRM application, my penchant in programming and acquired functional expertise made me qualify me for automation testing, working on HP tools of Quick Test Professional and Quality Center. My current project is a new initiative in HR domain well focused into competency strategy enablement. Being recruited at the early analysis phase of the project, I had opportunity to work with client and Business Analyst team in requirement analysis. Further, my contribution was significant in defining data migration rules with thorough study of data model in both applications. Here, we opted to use a new test management tool, Microsoft test manager which is an extension of Team Foundation Server. I self-learned the tool and created customized easy-to-use test execution and defect management reports using TFS OLAP cube. I was felicitated by Delivery Unit level Excellence award and considering my skills and interest in programming I have been nominated to take stream training in SQL Server Integration Services. Consistent performance has held me at the top performance rating band. After working for 2 years at Accenture, I realized that industrial environment, though presents copious opportunities to learn new commercially available technologies and implement them in real world applications, it cannot assuage my desire for specialization. Career counselling at my workplace and by my professors at college made me realize that to take a step closer towards meeting my goal of becoming a research faculty member, I need to enhance my knowledge in that area, which can only be through a graduation course, full-time. Throughout I kept myself occupied with tasks that complemented my career. While in undergraduate I took a freelancing assignment to develop a website for a local business – Parivartan Group. For inter-collegiate technical festival, Praxis, I was selected thrice to organize ‘Open Software’ an event where coders showcase their talent. The spirit continued in Accenture when I took 2 web based knowledge sharing sessions for Accenture’s testing community, having hundred plus audience, on MTM. My association with NGOs is right from early teens when I was a part of a voluntary organization, Sea Cadet Corps. In undergraduate school I participated in blood donation camps. To my immense gratification I took membership of Corporate Citizenship Team in Accenture, which organizes campaigns for local NGOs. I look forward to be a part of the ambitious and intellectually stimulating atmosphere fostered by MS in CS program in your university. Program’s excellent curriculum coupled with the industry exposure that the program offers, have attracted me to your University for pursuing graduate education. I am particularly impressed by the research opportunities provided by the program. I look forward to the opportunity to be a part of the ______ and ___ groups which will provide me added opportunities to interact and learn from the faculty and my fellow students. Hence, the program offered by your university is the best place for me to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to fulfil my professional goals. I would like to conclude by saying that, I am completely aware of the dedicated and focused hard work required in course work and I am confident that my technical aptitude will these meet challenges. Satyam Jaiswal