Professional Statement Zhi Wang Purdue University
There is no easy path to become an engineer. It takes even more to become a good one. Attending one of the most prestigious engineering schools, experienced working for the industry and having done well in various courses and school project, I am eager to start my career as an electrical engineer. I was a Co-Op student in Technicolor for three semesters. I gained invaluable knowledge and skills that I would not be able to get from academia. My position for the first two semesters at Technicolor was software engineer. My team worked on a Broadband Home Router (BHR) for Verizon Fios TV system. During my third semester working at Technicolor, I worked at the hardware group developing set-top boxes for DIRECTV. In terms of technical skills, working in the industry helped me enhanced knowledge gained from school. As a software engineer, I got familiar with code development under Linux environment, reversion control software, various test and debugging tools, enhanced my knowledge of embedded system design that I acquired from school, and networking protocols. While working for hardware group, I have used Cadence design tools, hardware test equipment and utilized my skills gained from courses taken at Purdue, such as circuit analysis, embedded system design and control theory. Besides the technical aspect, the Co-Op experience also benefited me in terms of project management. I have seen the whole life cycle of the BHR project and how my project manager and software lead manage the project. I have applied the project management skills I gained from working at Technicolor to an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle project that I am currently working on with a few other Purdue students. What we have learned or will learn from courses taken at Purdue is very important. But the most valuable thing that school teaches us is the ways to learn. In a lot of my engineering class projects, we were not simply told what to do and just follow the instructions. Instead, we were given some objectives, design criteria and some references. We have to learn from the references and get on the internet to come up with a way to meet our design objectives. For example, in our Microprocessor System Design and Interfacing course project, we could do anything with our microcontroller dev board, only information about the dev board and programming references were given. My team had to decide our design objectives and learn how to interface peripheral hardware to the microcontroller. Willingness to learn and being able to learn new things quickly throughout our engineering career is vital. Purdue has helped me well improving both. It takes more than strong technical background and being able to learn quickly to make a good engineer. Good working ethics is an important characteristic of a good engineer. I consider myself having good working ethics. First of all, I am hard-working and I like challenges. I would take more course and challenging courses. My graduation will be one semester earlier as result. I do the best I can to get A’s and I wouldn’t mind spend a few extra hours at night to improve my work. Furthermore, I try to be professional when collaborating with my co-workers and fellow students, and give them respect they deserve. Moreover, in today’s globalizing society, being a Chinese student and fluent in both Mandarin and American English would potentially be helpful if employed by a company that has a subsidiary in China. Our team can work more efficiently and resolve conflicts much quicker. With the experience I have in classes here at Purdue University, working for the industry and having good working ethics, I am ready to start my engineering career.
