Aalto University

Application for admission to the Ph.D. program

Dear committee members,

Once, a professor told me one could not live without a philosophy. My philosophy of life is to use
my abilities to examine new ideas and experience novel methods to expand my range of
knowledge, a means by which I can get into the zone and lose track of time. This philosophy has
been my vision since I remember and it led me toward meaningful steps to make it happen. I chose
to major in engineering to build up analytical skills and understand how to build things. Even
though engineers are great as they solve hard problems, I am also interested in what motivates
them to solve those hard problems.

A year away from school after my undergrad graduation, I decided to invest the time needed to
follow my passion, gain some real experience and perspective, and work on fulfilling the skills
and requirements for my graduate study. Also, during that year, I took business, finance, and
project management related courses. The hard work paid off well. I took the national Executive
MBA Master’s program university entrance exam in Iran (one of the hardest master’s program
entrance exams) and ranked 66th among more than 25,000 candidates (top 0.2%). Although I could
have graduated from the best school in Iran with this score, I decided to stretch my comfort zone
even further and continue my engineering study abroad in Germany; something that I was sure
will bring me more opportunities and growth. I think “I love breathing’’ is a self-evident sentence,
for one cannot live without breathing, and it does not need any further justification. Learning more
and moving forward with the experience I gain is like breathing to me, and this is precisely the
reason for which I accepted all the difficulties that come with studying abroad. I think the love for
expanding my knowledge shaped in me gradually. It was not caused by an exciting event or a nice
experiment at school or because of a beautiful book. It happened when I thought I found something
that finally I feel related to and is in complete harmony with the viewpoint from which I see my
environment. Now that I retrospect after reaching the end of my studies in Media Technology—
Audio Engineering at the Ilmenau University of Technology, I am glad that I took this challenge
which helped me to grow, both professionally and as a person. Now, I feel even more ready to take
on my next challenge and go even further to broaden my horizon by pushing the boundaries in the
field and return to the community.
During my studies, the topics and more specifically psychoacoustics and spatial sounds in virtual
environments began to resonate with me. This connection enabled me to successfully deliver my
impactful media project titled “Psychoacoustic Evaluation of Algorithms for Continuously
Changing Listening Positions in Interactive Virtual Acoustic Environments” which helped me to
decide on what I am keen on doing as a master thesis. Right now, I am taking the final steps of
completing my master thesis titled “Evaluating Plausibility of Virtual Acoustic Environments for
Headphone Reproductions” which involves lots of experimentations, analysis, and new exciting
findings.
The main reason I see The Virtual Acoustics Team at Aalto University as an ideal place for
continuing my studies is the state-of-the-art research focuses on spatial sounds which is one of my
main research interests. Moreover, Professor Lokki’s publications have been a source of
inspiration for me, especially for my media project. These inspirations include but not limited to
works like “Physically-based auralization: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation" and
"Creating Interactive Virtual Acoustic Environments."
When I look at my application, I may not have all the knowledge and experience required for the
position, but I am sure I pose all the qualities needed for a hard-working and fast learner Ph.D.
student. I see lots of potentials in myself that I believe by the help of the excellent facilities,
professors, the scientific atmosphere at Aalto University, and employing my talent I can be a
successful student there. Another important fact is the research experience I have gained (and I am
gaining) from the media project, and my thesis helped me to build muscle memories on how to
approach a problem scientifically, how to design an experiment and benchmark, and finally how
to communicate the result effectively back to the community to make a difference.
I am sure that Aalto University and your virtual acoustics team will attract the best candidates in
the field and I am confident that I would flourish in that environment. Working and sharing with
other highly motivated Ph.D. candidates would be an excellent opportunity to grow and learn. I
appreciate your time and consideration in advance and kindly ask you to let me know if you need
any additional information.

Sincerely,
Afrooz Nasrollahnejad