Scholarship

Sometimes one comes across an event which tends
to produce an ineffable effect on one's life. The BBC
article titled "Artificial brain, 10 years away" forced
me to read agape about Dr. Henry Markram's
revolutionary vision of "reverse engineering" and
reconstructing a "detailed, functional artificial human
brain". The "Blue Brain Project" has, thus, impelled
me towards a research oriented career in
Neuroinformatics and Artificial Intelligence, in the
hope of someday contributing to the creation of self-
sufficient intelligent humanoids.
In today's world, where efficiency is of the essence
and nothing is of as much import as saving time and
money, artificial machines perform simple
monotonous tasks swiftly and reliably, which humans
are ill-suited to. Complex problems are, however,
human dependent and not failsafe. Thus, the study of
the human brain, in order to mimic it and improve
machine behavior, is of paramount importance. The
interdisciplinary Masters program (MSc) in Neural
Systems and Computation (NSC), offered jointly by
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH),
Zurich and University of Zurich (UZH), "prepares
researchers for their first decade of independent
research, or a contribution to industry". This course,
along with a plethora of affiliated research institutes
such as the Machine Learning Lab, the Artificial
Intelligence Lab, the Institute of Robotics and
Intelligent Systems, and the Signal and Information
Processing Laboratory, is sure to spawn scientists
and engineers with the key that unlocks exponential
technological growth. Aiming to join such a group of
elitists in the future, I vehemently seek to undertake
the stated master's course with a belief that it is the
ideal program for me and that once finished, I can
contribute to making intelligent systems the
mundane way of life.
Having enjoyed doing complex physics and
mathematics right from high school, I succeeded in
the engineering entrance...