Statement of purpose

Respected Sir/Madam,

My name is Siva, I am a BSc Mathematics graduate from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore,
India. I am applying to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Purdue University for the Ph.D.
program in Mathematics. My main interest is in the field of Algebraic Geometry and Commutative
Algebra. My Bachelor's degree did an incredible job in strengthening my foundations as well as paving
the way to understand advanced concepts of Algebra, Analysis, Topology, Combinatorics & Discrete
Mathematics, Differential Equations, and other areas of mathematics. Hence, I would like to pursue my
Ph.D in Algebraic Geometry.

I always had a knack of understanding abstract concepts; in high school, I attended a seminar by professor
R. Ramanujan in "Geometry and Algebra" at IMSC (Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai). There
he made the following statement "Science is wide, algebra is a sink point in which finally most of the
concepts of science and math fall into". This kindled my curiosity about algebra. I started reading "Linear
Algebra" by Kenneth Hoffman and then "Topics in Algebra" by I.N. Herstein. Aside from pure
mathematics, Algorithms, Complexity theory, Automata Theory and Data Science are a few domains in
Theoretical Computer Science that also fascinate me.

During my undergrad days, I got the opportunity to head the mathematics club of my university through
which I actively worked to propagate pure mathematics among the student body. I gave lectures on Lie
Algebra, Representation Theory, and Combinatorics in Computer Science, Theoretical Machine Learning,
and Image Processing. It was also at this time that I implemented my plan of rigorous self-study -outside
of the classroom- to hone the skills required for mathematical research.

When I got introduced to the area of Module Theory, I came across quite a few open problems. In
particular, I looked into the "Jacobson Conjecture" which states "For a ring R with Jacobson radical J, the
only element of a Noetherian ring in all powers of J is 0." At first glance the statement of this conjecture
seems much intuitive and comes with a lot of insightful examples too, however, later I realized the
intricacies behind it: in my quest of finding a counterexample, I must admit that I was indeed unsuccessful.
During the summer of my freshman year, I interned at CEBS (Center for Excellence in Basic Sciences,
Mumbai) under Dr. Balwant Singh, who guided and motivated me to understand the proceedings of this
conjecture through some established works by IN Herstien, Jategaonkar, Arun Vinayak and Lenagan T.
H.

In my sophomore year, I worked with Dr. K. Somasundaram, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore,
on the "Permanent Dominance conjecture" in the area of multilinear algebra where I got the chance to
refer to top-notch research publications and journals that dealt with intriguing ways of solving this problem
for specific cases. While searching for examples related to matrix inequalities using determinent’s and
permanent’s I came across the book "Matrices and Graphs" by Dr. R.B. Bapat. The “Erdos-Faber-Lovasz
Conjecture" and the "Total Coloring Conjecture” in this book caught my attention at once. I did a reading
project on the "Total Chromatic Number for Some Classes of Cayley Graphs” under J. Geetha and K.
Somasundaram which aims to solve the Total Coloring conjecture for Cayley graphs using an algebraic
approach.
Recently I had an opportunity to be a Research Intern at IIT-Madras in the Department of Computer
Science under Professor Arun Rajkumar where I worked on the Structural classification of algebraic
tournaments. I had an opportunity to extend the work of Professor Arun Rajkumar who classified
tournaments of rank-2. I am glad to mention that our results are under review for publication.

My Bachelor thesis explains the "Kaplansky Conjecture" on Group Rings. In this regard, I am working
with Dr. S. Santhakumar to extend the research of Zahra Taheri and Alireza Abdollahi on the zero divisor
conjecture which remains unsolved. I am aiming to extend the result of Zahra and Aliereza to rings of
prime support size, who proved for rings of support size 3.

The covid-19 pandemic was undoubtedly a new (and challenging) situation that brought a lot of change
in the formal teaching-learning process, yet I utilized this circumstance in the best possible way by taking
part in many online seminars from premier mathematical institutes in India and across the world. This
encouraged me to keep going despite the tough times.

I believe that I will have much wider scope for research in Purdue University than in India. The
Department of Mathematics at Purdue University boasts of several Field Medalists, Able Prize winners,
and other notable prize-winners. Therefore, it would be extremely gratifying to share the same bench.
With almost two centuries of unparalleled and rich contributions to Pure Mathematics, this pinnacle of an
institute provides the ideal environment to remain constantly ignited for mathematical contributions.

I am applying to Purdue because of its strong Algebraic geometry, Number theory, and Commutative
algebra research groups. More importantly, the current research topics of some department members
immediately interest me. The works of Professors William Heinzer, Irena Swanson, Donu Aprapura
inspired me to apply to the Graduate School of Purdue. My interest in Commuative algebra research came
by looking at the publications of Willaim Heinzer. Especially the the publication on “Commutative ideal
theory without finiteness conditions” and “Maximal prime divisors in arithmetical rings” gave me ideas
on ideal theory in a broader sense.

For my doctoral studies, I would like to further my knowledge on Algebraic Geometry and Commutative
Algebra, which I started studying during my undergraduate program. I aspire to continue my research
under the supervision of Professor William Heinzer. Especially I would like to work on some open
problems such as the MNOP conjecture, Tate's conjecture, Virasoro conjecture. I would also like to extend
further my work on Jacobson's conjecture. In general, I hope to get an in-depth understanding of algebraic
geometry, elliptic curves, modular forms, and homological algebra at the graduate school of Purdue.

As an enthusiastic student with utmost dedication and determination, I seek to apply for a PhD position
at Purdue because I firmly believe that it would lead me in the right direction to enter and grow in the
field of academia. With the ultimate goal of becoming a good researcher of mathematics, given such an
opportunity, I have all faith that I would thrive and contribute back to the department and community to
the best of my ability.

Yours Faithfully

Siva S