Statement of Purpose

Amirhossein Omidi Soroor

I remember one of my teachers in elementary school once said: "Amirhossein is a mathematician by nature,"

to my parents, which reveals my passion for mathematics from the very beginning. During secondary

education, I was always among the bests, especially in math and physics. When it came to attending

university, as Leonardo Da Vinci beautifully said: "Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences

because, by means of it, one comes to the fruits of mathematics," the field which could satisfy my desires the

best was mechanics.

When I was hardly studying to prepare for academic education, my family's temporary immigration due to

my father's 2-years mission led to multiple stressful hardships. Being young and inexperienced in handling

this significant stress made me underperform in the public universities' national entrance exam and not being

admitted to top public universities, which I always had dreamed of them. However, I was admitted to Azad

University's best branch's competitive undergraduate aerospace engineering program through a separate

entrance exam with the same number of participants. Nevertheless, I was not satisfied, which led to severe

disappointment and depression in the next four years that affected my early academic performance. It is

worth addressing the four unexcused absences leading to zero scores in my undergraduate transcript,

significantly reducing my undergraduate GPA. Being emotionally unstable in the early undergraduate

studies and suffering from hypertension caused by obesity led to my absence in the final exams for two

semesters, willing the courses to be dropped automatically. However, at the time of graduation, I found out

that the rules were too vague to make me misinterpret them. Finally, some of the courses were dropped, but

not all of them. However, I could recover by making myself go to a library for specific hours of the day and

exercising regularly to become fit and improve my medical status. Despite facing the most challenging

courses, my performance in the last two years improved, and my GPA via 144 passed credits is 15.27/20

(3.04/4).

I decided to continue the journey as a graduate student. This time, thanks to my experiences and studying

extremely hard, I could exhibit an excellent performance in national university entrance exams, which led to

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Statement of Purpose
Amirhossein Omidi Soroor

admittance to my dream university, awarded with a full tuition waiver. Despite an excellent GPA, there is a

failed course in my M.Sc. transcript that must be explained through my great sense of perfectionism. In the

first semester, I felt I had not done my best for the FEM course when I understood my grade is 14/20 (2/4).

Besides, my moderate undergraduate GPA necessitated taking every chance to hold a better graduate GPA.

Therefore, I asked the instructor to fail me with the highest possible grade. I retook the course and obtained

a good grade of 17/20 (4/4). I also want to address the low grades in my early undergraduate studies and

how they are compensated. Firstly, my high rankings in graduate university entrance exams confirm my

improved knowledge in these courses. Secondly, many of the courses I took afterward and obtained high

grades in them were extensions to earlier courses I failed to obtain top scores. Finally, I have also taken five

Coursera courses to solidify my background further.

Since my late undergraduate, I gradually became interested in structural dynamics and vibration, which has

been my main research interest until this day. Taking Modal Testing and Structural Dynamics graduate

courses helped me develop a solid knowledge in this area. Besides, I developed the necessary skills and

tools needed to cope with structural dynamics problems, e.g., solid knowledge of the utilization and coding

of semi-analytical and numerical methods such as the Galerkin and Newmark methods, knowledge of

performing modal testing and analysis (and the utilization of respective software, i.e., ModalView),

advanced MATLAB programming skills, and sufficient ABAQUS finite element analysis skills. As a group

leader in the Modal Testing course project consisting of different aspects from doing experiments and

extracting data to developing computer codes to process them, similar to those in the industry, I could

manage the group to obtain the highest mark. Advanced level in MATLAB programming helped me become

a MATLAB instructor at Iran's most reputable non-profit technical institute. I also gained teaching

experience in this area by becoming a TA in the Mechanical Vibrations undergraduate course. My duties

included holding weekly classes for problem-solving and answering the students' questions, designing and

grading quizzes and homework assignments, and designing and grading the midterm exam. These teaching

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Statement of Purpose
Amirhossein Omidi Soroor

experiences led to my great passion for teaching, which is indeed one of my primary professional goals for

the future.

My main research concentration arose when attending the Structural Dynamics course, and I found out that

there are many challenges associated with thin-walled structures' excessive vibration suppression. I started to

study their dynamic behavior as my course project; I studied the effect of localized dampers' implementation

on elastic plates' vibrations. After some research, I found out that one of the most promising concepts in this

area is constrained layered damping (CLD) through sandwich configuration. I have thoroughly researched

these structures' dynamics and vibration during recent years. For instance, I have investigated the nonlinear

dynamics of a circular magnetorheological fluid (MRF) sandwich plate in my thesis. The MRF core was

chosen due to its desirability for active and semi-active damping treatments. For the first time, I scrutinized

sandwich beams consisting of axially functionally graded material (AFGM) constraining and an MRF core

layers (AFGMR beam) free vibration in my paper. This topic was considered due to AFGMs' desirable

capability to be implemented when there is weight or size limitation in the design procedure. In this paper, I

have also shown that the common neglection of the frequency-dependent properties of viscoelastically

behaving materials can lead to significant errors, especially in lower frequencies, questioning the validity of

some results presented in the literature. I am currently preparing another article in this area, which will be

published soon.

I am looking forward to continuing my research in linear and nonlinear dynamics and vibrations and explore

other novel aspects and applications in this area. The research of Dr. Acar in the Mechanical Engineering

department incredibly fits my background and research interests. I believe that obtaining a Ph.D. from a

renowned and prestigious university such as Stevens can help me reach my professional goals. It can

improve my chances to become a professor and a faculty member who can teach future engineers and

scientists and conduct independent research in scientific areas.

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