UCAS Personal Statement
In the world of computer science and artificial intelligence, I see great tools and technologies for tackling problems in our daily lives, yet what I love most is the complexity in problem-solving to achieve that goal. Participating in the Hong Kong Olympiad in Informatics back in 2018 drove me to have great passion in computer science, and reinforced my desire to study in it - making life easier by using algorithms to solve real-life problems.
Two years ago during my summer break, I began self-learning web development and multiple programming languages. What I learnt gave me the ability to deploy my own websites on the Internet. For instance, in light of the pandemic six months ago, I released a web application which allows viewing simple statistics and finding cases near the user to raise awareness of the situation. Recently, for the sake of familiarising myself with AI, I have built a chatbot using Dialogflow - Google's natural language understanding platform. This chatbot was able to perform simple conversations, remind users of tasks at the scheduled time, and even control lights in my room. Despite encountering various difficulties in the process of building projects with innovative features, I have eventually overcome them. These processes greatly strengthened my problem-solving skills and programming skills. At the same time, I improved my understanding of user experience design by receiving constructive user feedback.
Recently, I came across an 8-episode long documentary - "The Age of AI", where it showcases developers working alongside others with different professions to find solutions to problems with AI. I was fascinated by how much a well-trained AI could help people in areas of all kinds. My thirst for AI has further led me to read a research paper "PIFuHD" published on Facebook Research. This AI was able to transform 2D images of a person into a 3D sculpture model. Being stunned by the complex mathematics involved, I was still especially impressed by how this AI model could revolutionise the 3D design field as it automatically generates 3D models instead of painstakingly creating and modelling one by one. After attempting an image of myself using PIFuHD, I was so astonished to see the result that showed how AI could miraculously turn a plain 2D image into a complex 3D figure.
Outside academia, I have volunteered in the Po Leung Kuk Charity Walk and the Annual Flag Day for several years. In addition to that, I have also participated in numerous community services in which I visited the elderly and chatted with mentally handicapped people. These activities not only helped me develop my sense of compassion and empathy towards the disadvantaged groups but also brought me satisfaction through serving the community.
Aside from my academic life, I found that playing badminton and table tennis helps me relief stress, which let me maintain a healthy work-life balance. In addition, I was an information technology prefect of the school and now an IT helper of my class, both roles allowed me to help out my teachers and classmates in need of technical advice in IT matters.
All in all, I found that computer science and artificial intelligence highly demands problem-solving skills and is profoundly challenging. With my enthusiastic heart in it and my love of technology, I wish to further pursue my studies in these subjects.