SOP Sample for MS in Computer Science - Data Science Focus

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." -- Albert Einstein

Throughout my school and college career, Einstein's words fascinated me and I dedicated my attention to increasing my level of awareness to better understand life and its associated problems as a result of his words.

The field of engineering is associated with applying science, mathematics, technology, and common sense in a creative manner to develop products, services, and information. In my opinion, being successful in any career requires a set of fundamental skills and technical expertise, combined with a good knowledge base, as well as good administration skills. My exposure as an undergraduate student has been on the academic side, including engagement in seminars and internships. Prolonged success is determined by how successfully the individual can transform the attributes listed above into sustained, demonstrable achievement that is consistent with such accomplishment. Although, with the tough race being in all technical fields, and with in-depth knowledge required to handle challenges that may become apparent in these technical disciplines in the days to come, I am certain that the Graduate Course at your esteemed university will provide the exposure that shall be required.

I have always been fascinated to tackle difficult challenges because of the great pleasure that comes from finding solutions. I believe that my curious and exploratory nature drives me to study on a continuous basis. Since I was a child, I've had a strong interest in mathematics and technical disciplines. When I reached a certain age and this desire began to grow, I realized that my professional activity had to be relevant to this particular field. It's while trying to find the right opportunity and field for myself that I was introduced to this world of Data Science and it immediately captured my interests. My passion for Data Science and Computer Science offers me a chance to combine both my interests and my desire to be successful in my career. During the past three years, I have developed a passion for Machine Learning and its applications from my experiences in academics and work. Having familiarised myself with the industry, I feel this would be the right time to refine my understanding and skills through graduate school and contribute to this field. In the modern world, having a firm grasp of fundamentals and expertise in more than one area is essential. Taking a Graduate course provides the chance to develop both skills and experience at the same time, offering an environment that is similar to none other. I will have an opportunity to interact with faculty and other graduate students at the graduate school and university and gain a broad understanding of several research areas. Also, working in the university environment will allow me to access lab facilities, computational tools, and interact with faculty and other experts on various research topics.

My academic career has been successful so far. I completed my schooling with a CGPA of 9.2 in 2013 from one of the most reputed institutes in Andhra Pradesh, and Higher Secondary with an aggregate of 94.9% in 2015. I qualified the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE-Mains), 2015 among a total of 1.4 million applicants and cracked JEE-Advanced amongst the top 150K applicants at the national level. This led to my admission into [UNIVERSITY_NAME], the premier engineering institute of India where I had the privilege of learning in collaboration with some of the greatest minds of the country. I also achieved an All-India Rank 8 in the Central University Common Entrance Test.

My first exposure to programming and data structures came as part of my curriculum during my first year of undergrad, which got me excited about programming. My curiosity about Machine Learning and Programming emerged from a couple of undergrad courses, like Programming & Data Structures, Probability & Statistics, Statistical Decision Modeling, Advanced Decision Modelling, Robots & Computer-Controlled Machines, and Intelligent Machines & Systems. I was enthusiastic to learn more about programming and machine learning in detail, so I did a few certified courses in these fields. I proceeded further to explore many areas in Computer Science like Algorithms, Data Structures, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning.

In order to become an expert in the field of my academic choice, I have understood the importance of hands-on experience. Therefore, in order to achieve my goals, I took advantage of internships whenever the opportunity came my way. I interned at [COMPANY_NAME] – a [COMPANY_NAME] company, as a Data Analyst where I collected data from the [COMPANY_NAME] Assembly plant, [CITY], and performed Data Wrangling methods to interpret, clean, and transform data into valuable insights for the identification of bottleneck stations, departments, lines, shops, defects and new variants which are affecting the efficiency of the plant. As the lead time of the assembly line was very crucial, I was able to draw great insights from patterns obtained and relations between lead time and line stop. This analysis helped managers to reduce the line-stops in the assembly line, which in-turn helped to assemble more vehicles. During my internship, I became familiar with industry and development, and this project provided me with an in-depth understanding of the subject and impetus for my interest in research.

Having gained some technical maturity, I desired to work on a challenging thesis project in my senior year and selected a problem related to research. My project was titled "Incorporating Fuzzy DEMATEL Method to Find Relationship Among NASA TLX Components" under the guidance of [PROFESSOR_NAME]. I worked on analyzing the mental workload of the workers using NASA Task Load Index components which are uncertain in nature. I designed a questionnaire and collected data repeatedly till high convergence among factors. Using Fuzzy theory, uncertain factors were converted into crisp values to compare among themselves and Fuzzy Delphi method was used to rank the variables. DEMATEL could well identify the interdependence between the factors and was performed to prepare the cause-effect relationship among the factors in a digital manner, making it much easier to interpret the effectiveness and assess the significance of the relationship. The results from this study can be used in designing proper guidelines for industry managers and employers to improve safety performance in the workplace. This project was the most eye-opening experience for me as the Fuzzy analysis method solves problems involving uncertainty and vagueness and it is used in many disciplines, including engineering, and in solving problems related to decision making. Executing this project independently built my confidence in handling a variety of practical issues when dealing with real-life data.

After graduating, I got a full-time opportunity as a Data Scientist at [COMPANY_NAME], which is the third-largest motorcycle manufacturing company in India. During the last 1.3 years, I had executed the responsibilities of a Data Engineer and a Data Scientist, and I would say it was quite a fascinating journey where I'd learned the importance of data engineering skills to build efficient data models and also set up the Data Warehouse and ETL data pipeline on the Azure Data Factory. Not only Data Engineering skills, but I also got an opportunity to master the data analysis, transformation, and munging skills to understand and derive meaningful insights from the data before model training. Currently, I'm working on a Lead Scoring project where I have built a binary classification model by leveraging algorithms like LightGBM, XGBoost, CatBoost to determine the potential customers by classifying into Hot, Warm, Cold buckets on the basis of the propensity to retail. This bucketization helps sales executives to prioritize the follow-up, which in turn results in an increase in the conversion rate and, thereby, incremental revenue. The current model does batch inferencing over 3.5 lakh enquiries per day. In this project, I have developed an end-to-end machine learning system by leveraging Azure Databricks, MLFlow, and Evidently. MLFlow is used for tracking model experiments, registering models, serving models, and storing metadata, whereas Evidently is used for drift detection. Since there are no open-source frameworks available for Model Monitoring, I developed a Model Monitoring Dashboard using Streamlit that is in production where one can track model evaluation metrics, Model Drift, Data Drift, and Pipeline status. I have added a new alerting mechanism that notifies the users if any anomalies are detected in the monitoring, such as identifying Model Drift or Data Drift, or if model metrics fall below a specific threshold. Through this project, I gained real-world hands-on experience building robust ML models and deploying them into production. Moreover, I always support my team members with their ad-hoc requests, which makes me an active team player. It was very satisfying to receive multiple compliments from my Lead, Manager, and Head of Data Science for my sustained support and dedication to work. The CEO's word of appreciation was a testimony to a well-done project since this project generated about 9 Crores incremental revenue in the last quarter, which was more than expected.

I'm not only an academic enthusiast but also have a great interest in various extracurricular activities. From 2015 to 2017 at [UNIVERSITY_NAME], I was a member of the National Cadet Corps (NCC), a wing of the Indian Armed Forces, and I participated in Annual Training Programs and held a prestigious B certificate. In addition to that, a student body of 358 students elected me as General Secretary, Sports & Games to represent our hall in the Inter-Hall General Championship at [UNIVERSITY_NAME]. During my tenure, we won 1 Bronze and 3 Gold medals and also gave tough competition in every sport. I participated in various sports like Cricket, Athletics, Volleyball on behalf of my hall of residence and was a Finalist in athletics 100 & 200-meter sprint running in the General Championship, [UNIVERSITY_NAME].

It is well known that doing any innovative research work is not without its challenges and difficulties, such as the strict schedules and temporary failures that are inevitable. A large part of my research success stems from my interdisciplinary background. My diverse interests allow me to approach a problem from multiple aspects, so my short-term intent remains to improve my understanding of Machine Learning and explore its applications and moreover, I aim to become an expert in Programming, Data Structures, Algorithms, and Data Science in the future, being able to solve challenging problems which will improve quality of human life by developing products and tools and to contribute to the community. The Master's program would strengthen my technical knowledge, giving me an edge in entering the field sleekly and serves me for the next step in my profession. With the combination of incredible research facilities and expert guidance, I would receive the much-needed impetus. My experience would enable me to develop a valuable contribution if allowed to work on my thesis project with these faculties. I am certain that my qualifications and skill-set make me eligible for the Master of Science in Computer Science program and because of a variety of reasons, I believe that my academic goals can be best pursued at your esteemed university. It would be an honor to become a member of the community and to become a successful graduate student.