SOP Sample for MS Data Science in India - Fresher with Research Focus

Statement of Purpose

As we all know, we are currently in an information age and data is being generated everywhere despite the size of the organization whether it is a hospital in a rural area or a multinational technology company like [COMPANY_NAME]. My father, a businessman, always used to tell me that we should never be just consumers but should rather find a way to make use of the resources we consume into profits. As a youngster, I never understood what it really meant but as years passed and when people started prognosticating the weather conditions with the data gathered from different equipment, I eventually began to understand the true meaning of my father's words. Data is now considered a priceless asset in the same way oil was revered a few decades back. Looking at this trend and keeping in mind the words of my father, I wanted to take advantage of the colossal amount of data generated every day and utilize it to aid businesses as well as environmental groups that are currently working on carbon offset, with a goal to make the right decisions.

During my undergraduate years, I was always bewildered on how these social media applications were suggesting to me the products that I recently looked up on the internet with the intention to purchase it someday. I had no idea on what was going behind all these and to my serendipity I got an opportunity that would serve as an eye opener and answer all my queries related to this. It was during the sophomore year of my college where we had a course on "Design Thinking" and were given a task to identify and solve a pressing problem that was prevailing in the society. I have been leading a team of 7 and we came up with a fraudulent problem existing in the petrol pumps that each middle-class Indians would have faced in their mundane lives. It was during this time, I realized how important it was to analyze the data that we generate. For instance, our product that we came up with during the culmination of the course measures as well as collects the quantity of fuel that has been hoodwinked from the people. I had this idea of analyzing this trend from people all over India, who were swindled, so that we can bring about a meaningful change that would eradicate this fraudulence forever. But I had no idea how it should be done, and this served as an opportunity for me to explore this emerging field of Data Science, and from there on my zeal for playing with data began and never stopped.

I started preparing myself to get a knack of what this field has to offer by taking online courses from [PLATFORM_NAME] and once I felt I was ready to apply the skills that I have learnt, I approached my professors to guide me on how to proceed further. They provided me with a public dataset and advised me to perform Exploratory Data Analysis on it which was the initial step to analyze any dataset. After gaining sufficient knowledge during my college days, through elective courses like Database Management System, Data Structures and Algorithms, Digital Image Processing, and Fundamentals of Machine Learning, I wanted to apply my skills to research in fields related to Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning because ML has fascinated me a lot as soon as I came to know that all social media platforms were using it to build those recommendation systems. In our college, extensive research is carried out in the field of Image and Speech Processing which helped me perceive the very basics of research. I used to spend a myriad amount of time in the research labs at my college and would aid my professors in building the ML models required for the task. Initially, I floundered a lot, but as days passed, I learned a lot from my professors and this enticed me to employ ML in solving real world problems.

Surprisingly, it was during this time, COVID-19 pandemic came into effect which hindered me from attending college physically. I was entangled as I could not make use of the research facilities available at my college for my research, but my quest for knowledge never stopped. Furthermore, I really wanted to contribute something during this difficult time to the society with my learnings and that is when I came up with this idea to automatically classify rural medicinal plants from leaves because people started using natural medications to treat themselves for mild diseases, amidst the pandemic, as hospitals were inundated with corona positive patients. I prepared a dataset on my own with the help of my parents and friends, and tried to identify the best pre-trained Deep Learning model through Transfer Learning that would suit my dataset. I further extended this research by improving the classification accuracy of the model by applying various data pre-processing techniques such as Canny Edge Detection on the dataset. All my research works got published in [PUBLISHER_NAME] and were presented in esteemed [PUBLISHER_NAME] conferences.

Besides my academics, I was an avid reader and also a language enthusiast. I have often dreamt of building a tool that is similar to "[PRODUCT_NAME]" for the Tamil language. Moreover, I have never failed to admire the work and time that has been put into building this product. This is how my avidity towards Natural Language Processing (NLP) began to thrive. During this time, I got a research opportunity to work under [PROFESSOR_NAME] from [RESEARCH_CENTER_NAME] located at [UNIVERSITY_NAME] and my learning curve drastically increased during this period. I was part of a shared task, organized by [ORGANIZATION_NAME] and this provided me with a lot of insights to understand NLP in a deeper sense. I created a speech corpus for vulnerable old aged individuals as well as transgenders. I was given the responsibility of collecting the dataset all by myself which in turn helped me in assimilating the data collection process altogether and made me realize how important the data that we collect was, while building the baseline model for the Automatic Speech Recognition system. This research work was carried out in collaboration with a lot of research scholars from India and this served as a rewarding moment for me as I was afforded with a chance to network with some of the brilliant minds of India. This work is submitted to the [JOURNAL_NAME] and is currently under review.

Besides learning something new that keeps challenging myself, I always wanted to share the knowledge I gained to people who are keen in acquiring new skills. I was fortunate enough during the third year of my undergraduate as I was provided with a golden chance to serve as a mentor to my juniors and lead the course of "Artificial Intelligence for All" which was offered by [ORGANIZATION_NAME]. This opportunity has shown me a different perspective on why it is important to share our knowledge because the queries my juniors had asked me during the course had often left me nonplussed and has shown me a whole different path to learning when I was trying to figure out the answers to their questions. From that moment, I started sharing my learnings with people who are so enthusiastic about recent technologies and this paved the foundation for me to start a "[CLUB_NAME]" at my college. I initiated this process by the end of 2020, recruited people to assist me and share their own knowledge too. Today, this is one the most active clubs in our college at the moment and has received numerous accolades from professors as well as industry professionals.

This field of Data Science is burgeoning with great celerity and the challenges as well as the learning is forever. Moreover, I feel there is a lot of knowledge that needs to be gained in order to remain successful in this exciting career path and a Masters in Data Science degree from [UNIVERSITY_NAME] would be the perfect place for me to fill those gaps that would galvanize me to take a great leap into this field. The coursework here is just as I expected it to be, specifically the elective courses offered by the Computer Science and Engineering department would be the perfect fit for me with advanced courses like [COURSE_CODE] and [COURSE_CODE]. I hope from the guidance I receive from [PROFESSOR_NAME] and [PROFESSOR_NAME], together with my passion towards data, my vigor and perseverance to succeed, my long-term dream to become a data scientist will turn into reality someday.