Hi everyone,
I have written a draft for a motivation letter, which i'll include in a Ph.D. application.
Because, at the moment, I don't have acces to someone from whom I can get feed back, I'll post it here, and hopefuly someone will be able to read it and comment.
Thank you in advance to whom might read it.
To whom it may concern,
Application for the *** Ph.D. Program
The present letter will explain the reasons why I'm applying to a Ph.D.
degree.
By enrolling on the undergraduate course on Systems and Informatics
Engineering at the *** University, I came in contact with different
paradigms, technics and methodologies for software development.
In the early years of my studies at the university I was a student of
Professor *** which introduced
me to the basis of Formal Methods for software development and verification.
Soon I discovered the interest for Formal Methods, and
got involved in the Grand Challenge in Computer Science initiative.
This experience gave me a taste of what research in Formal Methods is.
Before terminating the under-graduation I entered another challenge like
project, forming a team of students like my self for the ***
contest, under the category of Software Design.
We made it through to the *** finals with a project for a
distributed environment where mobile devices could be used to increment the
contents already available on social data sources like Wikipedia, and others.
Enrolling in the MSc on Informatics at *** was a natural choice in order to
keep working with, and in, Formal Methods,
allowing me to continue the research in the context of the Grand Challenge.
My thesis subject is ***, which includes
building formal models of a informal specification and it's correction
verification.
Under Professor ***'s supervision I have done research on the
possibility to use different tools for different aspects of the formal
development and verification of software.
Which lead to a paper submitted and, presented by me, on the ***
Workshop at the *** symposium.
The contact with researchers from all over the world made me want to keep
doing research on Formal Methods, and push the Grand Challenge initiative
further with my contribution.
In 2007 I was invited to join a development team, as a junior developer, to
design and build an information system for the "*** *** ***" (***).
From November/2007 to May/2008 I worked at the *** facilities together with
domain experts to design and build the software system, while maintaining the
research related with my MSc studies at the university.
I believe that through Formal Methods one can achieve true engineering
concepts for software correction by construction, and that, due to the
overwhelming expansion of software applications, not only critical systems
should be proven safe and correct.
Nowadays software is embedded in almost every system we use, and in most
cases,
the producers os these artifacts not only don't provide warranty, but will
relieve themselves from any obligation with disclaimer notices.
Formalizing software development, as other engineering driven development
communities have done in the past, will give it scientific grounds to hold on,
and probably increase its quality.
Kind Regards,
***