SOP Sample for MS in Computer Science in the US - Fresh Graduate

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

Name: [NAME] ([EMAIL]) Program: MS in Computer Science

Artificial Intelligence, being an intelligent entity created by humans in the modern world, gained its popularity by proving capable of performing tasks intelligently without being explicitly instructed. From a simple set of algorithms that can produce solutions for real-world problems in vast fields such as Medical Diagnosis, Language Translation, Gesture Recognition, and Virtual Reality has driven me to explore myself in the research areas of Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Computer Vision. Furthermore, the passion and quest to understand "Whether AI can behave as a human?" developed further interest in broader areas of Deep Learning in the field of Computer Vision and its intersection with Natural Language Processing.

My fascination with mathematics from a very young age led me to enroll in a bachelor's in computer science program at [UNIVERSITY], [CITY]. During the first three years of undergraduate studies, I have developed a sound background in linear algebra, discrete mathematics, data structures, object-oriented programming, and web development. To put in practice with the knowledge gained and to apply in the real world has led me to develop an E-commerce website as a mini project using JavaScript and MySQL. This project helped me to explore the world of web development and databases. Further, during my fourth year, I took the courses such as computational intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Mining, where I learned about various evolutionary algorithms, fuzzy logic, neural networks, and classification and regression techniques.

For my major project, I worked on a problem based on Semantic Search Engine under the guidance of [PROFESSOR]. The primary goal of the project is to find relevant context based on the query we provide. To achieve this goal, we tested the Sequence to Sequence model first, followed by the Sequence to Sequence with Attention model, and found lesser sparse categorical Cross-Entropy loss with the Seq2Seq Attention model. I greatly enjoyed working on this challenging project and improved to bridge the gap between my theoretical knowledge and analytical skills.

To challenge myself beyond academics, I took up an internship as a full-stack developer at [COMPANY], where I worked on a [PROJECT_NAME] project, a virtual waiting platform. I am responsible for developing the server-side (Django, Python) and the client-side (ReactJS, JavaScript) and learned a lot about software development. This internship gave me extensive hands-on experience and confidence in my ability to work in the industry.

After graduation, I have joined [COMPANY] as a software engineer and worked on Predictive analysis, Multi-label classification, exploratory data analysis, associate rule mining, and integrating models with front-end developers. My initial project was a Proof of Concept developing a cognitive complaint code suggestion with an objective to minimize manually categorizing the code for the complaint received and automating the complaint coding. The client has integrated our solution as a plugin to their existing complaint handling management system. I also worked on Automating the PDF generation and visualization of data.

I am currently working on medical Image pre-processing that includes removing artifacts, image-denoising, cropping, normalization, data augmentation, and applied histogram equalizer for increasing image contrast and creating mask images at tumor region. With pre-processed data, we developed classification and segmentation models. We experimented with existing TensorFlow models such as Densenet, Alexnet for classification, and U-Nets for segmentation, deployed the model on AWS cloud, and developed a UI for a demo. Working on these projects made me realize the importance of AI in healthcare, particularly cancer-related diagnosis and treatment solutions.

With self-interest and motivation to explore, I enrolled on Coursera and successfully completed Deep Learning Specialization by [PROFESSOR] along with a course on AI in Medicine Specialization. As a part of the course, I worked on different assignments, which have been fruitful, both in terms of results and the learning experience, such as Brain Tumor Auto-segmentation for MRI, Estimating treatment effect using ML, Natural language entity extraction from clinical reports.

The interest further sparked me to participate in a month-long Summer school on Artificial Intelligence at [UNIVERSITY], India. During the program, I worked on three projects: Sentiment analysis using RNNs, Face verification, and Fetal head segmentation. During the course, I have also been fortunate to attend inspiring lectures and interact with some of my idols in Computer Vision like [PROFESSOR] ([UNIVERSITY]), [PROFESSOR] ([COMPANY]), [PROFESSOR] ([UNIVERSITY]), [PROFESSOR] and [PROFESSOR] ([ORGANIZATION], [UNIVERSITY]).

Having proven my academic and professional abilities, I feel I have built a strong foundation through my efforts, and my journey in the field has only begun. I wish to dive deeper in order to gain expertise and prepare myself for a career in this field. The stimulating research environment at [UNIVERSITY], with the opportunity to work with some of the best minds in the world, like [PROFESSOR]'s work on Multimodal (Vision and Language) processing and [PROFESSOR]'s work on Brain Imaging Analysis strongly aligns with my research interest, will go a long way in making my research an enjoyable and motivating experience for me. If given an opportunity to pursue a Master's in Computer Science program at [UNIVERSITY], I will work diligently and strive to make the best out of the program.

After my Master's, I see my professional life as a balance between research and engineering. I strongly believe that I have all the capabilities, requirements, passion, and futuristic goals that this position requires. Please find my curriculum vitae for your consideration; it contains not only a further description of my projects but more of my enthusiasm combined with my formal classroom work and professional experience. Thank you for your time and kind consideration.