Motivation Letter Example: Erasmus+ Security and Cloud Computing (SECCLO)

Aalto University - Auditorium. CC by J-P Kärnä

As the admission process for this year is completed, I think it is okay to publish my motivation letter so other fellow prospective students, on either this program or other program as well, can learn from it. This motivation letter is targeted for Security and Cloud Computing (SECCLO), an Erasmus+ program. I applied for 2018 intake and all praise to God that I nailed the admission.

The problem statement is: “Tell about your expectation for the SECCLO programme, career aspirations, relevant experience and achievements, maximum 500 words“. I nailed exactly 500 characters in this letter with of course, grammatical mistakes. This letter is also the 3rd rewrite version. I scrapped the previous two as I found new inspiration to write the letter at the last minute.

The Letter

Just right after the new year of 2018, the computing world was surprised by the publication of an imminent security hole on every modern microprocessor which exists within the hardware itself. Meltdown and Spectre, how the hole was called, exploit the modern processor features called Speculative Execution which actually was the means to increase throughput of a processor. The infuriating part of this finding is that it must be patched via software which may give performance degradation for over 30%, and the most affected parties are enterprise computing and cloud service providers.

I reflected to this event that even the smallest hole in a system can be exploited. Therefore, an engineer must think of security very early before developing a system. I hold to this value every time I develop my software, such as my Tizen Fundamental Classes (TFC) project in Samsung R&D Indonesia (SRIN). I initiated TFC to help my team mates migrating from Java to C++ to develop software on Tizen platform. Unlike Java, C++ is way more complex and has to be coded correctly in order to not introducing bug and security hole due to its nature of being a native-targeted language.

I believe that by creating frameworks and standards will lead to more efficient and secure code. Reusability paradigm can centralize certain functionality into a single code so it can be easier to maintain should there’s a bug in it. TFC was proven to be successful to increase productivity and code quality in our team. We delivered several projects to enhance Tizen ecosystem, including developing Telegram client for Tizen platform last year.

Another reflection is that a good design will lead to a better outcome. I applied this principle on my previous career as consultant in Accenture, where I worked on developing a project information system for a national utility company. I carefully considered a modular system design to accommodate feature expansion. This is important as the system will need to be expanded as the business expands. This principle helped our achieving a good quality product in the end.

SECCLO program caught my attention because it focuses on security and cloud computing, which is an emerging technology nowadays. I believe by enrolling in this program I can keep up with the latest skills and knowledge in this field. I expect to gain expertise in system security, security protocols, and their implementation in actual applications, which I barely obtained from my undergraduate study. Moreover, SECCLO offers courses related with distributed computing, embedded system, and infrastructure security, which I found very interesting and related with my interest in embedded development.

I am going to apply my expertise in technology industry after I graduate from this program, specifically related with embedded system and cloud services. I am also considering in continuing towards doctorate level to establish my position as a computer scientist. Considering my long time experiences in technology industries as well as my previous academic achievement, I am sure I am going to success in SECCLO master program

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2 Responses

  1. Danniel says:

    it’s really good rows
    i recently find this program and i really liked
    i’m still undergraduate and i need improve my english and somethings else.
    if you have some advice i’d like to know.

    • gilang says:

      Just ensure you maximize your performance in your undergrad study, and take some internship and research job on your campus or elsewhere. The experiences will help you stand out. 🙂

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