My Passion into a More Professional Aspect of Electrical Engineering

Having been raised up in an academic teaching environment by my parents, who are mathematics teachers, as well as my early fondness for explaining intellectual concepts to my classmates through elementary school, had founded an immense desire in my character to be a professor after graduating.

Besides, working as a mathematics and physics tutor to high school and undergraduate engineering students during my 5 year bachelor degree, had effectively developed my passion into a more professional aspect. Accordingly, achieving master’s degree would be a stepping stone to my Ph. D. degree.

While many students find it confusing to determine which sort of study they should adopt after graduating from high school, I was markedly influenced by the way an engineer usually approaches challenging issues with such ingenious analytical thinking to come up with a practical solution under time and budget constraints and to implement it in a real time world. Furthermore, an insightful engineer pays precise attention to detail. A minor error can cause an entire structure to fail, so every detail must be reviewed thoroughly during the whole project.

The reason that I chose to pursue electrical engineering, especially power and energy systems branch among the various types of engineering fields, is based on the economic climate of most of the third world countries, where I have lived most of my life despite my American citizenship, through which they endure shortage of non-renewable resources: fossil fuels, crude oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear fuels.

This shortage of those resources clearly makes the developing countries fall behind with the global economic competitiveness. However, developing countries are themselves in strong positions to promote the use of renewable energies due to abundant renewable resources, including wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and hydro. Financial aid is only needed to foster the process of creating the right framework and the momentum for renewable energies.

Renewables may allow developing countries to leapfrog directly into a clean energy scenario, thereby avoiding actually what Europe is facing today: it has an existing grid, existing energy production, which will over time have to be upgraded, and this costs a lot of money. So the developing world could jump from the present situation to a situation in which it doesn’t need this obsolete and polluting infrastructure.

As an undergraduate of Ain Shams University, one of the top engineering universities in Egypt, I was introduced to the fundamentals of wind energy, solar energy, economics of generation, thermal power plant and power electronics to help me deepen and strengthen my knowledge towards electrical power engineering.

Moreover, I had the opportunity to be enrolled in courses like storage energy technologies, power quality, advanced integrated systems and network interfacing of renewable resources to get exposed to the techniques of connecting these renewable resources: solar and wind to the power grid, also the power quality problems associated with the interfacing of these resources with the smart grid. Beside my academic knowledge, I am glad to say that I am not a person who was only engaged in studies; however, participation in different activities and internships was essential and vital in improving my personal and leadership skills.

During summer 2016, I had an internship in El Sewedy Electric, one of the pioneering multinational corporations in the field of electrical equipment, in the design department. Through this internship, I offered exceptional attention to details, highly developed communication skills and a talent in managing complex projects with a demonstrated ability to prioritize tasks and multitask.

This internship widened my prospective about power transmission & has provided me with a firm foundation of the basic concepts of power flow control. Throughout that summer, I was selected among numerous candidates for the position of head usher of City Scape real state exhibition, world's largest networking exhibition and conference on property development that took place in Egypt.

Although I succeeded to attain outstanding GPA through my 5 year bachelor’s degree among my colleagues in the university, as well as the fact that English language was the teaching and the study language of my engineering program, I wasn’t lucky enough to accomplish high verbal GRE score as I had a short preparation time. I knew it would be hard to achieve a high score in a New York minute, but I was grasping at straws and denying any reasons to hinder me proceeding with this goal.

Glimpsing through the information given on the website of University of Houston, I am highly impressed with the accomplished faculty members, environment and the facilities the University has to offer to its students. I also realize that the syllabus offered at this University is designed to meet the demands of the present day industry. Last year, Texas generated 18 percent of its energy from wind and solar with wind providing the enormous majority of total renewable generation. Factor of the reason Texas’ renewable integration achievements are such a big deal is that the Texas grid is essentially completely isolated from the other U. S. grids which gives the chance for further development and advantage.