Becoming An Engineer To Achieve Complexity, Reliability And Innovation

I have always been fascinated by the process of designing and constructing, and the way in which theoretical knowledge of physics and mathematics is combined with knowledge coming from experience and other scientific disciplines, to achieve complexity, reliability and innovation.

In school Mathematics and Physics were my favourite subjects, where I was in the top 25 in the country for seven consecutive years in ten different competitions, which led me to apply to Mathematics at Oxford University, Merton College, where I spent one year studying. At the end of the year I saw that I was more interested in the applied areas. As a young student I was amazed by the projects of NASA and ESA (Apollo 11 moon landing, Voyager, Rosetta, Masat-1), which showed me what innovative design, accurate planning, and precise construction can achieve. As part of a research project, I had the opportunity to have an insight into the Wigner Database Centre (which analyses CERN data in Hungary), where researchers talked to me about circuits, space exploration and electron microscopes through several models and examples. In High School, I also had the opportunity to participate in the research of Professor Louis Deaett, member of the American Mathematical Society, on the topic of the number of roots of a real polynomial inside (or outside) the unit circle, and locating unimodular roots. On the Hungarian Higher Final Examination in Physics, we had the opportunity to conduct several experiments on our own, such as measuring the speed of sound with standing waves, or determining the density of a solid body and a fluid by measuring buoyancy. I have also designed an aeroplane with the aid of the XFLR5 software, simulating the wing profile, gliding properties, stability and spatial flow chart on my own. In Oxford we had a MATLAB course in which I got a distinction with 85%. In High School I have finished in the top ten in the European Girls Mathematical Olympiad’s national round twice (9th in 2014 and 6th in 2015). My collaboratie skills are best shown by the 5th place out of 120 teams we have achieved on the Bolyai National Mathematical competition in a team of 4. I was the leader of the Maths preparation course for pre-entry pupils in my school. My task was to develop their knowledge to the appropriate level for special Mathematics classes. I also helped a 5th-grade boy who was receiving E marks in maths to attain an A at the end of the year, which helped me to develop my teaching abilities.

In order to deepen my knowledge in informatics, I have taught myself to program in Pascal, Python and C++ with the aid of SoloLearn and the book “Making Use of Python” by Rashi Gupta. In the former, I have written a multi-player mathematical (simple logic and strategy) game where you could play against the computer or other human players. The game included level selection and leaders’ board that kept track of your scores across multiple attempts. I have worked during Summer 2018 at a Firewall-protector IT firm as a software developer intern. Here, I have learned to use various Python libraries, such as the Django framework, as well as the Linux terminal on a more advanced level. My task was to write a software authentication based log-in system with an OTP (One Time Password) algorithm, and also to present to my co-workers what I have learned about hardware authentication. These programming exercises helped me to familiarize myself with various different ways of materializing my ideas.

I would like to become an engineer because I am amazed by the way we can use Maths, Physics and Informatics together to create things beyond the scope of any one discipline. I would like to continue my studies in the UK at a world-leading university, being surrounded by like-minded enthusiastic students and excellent technology.