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Motivation Letter
“Curiosity keeps one moving forward, exploring, experimenting, opening new doors“, a quote that
characterises me. Computers have always intrigued my curious mind and made me wonder how
challenging it is to develop such complex yet intuitive systems. My first such encounter was when I saw
my neighbour set up a RAID NAS server using Raspberry Pi at 15 years of age. The incident lit a spark in
me to learn more about computers and networks. Inspired to study Computer Science, I worked hard in
high school and a year after that to secure undergraduate study in Computer Science at BITS Pilani, India,
which was granted Institute of Eminence for being among the top 20 engineering universities by Ministry
of Education, India in 2018.
After the second year of undergraduate studies, I took an introductory course on Computer Networks
offered by Stanford as a MOOC for a precursory understanding in Computer Networks before it was
taught at BITS Pilani. This course helped me secure a year-long project under Dr Virendra Shekhawat,
BITS Pilani in my third year. The project provided me with excellent first research experience on reading
literature, proposing and implementing algorithms for multicast in DTNs and finally testing the algorithms
on ONE simulator for connectivity probability statistics on different scenarios. This experience, thus first
sparked curiosity in me to pursue research.
Subsequently, I decided to apply the knowledge gained until the third year on industrial research projects.
Therefore, I interned at Samsung Research Institute, India, where I worked on adopting academic research
for industrial applications. The thrill of learning a whole new concept of 5G mobile communications and
proposing a solution added to the motivation for graduate studies and research.
Further, a project under Dr Vishal Gupta, BITS Pilani in the final year gave me a brief experience in
Network Security. This project helped me realise how elegant yet fragile is the whole Internet
infrastructure today and how innovative approaches to utilise packets efficiently can prevent DDoS
attacks. Although this was a relatively new topic to me, I, with my professor, will publish a research paper
in Scopus indexed journal titled “True-Prevention Techniques for DDoS Amplification Attacks”.
Owing to my work on DTN, I secured a year-long research assistantship under Prof. Dr. -Ing Lars Wolf,
Institute for Systems and Computer Networks, Technical University of Braunschweig. The tasks involving
restructuring network stack, implementing drivers and power management of MCUs have enhanced my
understanding of low power embedded systems. The interaction with experts both from academia and
industry while contributing to RIOT OS motivated me further to delve deeper in systems and networking. I
have, therefore, taken Masters level courses in systems and networking at TU Braunschweig. The
challenge and thrill of coming up with a research proposal, materialising it and finally concluding it with a
written thesis in the first four months of the assistantship for my Bachelor’s thesis further motivated me
to continue research in systems and networking.
Apart from academics, I volunteered for health and public awareness drives at villages near Pilani, India,
to serve the unprivileged sections of the society. In my free time, I play Piano and Guitar to gratify my
passion for them. I also model radio-controlled autonomous aircrafts at BITS Pilani to fulfil my desire for
hands-on work.
Nishchay Agrawal Application for TU Munich, Computer Science