Statement  of Purpose

It is a great pleasure to apply to a Ph.D. program in the field of electrical engineering at the UC Berkeley Graduate School and I feel privileged to have a chance to introduce myself.

I have been brought up with the industrial development of South Korea from construction to electronic appliances and again to integrated circuit and communications. When the second change occurred, I was much impressed with enthusiasm shown by many researchers and engineers for the development of new products. Now, the core of Korean industry structure might be seen as being centered around electrical engineering and computer science. As a result, for the latest few years the industry has earned enormous dollars every year particularly with memory chips and in turn, the profit has led to corresponding investment on electrical engineering. Many brilliant students are studying on these. By witnessing the changes in the high tech industry in Korea, therefore, the significant attention to semi-conductor and related science fields has been the main driving force for me to major electrical engineering in the Korea University. Soon after majoring it I began to search for more focused technology field to which I could dedicate myself both from academic and professional perspectives. In the mean while, having read an article on MEMS (Microelectromechanical Systems) technology in the Science, I reaped my interest in this field. The article explained that it enables silicon wafers to be manufactured for micro structures as sensors and actuators and it fascinated me profoundly contrary to my previous knowledge that a silicon wafer is used for integrated electrical circuits. And this led me to believe that I would play an important role in development of this technology. Largely due to the fact that MEMS will be a solution to a single micro chip which has various functionalities in circuit and structure I believed that the technology would be a prime candidate for the better future of human lives if it is applied to biotech and information technology. Given this, I pursued my academic aim in the area of MEMS at Graduate School of Korea University and fortunately I could meet an eminent professor whose major research was in MEMS.

At Master¡¯s degree, having believed that building a firm theoretical background was most important I devoted myself to comprehensive reading of related literatures on the subject and was absorbed in learning simulation tools. Moreover, I made my sturdy foundation of design for manufacturing by attending a semiconductor integrated circuits manufacturing course at Inter-university Semiconductor Research Center at Seoul National University. During my master program, I was mainly involved in the project to develop micro-devices for inspection of power electric machinery, particularly in micro accelerometers. In this project, I proposed the novel detecting method using the variation of dielectric layer thickness of a FET (Field Effect Transistor) and also simulated its electrical and mechanical characteristics as well as manufacturing process with designs that I made. Through these activities, I understood the concept of various micro-machined sensors and the overall surface micro-machining technologies. Not only did I research in this project, but also actively took part in other projects which were on-going within the laboratory (the development of a gyroscope, the protection method for stiction which can occur during the release of a large proof mass, the application of laser to the surface 3D micro-machining development and so on), through which I enlarged the range of know-how and gained impetus in studying MEMS.

After the Graduate School, I joined the Micro System Group at LG Electronics Institute of Technology (LG-Elite), a high tech electronics company. It was an opportunity for me to strengthen my knowledge on MEMS in the practical process of industrialization in many challenging ways. As a research engineer, I wished that my strength in theoretical background would form a basis to realize products at the lab level. This was largely achieved through the SiOB (Silicon Optical Bench) project as a main task at the company. Although this project was initiated as an academic research, successful research and development resulted in articles of trade representing our group largely due to the endeavor of my team.

In this project, I was primly involved in the overall production process as a director and put an enormous effort on sorting out unexpected flaws of the process. One of the biggest achievements is to succeed 3-dimensional photolithography process on several hundred-micrometer anisotropic wet etched silicon substrate. As the projects developed further, my role extended to other business activities such as marketing and sales as well as technical ones for device design, reliability test and qualify assurance for manufacturing. This could be acquired largely through interaction with experts on each field within the company, LG Electronics Inc. and became another important asset to arm my knowledge both in terms of practicality and theory and interpersonal skills in technology oriented business a whole.

I am now planning to investigate myself for further education because I have had been eager to absorb advanced knowledge of your institute which offers effective and efficient research environments. Since when I was a college student, this desire has been brought up in myself and it has been amplified whenever I felt my shortage and limitation and gratified when I overcame difficulties in various tasks. In this light, it is the right time to apply my attainment to new areas of electrical engineering by unifying and readjusting the knowledge and experiences acquired over past years. In my judgment, UC Berkeley best fits to my personal lifetime goal by gaining exposure to an experience with diverse faculties. This will be even more beneficial to my career given the fact that MEMS requires systematical multi-disciplinary studies. While I was gaining insights into MEMS technology, whenever I fell into a trouble, papers and information on the website of BSAC (Berkeley sensor & actuator center) have been the most reliable reference to overcome the bottlenecks that I have faced and this contributes largely to applying to the Ph.D. program at UC Berkeley. In this sense, there is no doubt for me that the program offered at UC Berkeley will be the most effective means to learn both inside and outside the classroom not only academically but also professionally and, thus, to broaden my view on MEMS as well as related technology fields. If accepted, therefore, I will devote all energy, knowledge and experiences to the study and research and this effort will contribute to the reputation of the University to a large extent. I hope that my background and qualifications are found suitable for your program.

I strongly believe that MEMS technology miniaturizing most elements of machine will be revolutionary innovation in the high tech field and, thus, will be a key technology in entering the era of ubiquitous computing. I hope that my research activities at UC Berkeley would play a crucial role in this change and will ultimately contribute to changes in life of human beings in the future.

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