Statement of Purpose
Karsten Loer
During my studies (double major Computer Science / Genetics) in
the University of Bielefeld's Faculty of Technology, I discovered
my interest in research in applied computer science. I became deeply
involved in particular in the following five projects:
- Robotics: Together with students from the psychology and
electronics departments I built an autonomous robot for tactile
exploration of unknown topographical areas (of course it only ran over
a few lumps on the floor of our lab:-). This robot was demonstrated at
the 19th German Artificial Intelligence Conference (KI'95) in 1995:
(ref: KISTE).
- Automated verification: As an assistant to Prof. Peter Ladkin, I
installed and maintained the EVES theorem Prover from ORA
Canada for use in verification with the Temporal Logic of Actions (TLA).
- Computer-related incident and accident analysis. Together with
other interested
students, I used Prof. Ladkin's WB-Graph method to analyse
some computer-related accidents in commercial aviation
(refs: Cali, AMAST, Forschungsbericht). I also searched for suitable
graph-drawing tools that could be used to support the WB-Method and
used daVinci before settling on the dot tools in
Graphviz from AT\&T
Research.
- Computer-based sequence analysis. In several seminars I worked on DNA/RNA
and protein sequence analysis as well as secondary structure
prediction. I am currently deciding on `Diplom' thesis work;
either about the Shortest Common Superstring problem or about
the WB-Graph method.
I also obtained practical experience in the following two areas:
- Practical Network Support: My second task during the
assistantship with Prof. Ladkin was to plan, install and
maintain the group's Solaris-based computer network
(which also includes Linux and Windows NT machines)
together with two other assistants. I was personally
responsible for email/Sendmail,
NTP, Emacs, document processing tools (TeX, LaTeX,
Postscript/ghostview),and the C compiler. General
responsibilities with other assistants included daily
maintenance, security, trouble-shooting and service
recovery, and WWW-server administration. Our network runs very
well!
- as an IBM Work-Study fellow at IBM Germany's service center in Stuttgart,
working on a major DB2 database development project.
Since my studies have been successful, I want to stay in and have fun doing
research. I am therefore looking at Ph.D. work starting in January 1998
after my Diplom thesis is finished. Talks with friends who are PhD
candidates in Germany as well as Prof. Peter Ladkin, who has Master's and
Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, and
Prof. Robert Giegerich have given me an insight into how much more
effective PhD studies in the US could be for my style of working than
continuing in Germany. I am a social person and have achieved a lot in the
context of group work.
Both the computing equipment support and the level of educational care at
the Ph.D. level in the US in the fields in which I am interested appear to
be superior to those available in Germany.
On a general level, studying continues at the graduate level in
special graduate courses at United States universities . This is
almost unheard-of in Germany -- Ph.D. candidates are expected to
have completed their `studies' with the Diplom, and they have a `job',
during which they are expected to perform their research, and they
work on this job mostly on their own. Yet science is a continual
learning process, and in my opinion requires continuing education in
seminars and courses, probably throughout one's entire scientific career!
I also think that, socially, living in another country for a while would
be a great adventure and a unique experience.
I already worked in Canada for almost a year. I liked the `Western'
openness and way of life and would love to have the opportunity for more.
Moreover, it is my opinion that a scientist in particular needs to get to
know different professional cultures and to be able to use different
working styles in order to reach his or her full potential in research.
Individual cultures have their own priorities and, if one may say it,
obsessions, and it's sometimes necessary to step outside a particular
culture in order to be able to solve a problem. This becomes obvious within
subjects (for example in my accident-analysis and robotics work, which
involved synthesis of very different working areas) as well as on the
more general cultural level. Pursuing graduate studies in the US would
be the ideal way to develop the perspective I need.
Because the Faculty of Technology at the University of Bielefeld
maintains scientific contact with the Department of Computer Science at
the University of Arizona in one of my areas of interest, computational
biology, Arizona is a natural choice for me for potential graduate work.
I already talked to Gene Myers when he visited Bielefeld. I had a good
impression of the research environment of the University of Arizona.