PERSONAL STATEMENTAn experienced electronic engineer trained in China's major cradle of technological talents, I am submitting this document in support of my application for acceptance into your graduate program. With more than eight years of higher learning and quality research behind me, I now stand ready to pursue advanced studies and scale grander heights in my career.

Presently, I work at a leading Beijing-based center of telecommunications research and development, jointly run by Canada's Northern Telecom Ltd., one of the world's foremost IT enterprises, and the Beijing University of Yanjiu, a major higher-learning institution in IT technologies in China. Engaged in cutting-edge research and development at this center, I have accumulated a lot of advanced knowledge and expertise in IT technologies in a relatively short time.

I obtained this coveted position at such a respected international establishment on the strength of my research experience at the North China Institute of Computing Technologies, the country's oldest research organization in computer science. Exercising my diligence and creativity, I specialized in automation research and development in this institute, which not only gave me the opportunity to make full use of what I had learned at the university but also spurred me to constantly improve myself. I taught myself Computer Control Technology, Contemporary Control Theory, Electrical control Technology and Process Control & Automation Device, among other subjects.

Because of my strong skills in both hardware and software, I was appointed in 1995 the leader of a team to design the computer control system "Distributed Control System (DCS)". Under my effective leadership, the team completed design of the system structure, development of the modules, and programming of the software, and system debugging all in less than one year. A real-time computer control system, it can be combined with 2048 channels. For this project, I independently designed the kernels-CPU module, two other modules and the I/O interface software. The system is now a leading product in China's automation industry.

My research successes were built upon my solid undergraduate training at Tsinghua University, widely considered China's best engineering school. Between 1989 and 1994, I studied at Tsinghua as a major of electronic engineering, concentrating on basic courses as well as courses of my major. These courses solidly grounded me in theories of telecommunications and endowed me with all-round expertise in both software and hardware engineering. At the time of my graduation, my overall GPA ranked me among the top 10% of about 200 students in my grade.

Taking advantage of Tsinghua's emphasis on hands-on experience, I did a lot of lab work in my undergraduate studies. In my third year, I joined the university's Laboratory of Information Systems. In the lab I successfully designed the "2Mb/s PCM Digital Interface (32 frames)" used in the analogue PBX (Private Branch Exchange). In 1993, I independently designed a "Speech Signal Processing Card" used in the SUN SPARC station. This successful development of this card ended the situation in which the SUN SPARC station could not be used for speech processing and other multimedia applications. In the course of these projects, I became versed in hardware structure of the RISC computer, UNIX operating system and programming. All this laid a firm foundation for my career advancement.

My academic standing was so strong that I was offered acceptance into Tsinghua's graduate school without the normally mandatory admission exams. That was a privilege available to only the very best of each crop of graduating students. But I declined the offer, figuring that I should gain challenging research experience behind me, I think the time has come for me to not only undertake graduate studies but also undertake graduate studies in a quality program in the United States.

Ideally, I would like to enter into a Master's program that would lead me into Ph. D. studies later on. In such a program, I would like to focus my studies on one or a combination of the following areas: Control Systems, Communications Engineering, Digital Signal and Image Processing, or Microcomputer Applications. I will bring to the program a professional background significantly enrich my knowledge, enhance my expertise, and sharpen my research skills. If you accept me, you should find, some years down the road, that I will be a leading scientist in China's efforts to develop its IT industries.