My Statement of Purpose_2_ Request for help Second part: In my master’s thesis, I’m mainly working on the Tactical to Strategic Level Crew Planning and Balancing Workloads in Turkish State Railways. We moved forward from tactical level and considered a more flexible structure in our transportation network to propose some managerial insights. The problem is to determine the allocation and the level of minimum sufficient crew resources level coherently. Generally, we can approach to the problem from two sides, heuristics approach and exact approach. For the former, I designed a neighborhood search heuristic in order to search effectively and efficiently in the neighboring solutions. Currently I’m implementing the algorithm (in C++). For the exact approach, we formulated the problem as a network flow problem. I implemented the mathematical formulation using Cplex Concert Technology (in C++) and plan to submit the paper in a few months to a reputable journal. In operational level crew planning, we worked on balancing problem in Turkish State Railways. Again, both exact algorithm and several heuristics were designed. We presented the result of my thesis in some conferences. Moreover, we are planning to submit our balancing paper to INFORMS Journal on Computing. In addition to my thesis, I took part in different research works. There, I gained lots of experiences, besides their technical benefits, such as independent research abilities, teamwork and efficient resource investigation. Among those works, I should emphasize on some of them. I worked on Dynamic Networks with one of my friends and published a paper in Journal of Mathematical Modelling and Algorithms. We dealt with minimum cost flow problem on dynamic network flows with zero transit times and a new arc capacity, horizon capacity. We develop a simple approach based on mathematical modeling attributes to solve the problem. Moreover, I am working on a paper about Dynamic P-median Problem with Prof. X. We proposed a new formulation and two different heuristic algorithms to find facility locations to satisfy dynamic demands over a time in a network. Some of the existing heuristic algorithms such as genetic algorithm and tabu search algorithm can be easily used to solve the new problem. However, our new heuristic algorithms use the special structure of the new problem and some existing heuristic methods as a subroutine.

My Statement of Purpose_1_ Request for help Hello dear friends. As you know I'm going to apply for some PhD programs in USA. Recently, I have finished writing my SOP. Can you help me to correct it or revise it. Thank you all in advance:) It is too long so I will post it in 3-4 separate parts. First part: Statement of Purpose I have made some big decisions throughout my life. I would rank applying for a PhD program as one of my most important decisions I came to decide during last 5 years. I rejected the opportunity of studying master degree in an Iranian university to take a big step toward PhD. I have decided to get a PhD degree from a top ranked world university and accepted the challenge of going to Sabanci University, Turkey to start a new academic life. I believe I couldn’t be more serious about graduate study seeing that I am already a graduate student in a new field. Living through the M.Sc. thesis, a few publications and about seven graduate level courses, I have yet to face anything that will deflect me from my path, or even question it. My Bachelor period at Information Technology and computer engineering department of Amirkabir University (one of bests in Iran) helped me to find out that I do not like to be a computer engineer! Starting from third year, I began to select some courses from Industrial Engineering department and enjoy attending a class for first time. I could not bear sitting through IT courses with some exceptions, which in turn, chopped of about 25% of my grades because of lost participation points and unattended quizzes. Industrial Engineering courses opened a new window for me and realized that this is the type of course I like. After consulting with two professors, I made my decision and registered in Iranian national entrance exam for master degree in Industrial Engineering. Studying new topics like OR, Statistics, Probability Theory was unforgettable. Despite all hardness of selfstudying such core courses I ranked 189th in the national exam. However, the new university did not satisfy my eagerness to learn and I found myself applying abroad for Master degree. Among all of my options Turkey and Industrial Engineering Program of Sabanci University was my first choice. Using my programming skills from my bachelor and learning Operation Research concepts I really like it here. It was like using all of my abilities and enjoying what I’m learning. As a result of this good situation, I had 3.71/4.00 masters GPA and received great evaluations.

First notebook entry: Introducing myself I am learning English, because I want to study abroad. My native language is Azeri and I'm fluent in Turkish and Persian. I grew up in Iran and now living in Istanbul, Turkey:)