July 2003
Statement of Purpose
I have always had a great love of learning. Even in primary school
I exhibited a tremendous desire to learn more. I was forever asking
for more books, more classes and more projects to do. Looking back now
I smile and I think I better understand the reactions of my teachers
and peers at the time.
In high school I had already complete the required, grade appropriate
mathematics foundation courses and I soon found myself studying advanced
physics and mathematics. During this time I became interested in electrical
engineering and my high school's science lab. To me the science lab
was a wondrous place filled with intrigue and endless potentials and
possibilities. It was in that lab that I first began setting up simple
logic circuits in my spare time.
Always testing my own limits and striving for greater achievement in
all areas of my life I received my diploma and graduated as a top student
with a total GPA of 18.68/20 in August 1994. I was immediately admitted
in September of that year as an undergraduate student in the Electrical
Engineering Program at Sharif University of Technology (SUT) in Iran.
SUT is the most competitive and prestigious University of Technology
for undergraduate studies in Iran. Out of 300,000 applicants to SUT
for placement in 1994 I scored 19th. This ranking struck me greatly.
I realized that I had scored among the top twenty individuals on Sharif's
notoriously rigorous entrance exams. That the people I was being ranked
against were the best and the brightest of the next generation to advance
these fields of research, in my country.
While attending SUT, I had the privilege of being invited to participate
in various highly specialized and respected research teams. My work
with these teams opened my eyes to many new worlds of advanced technical
research and cutting edge theory.
While working under demanding conditions on highly technical projects
I greatly improved my own ability to work as a part of a team. And it
was during this time that I truly learned the importance of being able
to ask for help. I believe today that it was the unique esprit de corps
and unity of purpose of these teams and our advisors which helped me
to truly understand the importance of team skills in the research environment.
It was while engaged in this work that one of my lab partners and I
were invited to work on our B.Sc. projects Niroo Research Institute
of Iran (NRI) at their facilities in Tehran.
NRI plays a leading role in developing new products and technologies
for use in the electric power industry in Iran and throughout the world.
Research completed at Niroo is implemented and utilized by the entire
power industry and the achievements of this amazing institute are manifold
and impressive. Being selected to complete our work there was almost
too much to believe as undergraduates in our field.
Our project entailed designing a digital multitransducer which would
provide more reliable and longer lasting verifiable stability and greater
efficiency of operation in the control of turbine systems.
These multitransducers have continued in development and are planned
for product release in the near future. The actual product and end user
applications of the multitransducers are extremely broad and will affect
many industries and processes for years to come. Upon the completion
of our work at NRI we were told by our advisor Dr. Bijan Vosoughi Vahdat
that our contributions had truly been great.
By this time I had become fascinated with the subjects surrounding
biologic and digital signal processing. It was amazing to me that these
things were knowable, that people were doing this and that the field
was so advanced. In reading Solzhenitsyn's "A Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich" and "Gulag Archipelago" I learned that
speech recognition and the mechanical identification and transmission
of speech had a much longer history as a field of research than I had
ever expected.
Upon graduation from SUT in August 1999 I immediately registered to
take the even more rigorous entrance exams required for placement at
Tehran Polytechnic University (TPU) in Tehran in September 1999.
TPU is the most difficult school in Iran to gain entrance too. It is
the penultimate engineering institution in Iran and is often referred
to as an "Iranian MIT." For the study of Biomedical Engineering
there is nothing like it to be found in our country.
The Biomedical Engineering Masters Degree Program at TPU was intense,
expansive and filled with entirely new concepts for me. I truly felt
alive and at a new peak in my own personal development as this beautiful
subject continued to unfold before me offering me opportunity after
opportunity to make new and greater discoveries.
The first year of this program strengthened my desire to learn more
about the nature of signal processing. As a result I soon ended up taking
all of my classes in this fascinating field.
At the end of my first year there I realized that I had received the
highest scores among all postgraduate students at TPU in classes including
Speech Processing, Advanced Signal Processing, Biological
Signal Processing and Random Processing. And again I was
astounded by the level of my own achievement as measured against my
peers. Of course I had worked hard, I had worked as hard as I could
and even harder than I knew I could - but these were the best students
in our nation taking these courses.
In this regard and many others I owe a great debt of gratitude for
Dr. Sheikhzadeh who helped me to better understand speech processing
in his Advanced Digital Signal Processing class. It was under
Dr. Sheikhzadeh's guidance that I proposed a seminar at TPU entitled
"The Application of Wavelet Transformation in Speech Recognition."
The seminar was a great success and following it's conclusion I was
able to begin work on my master's thesis.
My thesis work lasted a year and a half and turned out to be one of
the most difficult tasks I have ever set myself too. The thesis was
entitled "Classification of Persian Stop Consonant Based on
Their Articulation Place via Wavelet Transformation" and the
subject a most serious challenge remains to this day. And not only to
myself but to some the greatest minds in our field as well. The subject
is located squarely at the forefront of speech recognition research
in and is of great importance to the progress of the field as a whole.
I was ranked first amongst postgraduate students in Biomedical and
Electrical Engineering at TPU with GPA 17.95/20 (3.81/4). And during
the entire period of my master's degree studies I received A's in nearly
every class.
Long before my graduation from the TPU Biomedical Master's Program
I had been approached by a British telecom company with research facilities
in Tehran. This company, Tecteon invited me to come and work with them
on their noise cancellation projects.
And when I had completed my master degree, I started working with a
team at Tecteon to enhance speech clarity in environments where a great
deal of background noise is present. Focusing on headset communications
this critical work will better enable pilots, factory and emergency
workers to communicate with each other in areas where the external noise
level currently prevents effective communication.
Firefighters and rescue crews face life and death issues surrounding
this technology and its development. In intensely loud environments
where they are asked to work from great storms to raging infernos this
technology can help bridge the gap between the existing clarity standards
and the crystal clear clarity we believe is possible. This technology
which I was privileged to work on will no doubt save a great number
of lives as it is fully developed and implemented.
I am currently excited, psyched and enthused to begin some really deep
research in Digital Signal Processing, Speech Processing and Time Frequency
Methods. And I am especially eager to begin work on Wavelet, Random
Processing, Biological Signal Processing as well as Pattern Recognition
and Neural Networks.
All of these relate to one of my greatest academic interests, namely
the development of a higher functioning and clearer form of Cochlear
Implant. This work is dearly important to me. I have worked with deaf
children and adults and look forward to the day that I can again continue
my studies and work toward providing them the best technological assistance
and the type of breakthroughs required to create "real hearing"
for those whose world is still silent as a result of conditions which
could be remedied by the use of Cochlear Implants.
I believe that where there is a will, there is a way. I am so eager
to begin studying for my Ph.D. at Clemson, I really can't explain. This
is my life's work and these subjects are very dear to me. It really
is one of my longest held goals. Doing research in my favorite fields
and utilizing this work in practical ways which reveal more and more
about the nature of biological signals.
Clemson really does represent so much to me in my life right now. Having
been accepted to study there I look forward to soaking in the culture
and unique feel of its campuses and students.
And as I await my first classes there I am consistently impressed by
the institution, the prestige of its Biomedical Engineering PhD Program,
the high level and quality of research I read about being done there
and the amazing research facilities. I look forward to working with
the many internationally recognized professors there who have so many
research interests similar to mine. I am glad I chose Clemson.
Mohaddeseh Nosratighods
Graduate Program Student
