Dear Scholarship Committee,

I am submitting this application for the Excellence Scholarship to further my education in Master of Geomatics. My academic performance and practical experiences, as well as my abilities and skills, prepared me to be eligible for ESOP.

With Southeast University, I have worked on a GIS project called ‘Group Interaction Space-time Accessibility Analysis Based on Real-time Road Conditions’, in which I was responsible for modelling and software development. By reviewing relevant papers and studying existing space-time accessibility models, I extended individual space-time path and individual space-time prism, which are the key concepts of Hägerstrand’s time geography, to the group context. Then I built a space-time accessibility evaluation model for group interactions by considering both the opening hours of facilities and the individual preferences. We testified this model with a case study of group accessibility regarding to food service facilities in Nanjing, China. Finally, we developed a desktop application by using C++ to provide multi-user recommendations on dining places. My ability in scientific research such as literature reading, modelling and IT skills has been greatly enhanced.

When I was funded to attend the 2019 Mitacs Globalink Research Internship in Winnipeg, Canada, I worked with Dr. Richard Milgrom, the Dean of the City Planning Department at the University of Manitoba. Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba has obvious characteristics of urban sprawl and my primary responsibility was to establish the GIS model of this region to help recognize the sprawl pattern. I extracted data which include land-use, roads, public transport network from remote sensing images and digitalized them separately as vector layers. At the same time, I established the corresponding spatial database. Also, I completed population growth analysis based on demographic data and I studied accessibility of Winnipeg’s public transport network and its change over the years between 1956 and 2016. It was the first time I went abroad and applied my knowledge to another field. It proved my competence in interdisciplinary project and my adaptability in new environment.

I am also a quick learner. I led the team of two members to participate 2019 Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM). Given a completely new problem related to emergency evacuation and 96 hours to research and submit solutions, we proposed an adaptive emergency evacuation model and used the cellular automata based on Matlab by self-study. As a result, we won the second place, which proved my problem-solving skills and self-study ability.

My interest in pre-proposal for Master thesis lies in the branch of GIS applied to transportation issues, commonly labeled as GIS-T. The specific pre-proposal topic is about customized bus services with spatio-temporal data, which intend to diversify and enhance a city’s public transport system. Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation at ETH Zurich has professional laboratories and a strong faculty. Your lab Mobility Information Engineering Lab, which focuses on the analysis and simulation of human mobility, suitably meets my research interests. These extraordinary academic resources in your program would no doubt prepare me the competence to complete my thesis project.

Your scholarship will significantly relieve my financial stress and, without such burden, I hope to fully utilize this precious opportunity and concentrate on fostering future success. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Yours Faithfully, [Your Name]