My Interest in the Master of Science Program at the Texas A&M University

Within this 'Texas A&M application essay' I am applying to the Master of Science program in Computer Science at Texas A&M University. I am very much interested in research being carried out by groups of Prof. Juan Garay and Prof. Guofei Gu. The work carried out by them on Cryptography, Network Security suits my background and Interests. As my background is undergraduate major in Computer Science and Engineering, I got an opportunity to explore various fields like Computer Networks, Cryptography and Network Security and Security and Privacy through various courses and projects. In addition, my undergraduate thesis includes project on An Advanced Elliptic Curve Cryptography based mutual authentication for Session Initiation Protocol. My undergraduate thesis gave me an idea that helped me to make a decision that I would specialize in future. It only takes a flicker to ignite the fire of inspiration. Following in the footsteps of my father who is an engineer, I had been a technology enthusiast since my childhood with an urge to give back to the society.

During my high school days, mathematics and its algorithms fascinated and presented a challenge to me simultaneously. I eventually mastered it and in this process developed a liking towards it which shaped out into a decision to pursue engineering for my undergraduate studies. Studying at one of the top 15 colleges in India, National Institute of Technology Warangal during under graduation opened up gateway in quenching my penchant for technical knowledge and the fact that I secured 8.56 CGPA testifies my passion for the subject and brilliance in the same.

With the desire to master new technologies and programming languages, I worked on various projects during my under graduation. In my sophomore year, I worked on machine learning project to de duplicate people data which enhanced my coding skills. During my penultimate year, I participated in Microsoft codefundo challenge in which I created an android app to sync mobile data with dropbox. It enhanced my front end and back end development skills. By participating in ACM ICPC and TCS Codevita coding challenges and getting selected till penultimate round in both the contests increased my command over Data Structures and Algorithms and enhanced my intellectual skills.

Subsequently, during my summer internship at Visa Inc., I was given an opportunity to work with their data security team​. I worked on symmetric encryption and decryption technologies which uses AES Algorithm. I developed data encryption and decryption Api’s exposed as rest services which are used by the applications in Visa. In addition to securing restful api calls with the Https protocol, I also developed password based authentication in order to access the restful Api’s. The above project enhanced my knowledge in data security at a higher level.

Security, Computer Networks, Data Structures and Algorithms are the three disciplines that enticed me during my undergraduate studies. With this curiosity I did choose to work on elliptic curve cryptography based mutual authentication for session initiation protocol for my undergraduate thesis under Assoc Prof. Dr.R.Padmavathy. As a part of the project I implemented registration and authentication phases. Both registration and authentication phases use asymmetric encryption and decryption technologies which uses Elliptic Curve Cryptography for data encryption and decryption. I used efficient algorithms which takes lesser time in order to compute the ECC operations. I also simulated the session initiation protocol between two users which uses the above mentioned phases for the purpose of mutual authentication. The above project further increased my knowledge in data security and the usage of it in computer networks. Having done my internship and undergraduate thesis on Network Security I found it interesting and challenging. I took up course on Computer Network Security offered by University of Colorado. All the way through the course, I was exposed to various information which includes programming with Crypto API and secured network systems with firewall and IDS. This course enhanced my technical knowledge to a greater extent.

After my under graduation I joined Oracle as an application developer. The main aspect of my work is to develop the setup area for compensation product in Fusion HCM, which has a wide range of customers nearly 6000. To describe the work briefly, I develop the features required for setting up a compensation plan, which is used by the managers to give hikes to the employees under them. In addition to this I developed a feature which gives an option to the manager to download the list of all compensation statements of workers under him. The time to process it reduced down to 70% which had a positive impact in terms of business value.

Why Masters at Texas A&M? As a common application essay it is needed to write why I choose this university. As mentioned above my undergraduate study and the industrial exposure which i experienced  provided me a brief approach towards any problem. However pursuing graduation in Texas A&M would provide me more technical and practical knowledge related to reality. After examining the courses Advanced Networking and Security, Foundations of Cyber Security which are offered as a part of graduation studies by Texas A&M under Computer Science plan enticed me and I consider them to be matching with my interests. In the long term I aspire to use this knowledge to develop an idea which can be widely used in the market.

In addition I also feel that project FRESCO being carried out by Prof. Guofei Gu is a perfect platform for me to extend my gained knowledge. I am eager to pursue the areas of study being valued by the faculty members mentioned, as well as faculty whose research areas are close to the areas of interest I mentioned previously. Finally, interacting with eminent faculty with apt setup and pursuing graduation in Texas A&M University will help me achieve my dreams and it will turn me into a well-balanced individual.