Having had a strong exposure to computer science(CS), mathematics, and biology as a part of my undergraduate study and research internships, I’ve developed interests in Self-Assembly, DNA Storage, Algorithms, 3D Games/Simulation, and Software Development. Therefore, I am eager to join the CS department at Iowa State University(ISU). My research interests lie at the intersection of CS and Biology, where in I can take help from techniques of Mathematics, and Coding Theory for solving problems. My career goal is to pursue a PhD and I, therefore, want to pursue an MS at ISU which will equip me with required proficiency.

I’ve, briefly, 2 years of research experience when I primarily worked on DNA Tiles, DNA Storage, Software Development, and Image Processing. It culminated into 3 research papers, with me being the first author.

-Computing Real Numbers using Self-Assembly.(will be submitted to FNANO’15)
-DNACloud: A Potential Tool for storing Big Data on DNA.(presented at FNANO’14)
-ImPatho: An Image Processing Based Pathological Decision Support System.(presented at IEEE R10 HTC’14)

While presenting my work DNACloud at FNANO’14, I attended talks on on Self-Assembly, which enlightened me with the cutting-edge research going in self-assembly areas such as DNA Strand Displacement, Chemical Kinetics, and Tile Assembly. Thus, I started reading thesis work of Dr. Erik Winfree, Caltech, on DNA Self-Assembly, as a part of my summer internship, to gain exposure in this field and identify potential problems. Later, my research work - Computing Real Numbers using Self-Assembly - based on DNA Tiles culminated in to a research paper. I had given technique to compute an irrational number from its infinite series. This work will be submitted for peer review at FNANO’15. It was presented at my university as summer internship work, for which I received Best Student Researcher Award. Out of the 240 presentations, 3 were awarded.

To widen my horizon, I’ve taken electives in the domain of CS, Mathematics, electronics, and Biology. Also, I maintain a good stand in my undergraduate class - approximately in top 5% - of 240 students. Additionally, I’ve done several projects in these fields and their codes are available on my github account(username: shalinshah1993). I’ve also been awarded, twice, the position of teaching assistant. Thus, I’ve tried to gain expertise in core CS disciplines, and also explored areas of biology and mathematics during my undergraduate studies. This has made me much more suitable candidate for this graduate course.

I feel that obtaining a formal degree at ISU can fill the gap between my current skill set and long term career goal. ISU's Molecular Programming Lab has excellent people such as Dr. Henderson and Dr. Jack Lutz, working on molecular programming, and self-assembly; this highly resonates with my research interests. Thus, because of my motivation to work in this area, and prior background, it should not be difficult to align with the current research going-on at LAMP.

To sum up, I think my interdisciplinary background, research and teaching experience, and ingenuity makes me a suitable candidate for ISU.

Shalinkumar Shah
www.guptalab.org/shalinshah