Career In Civil Engineering

“Unfortunately, soils are made by nature and not by man, and the products of nature are always complex…” cautions the father of soil mechanics, Karl Von Terzaghi (1936). Ironically, this phenomenal behavior of soil is one of the main reasons why I have developed a special interest in Geotechnical specialty of Civil Engineering. This natural aptitude for soil mechanics coupled with the knowledge and experience that I have gained in the classroom, laboratory, field, at work and from different conferences and seminars for the past 13 years have convinced me that civil engineering and in particular geotechnical engineering is the most fitting career for me. In fact, as my next step, I wish to continue on my studies in the PhD degree of civil engineering

I was consecutively admitted with full scholarship to BS degree at Imam Khomeini International University where I had the opportunity to be exposed to the full range of civil and environmental engineering courses, all of which tended to reinforce and solidify my intense interest in this major. However, due to some financial problems of my family during those years I had to work off-campus (32 hrs/week) and even take one semester off the university. Accordingly, I was not able to have my best performance at school. Nevertheless, I had a very successful internship experience in the summer semester of 2006-2007 at Tehran municipality where, under the supervision of the head of Deputy of Technical & Development Affairs, I performed various tasks including site investigations, computer aided design with AutoCAD, evaluations and cost estimates of different projects ranging from buildings to road pavements. It should be mentioned that I received a grade of 20 out of 20 in my internship due to the positive comments from my supervisor at municipality along with my comprehensive internship report that I presented to my

However, the versatility of the experiments and researches that I have been involved with after my graduation has made me interested and open to a wide range of geotechnical engineering topics. I enthusiastically intend to complete a Ph.D. program and I hope to pursue my graduate studies at the University of New Mexico. I believe that my desire for research and my diverse educational and work background will provide me with the base needed to pursue a prestigious PhD program in civil engineering, specifically in geotechnical engineering.

My intentions for applying to the Ph.D. Program at University of New Mexico is due to its honorable faculty, high quality of study, and strong research facilities. In addition, there are well-known professors at the University of New Mexico in the civil engineering department with research interests similar to mine that altogether make the University of New Mexico the best choice for