Letter of Motivation

Dear Admissions Committee,

Magicians use their magic power to make a stage more attractive while engineers are using the power they get when demonstrating basic principles of the world to make it better. That’s what I truly aspire to be and also the reason why I am applying for your master’s program of Mechanical Engineering.

Over the past few years, I’ve used the power from water and iron to design and manufacture a throttle valve as part of a hydraulic system project; I’ve used the power from mass and mathematics to optimize the performance of synchronous motors; I’ve used the power from binary to build up 3D warehouse system using Python and Plant Simulation. As I am using those magic power, I gradually aware that they are not isolated. All knowledge can be united if I can find out a proper solution.

Especially in the new digital era, traditional mechanical equipment is more and more defined by software and digital functions. To better realize this transformation and migration, I aspire to find out the very linkage between digital world and mechanical component by learning more from master’s degree. Like how to digital modeling a permanent magnet synchronous motor and better improve its efficiency.

The module of mobility engineering attracts me by combining mechanical engineering and information engineering. The old golden age is shining new glow when it is integrating with digital world. This image comes from my academic experience as a student in Tongji University and Polytechnic University of Turin and that my internship experience in Volkswagen.

From my internship in Volkswagen, I fully participate in the planning, test, audit, release and Go-live of Real-Time Monitoring system, Remote Parking Assistant System, Mobile Online Service China. Along all the way, my tasks are problem-oriented and my knowledge about coding helps me to process and integrate the data. And my knowledge about mechanical component’s function helps me to map the data into real components by using Python.

One critical thing I met was the log of one electric control unit related to battery showed very abnormal behavior one day. The root cause was being analysed by R&D and our department together. They tried to explain it by finding bugs from root codes, while I was analyzing it by combining its mechanical structure and electric circuit. From previous experience of high level warning test about E-Golf, I built up the concept and formed my understanding of the energy flow in a vehicle, which gave me hints on solving this problem.

I checked the motor’s status and log about battery voltage before and after the abnormal period and then separated out the log of ignition state, vehicle speed, resistance, main current and voltage to get the trend of how incidents happened and finally find out the root cause was that the small new battery was not proper. It provided a large micro-current that would activate the main circuit.

This successful analysis helps implemente the project on time in approval phase. I believe that I can do better after taking the course Electrical Drives For Industry and Transport Applications in mobility engineering. Prof. Davide and his proficiency on electric transportation eco-system field will strongly strengthen my capability about demonstrating the relation between components and the entire system.

Besides my internship, my final thesis about E-commerce 3D warehouse system made me determined to develop more myself in the field of combining mechanics and digitalization. When I was on a field research in an e-commerce warehouse in Foshan, I was amazed by the advanced degree of their warehouse system and also their very out dated way to operate it. I saw the trunks walking like a lazy worker going nowhere in the system.

That was the reason why I selected this topic and spent three months to learn Plant Simulation, built up a corresponding digitalized warehouse system in it by Python, used genetic algorithm to optimized its working strategy and finished my thesis. The thesis is proved to be successful not only because it was highly praised by my mentor and also because it did increase the efficiency by more than 50% after that company adapted my project. It would be a sadly waste if we have a gun but use it as a stick.

It is the same when dealing with data. Without correct theory, data is only combination of numbers. The thinking pattern of problem-solving enables me to add values by analyzing data, but I also aspire to go deeper and find out the basic specificity underlying mountains of data. The research of Prof. Carman Mark James about deep semi-supervised learning is opening a new door for me to enter the new digital era. The way he and his colleagues treat data as both high dimensional and small dimensional opens my mind. And makes me think that after proper transformation, it can also be applied in the machine learning about data in mobility engineering field.

This is also the very point that Polytechnic University of Milano attracts me. Teachers and students in your university are making a great effort towards future, and future will thus be defined by us. I aspire to gain the capability to further promote the digitalization of traditional engineering by learning more fundamental theory about electric system, vehicle transportation and its further application.

I am looking forward to participating in your project to achieve the magical future build by myself. And I am all ready.

Yours, sincerely

Ge Fang