Personal History Statement---1

I remember that I was so much interested in achieving knowledge in different areas and this was the reason that motivated me to read and write before school and enter school one year earlier than others. This tendency of understanding about everything around made me successful through all my school years. I visited a diary manufacturer in a high school science trip that was a breakthrough in my life when I realized the fascinating world of microorganisms and the variety of their products that we use unconsciously. According to our tour director, in addition to Biochemistry and biology, other tools needed in Biotechnology are math, physics, chemistry, economics and even management that are gained in chemical engineering. So, I chose Chemical Engineering as my major at university and Biotechnology as my major focus. There, I also found out that our current market has a limited variety of products that are capable of producing via fermentation technology.

In my country, Iran, oil and natural gas are natural predominant reservoirs and people consume these resources without any other option, and as a result, the investment on renewable resources of energy is restricted to only some laboratory experiments. Conversely, fossil fuel reservoirs are depleting dramatically in the past century and there are severe consequences of fossil fuel consumption that threaten our environment. In recent years, with the advent of Rohani’s government, several clean energy projects in pilot scales and even industrial are proposed for less dependency on oil and this is a great opportunity for development of renewable resources of energy that now is restricted. This huge potential for the development of renewable resources and depleting resources intrigued me to continue my studies in Biotechnology, focusing on renewable biochemical as a potential driving force of my nation’s economy.

I realized that for performing cutting-edge research in Biotechnology, I should enter to graduate program in order to increase my laboratory experiences, research abilities and team-working abilities. There, I served as a Research Assistant and Teaching Assistant at Biotechnology Laboratory, and bring the opportunity to improve my teaching abilities as an assistant for performing instructions and examining the students; problem solving with the responsibility of calibration of instruments and technical assistance; and professional experiences achieved with analyzing all the samples for HPLC and GC. Moreover, I reliably took other responsibilities and accept potential financial costs.

Thanks to my helpful supervisors, I also solved several obstacles that were happened during my thesis and performed some novel methods according to our laboratory instruments. I also developed my team-working abilities with group projects that are performed in several projects including simulation of biomass gasification, Bioethanol plants, Biogas plants and valve tray distillation columns and I served as the leader in 3 of them.

Also, while keeping a high position in my research and academic courses, I always tried not to disregard other aspects of life and have practiced basketball that boosts my team-working ability and hard-working, and sometimes play classical guitar that improves my focus and is relaxing.