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Gordon E. Moore , the co-founder of Intel, stated that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. This seemed abstract to me at first, but as I grew and started to better understand the world around me I came to realise it was the exact opposite. Moore’s law did not only apply to chips but to Computer Science in general. Seeing how eveyday a new piece of software made another part of our lives easier or how it vastly improved in performance and efficiency over its predecesor pushed me towards Computer Science. After participating in mathemathics competitions and olympiads which helped me cooperate better as member of a team and under stressful conditions throughout middle school , my intrest started shifting towards Computer Science. In highschool, without abandoning maths and the related competitions, I enrolled in the InfO(1) Excellence Programming Centre . It was here that I learned about complex algorithms and data structures. Furthermore, I learned which algorithms work best in which cases and most imporantly why. I studied their complexities and also methods of implementing them in a way that would be easier to understand and to explain. This information would prove itself very useful in the Olympics in Informatics and contests. Knowing the fundaments of how algorithms function allowed me to quickly accomodate myself with applied programming. Using C# I developed a few small games and applications with VisualStudio and Unity. A team of a few colleagues and I built and programmed a line tracking robot for a national Physics competition. This was my first encounter with a real life application of Computer Science. A simple line of code I wrote made a physical object move. This fascinated me and I decided to broaden my knowledge of the different fields of Computer Science and how they interact with our daily lives. I took Harvard’s CS50x online course, an introduction to Computer Science. After a couple of weeks spent on the fundaments of programming, algorithms and data srtuctures, we started learning about web programming. We learned how the internet works, all of the processes that work together to bring the user the information requested. Then we started creating content of our own using HTML , PHP , SQL databases and finally Javascript. We then dove a bit more into the physical world by using the Google Maps API. I was also intrigued by the security aspect of web programming, How issues like „Heartbleed” and „Shellshock”, which were portrayed on the news as desastrous „hacks”, all came down to simple characters in a line of code. This course showed me how broad Computer Science is and how deeply rooted it is into our lives. In the years to come I wish to become a contributing part in an important project, be it a game, a piece of software, a website or even in a new field, yet undeveloped.

Savu Mihnea Personal Statement Draft 2

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Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel, stated that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. This seemed abstract to me at first, but as I grew and started to better understand the world around me I came to realise it was the exact opposite. Moore’s law did not only apply to chips but to Computer Science in general. Seeing how eveyday a new piece of software made another part of our lives easier or how it vastly improved in performance and efficiency over its predecesor pushed me towards Computer Science.

After participating in mathemathics competitions and olympiads which helped me cooperate better as member of a team and under stressful conditions throughout middle school, my intrest started shifting towards Computer Science. In highschool, without abandoning maths and the related competitions, I enrolled in the InfO(1) Excellence Programming Centre . It was here that I learned about complex algorithms and data structures. Furthermore, I learned which algorithms work best in which cases and most imporantly why. I studied their complexities and also methods of implementing them in a way that would be easier to understand and to explain. This information would prove itself very useful in the Olympics in Informatics and contests. Knowing the fundaments of how algorithms function allowed me to quickly accomodate myself with applied programming. Using C# I developed a few small games and applications with VisualStudio and Unity. A team of a few colleagues and I built and programmed a line tracking robot for a national Physics competition. This was my first encounter with a real life application of Computer Science. A simple line of code I wrote made a physical object move. This fascinated me and I decided to broaden my knowledge of the different fields of Computer Science and how they interact with our daily lives. I took Harvard’s CS50x online course, an introduction to Computer Science. After a couple of weeks spent on the fundaments of programming, algorithms and data srtuctures, we started learning about web programming. We learned how the internet works, all of the processes that work together to bring the user the information requested. Then we started creating content of our own using HTML , PHP , SQL databases and finally Javascript. We then dove a bit more into the physical world by using the Google Maps API. I was also intrigued by the security aspect of web programming, How issues like „Heartbleed” and „Shellshock”, which were portrayed on the news as desastrous „hacks”, all came down to simple characters in a line of code. This course showed me how broad Computer Science is and how deeply rooted it is into our lives. In the years to come I wish to become a contributing part in an important project, be it a game, a piece of software, a website or even in a new field, yet undeveloped.

My hobby is origami, the art of folding a single sheet of paper into intricate shapes without any cuts. Taking up this craft at an early age, I soon progressed to much more complex models. It was then I understood how my love of exact sciences and my love of origami came together. Origami had advanced from the simple japanese art it was in the 17th century to something close to a science. I learned how complex concepts closely related to mathemathics such as pythagorean stretches were used to create newer, infinitely more complex models. But the one thing that out of everything consolidated my interest in Computer Science the most was discovering a piece of software which could create the instructions for folding any origami model imaginable only by being given a set of points and lines.

Involvement in international activities has provided me with the skills needed to excel in a multicultural collective. This compliments my desire for a competitive environment which I believe induces the best type of motivation. The United Kingdom can provide these, paired with an excelent academia. It is here I wish not only to develop my skills in the field of Computer Science, but to also become part of the community of professionals and explore my passion as member of a team.