Kranthi Kiran Mandadapu Email: kranthi_mand@yahoo.

com
Applying for MS in Transportation Date of Birth: 08-05-1984

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

Transportation Engineering with its fundamentals derived from such diverse fields
as mathematics and economics is a rapidly evolving field with scope for innovation.
Its practical application in real world problems makes it a very intriguing field.
Transportation Engineering deals with planning and land-use issues both of which have
long lasting effects on the daily life of man. In this ever developing society, where
travel makes up such a critical part of daily life, a Transportation engineer has a huge
role to play. My desire to contribute to the scientific world, coupled with my interest
in Transportation Engineering has driven me to choose Transportation Engineering
as my field of study. My long term aim is to do pioneering research in the field of
Transportation Engineering, to share the knowledge thus gained through teaching. I feel
that a Masters program would lay the foundation and guide me towards achieving my
goal.

My interest in science and mathematics made me choose engineering as my

undergraduate major. I have been a good student through my education. This is reflected
in my selection as the top 1% of 150000 aspirants for IIT JEE, and my admission into
IIT. I also have a good academic record in IIT scoring a GPA of 9.25 in Major theory and
an overall GPA of 8.86 to be 2nd in class of over 50 students.

My research in Civil Engineering in my undergraduate years has been very fructifying

and has fortified my interest to pursue Graduate studies. In my sophomore year, I worked
on a team of students and designed and fabricated an aluminum truss which won the
award for the best design in the Master Builder competition as part of a National Level
Technical Festival conducted at IIT Madras. The whole notion of working on something
new and as part of a group appealed to me and has been one of the guiding moments in
choosing research as my career.

The introductory course in transportation engineering, TE-I gave me an insight into

the concepts of transportation systems, highway planning and the probabilistic models
to represent trip distribution and mode choice models. This encouraged me to work
on a project “Monte Carlo Simulation for the utility choice models”. As a part of this
work, I studied on the utility choice models and the evolution of integrals using simple
expansions of Taylor series to determine the probability based on which the utility choice
is selected. This opportunity gave me an insight into the vastly diversified fundamentals
in Transportation Engineering and fostered my interest in this field and improved
my understanding of the numerical and computational intricacies in Transportation
Engineering.

The TE-II course deals with the topics of highway planning and signalized intersections.
The course provided valuable field experience as part of the course included studying
a signalized intersection to bolster the coursework in a practical framework. Practical
applications of the coursework were also provided in the form of site visits and Industrial
training at the end of my junior year. I worked in the A.P. Roads & Buildings State
Department, on the reduction of transport costs and transport constraints on economic
Kranthi Kiran Mandadapu Email: kranthi_mand@yahoo.com
Applying for MS in Transportation Date of Birth: 08-05-1984

activity by improving capacity and conditions of highly trafficked segments on the

state highways. The exposure to the areas of project management and evaluation
techniques to develop the institutional capabilities enriched my knowledge and made me
understand the importance of interdisciplinary work. This environment motivated me
to explore the research areas and in addition to this, my careful option of the electives
“transportation project planning and evaluation” and “public transportation” broadened
my understanding of the subject and strengthened my interest in the field.

As a part of my undergraduate thesis work, I am working currently on “Constitutive

Modeling of Shape Memory Alloys”. As a part of this work, I studied on the modeling
of behavior of SMA and constrained non-linear optimization. I also studied on various
kinds of optimization techniques which gave me an ample opportunity to hone my
mathematical and programming skills. Further, my option of Fundamentals of Operations
Research gave me an insight into the aspects of linear programming, optimization
techniques, dynamic programming and sensitivity analysis.

In my search for a good university to start my career, I was advised by my professors

and seniors that MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY is one of the
best places for research in the world and has an excellent transportation group. MIT also
possesses the state-of-the-art equipment and the excellent faculty for innovative research.
I find the research being done in the various areas of demand modeling, transportation
logistics, intelligent transportation systems, optimization, probabilistic methods to
transportation systems, public transportation very challenging and interesting, and am
very eager to play an active part in this research.

I am confident that the excellent research environment, interaction with the faculty and
fellow researchers at MIT will help me to become a good researcher and bring out the
best in me. With my strong fundamentals, academic background and zeal and enthusiasm
for research, I am confident I will be able to make good contributions to the scientific
world with the guidance of the eminent faculty at MIT. I am eagerly looking forward to
pursue graduate studies and consider it a great privilege to be admitted into MIT.