Angel Mrquez Aguilar Statement of Motivation for Wageningen University

Time ago I was told about a Mexican engineer Miguel Angel de Quevedo to whom we Mexicans owe the restoration and creation of quite a big extension of green areas that prevented floods and dry seasons to be uncontrollable and disastrous mainly in the capital city and the western coast, a person whose purpose was to help his country and his people through protecting and securing the natural environment, a role model who inspired me to put my passion and knowledge at the service of real, environmentally respectful and friendly progress. Wageningen UR came as in a dream as the place where to acquire what is needed to fulfil this ideal. My name is Angel Mrquez Aguilar and I do ask you to read my whole motivation letter, Im putting my heart and all my experience in it. I do thank you in advance. While attending the bachelors 6th semester and since I was to become and Electronics Engineer, but rather interested in the Agricultural science due to its sacred task of feeding the increasing global population in a harmed world, I inclined to the field of Greenhouse Automation, something that combines control, automation and electronics knowledge as well as the understanding of the variables and the system for meeting the needs of plants to develop. So I started a project of Virtual instrumentation with LabView and Arduino of a small greenhouse, the very same I built with my hands once I was granted permission of the scholar authorities. It was placed right next to the Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering Building at the UAEH Autonomous University from Hidalgo, the oldest public university from the province I still live in. It took time, effort and money to start the construction and along the way I had to encounter the obstacles of pour management imposed from authorities such as the career coordinator who not knowing and not wanting to learn of the beneficial impact of such a project (a project that despite being small as I consider it was of considerable importance owing to the fact that it was pioneering and bigger than anything done before by a student in those installations), he decided not to support it, mirroring the ways of quite many local governmental public managers, a story widely told, spread and repeated in my country. Fortunately by the time I was to work with the project, keeping in mind that any campaign needs funds, I was also attending a program called Professional Experience, a requirement from the University to fulfill your preparation consisting of working half-time for a public dependency or a private initiative company which needed to support students economically, a win-win situation where companies pay less for work and students acquire experience, it was my case. Throughout the program I collaborated in a company called INEXTIA, in fact a corporation of seven or eight smaller companies whose experienced and innovative founders managed to sustain, I was granted a total of $ 10000.00 MXN, something like 580.00 amount useful for transportation, to start and to keep my project going , tough as you can imagine it was a humble budget. There I met some people who were interested in the agricultural business and found themselves discussing whether to invest in those kind of enterprises or not. By then I had already started a, what I believed, was a thorough research in the fields of domestic greenhouse building and monitoring. As mentioned already I designed and wanted to implement a pretty basic Monitoring and Controlling system acquiring the data with a well-known Arduino Duemilanove, installed some temperature sensors, LDRs, Relative Humidity sensor, those for acquiring the data; then processed the data in a state machine in Labview; and regarding the control I borrowed a little fountain water pump, a fan that hesitatingly recall to be part of a car, and a bulb, all of them to be activated manually or automatically from the front panel of the app. Towards the end of my bachelors studies the load of subjects to attend was greatly less than in the past, thanks to the fact I took some subjects in advance during the past semesters during summer curses. Backshifting, I want to emphasize

the fact that such was the revelation of my purpose in life, which not only had to do, nor has, with professional development but an integral way of living and a true and meaningful contribution to society anywhere, and such was my desire of learning of the food and agriculture sciences in the blend with what I knew about electronics and programming that I, having never done anything of the sort, worked the land where my mini greenhouse was to be, I removed grass, rocks, soften the soil, delimited the area, applied fertilizer, added some other soil, built the door, assemble the structure with PVC ced 40 pipes, and all that took to get it working. I know this can sound irrelevant, yet unnecessary, nevertheless it was fun and interesting not only for me but for the other students, teachers and visitors to see me work from dawn till the high sun, picking and shoving, carrying a spade and a pickaxe, bringing wood, pipes, plastic, screwdrivers, wearing a hat. All this effort not for a grade but to fulfil an ideal, an idea, my objective. Unfortunately it did not last. Given the quality of the materials I could afford, and the lack of aid I received, my tunnel was not the most beautiful and the managers did not like it. I knew but I kept in working, I wanted to grow tomatoes. When I started with the project I looked for help in internet and thanks to my previous preparation in the English Language, area in which I also performed as teacher, most data I read was in English, a fact that eased my research and left with a feeling of reliability in the veracity and updated documents. Here I found a page I fan now and that I recommend and that even my students have published in, Instructables. I found a project called Garduino, the author said mint and Hierba buena were some good plants to take care of if you are totally new to the subject so I decided to buy some, this happened all before. Then I met a person who set up a temporary, plants and fruit trees store, Don Vionney, Mr. Vionney, he sold me my first plant, and the second and many more after that, I even bought some trees, most of them planted already. He came from another town inside my province, Huachinango de las Flores, a place where people make a living out of plants, I befriended Don Vionney, he helped me with starting the tomato seeds, with the fertilizer, gave me a starting bed. I also met with him a Chemistry Engineer, that used to visit and play cards with Mr. Vionney and he gave me a hydroponic tomato and some other starting tomatoes. So I planted those tomatoes once they were of size, by then the greenhouse was already covered with chlorophyll colour greenhouse kind plastic, the only one I could find and afford in y city, the structured fixed and some sensors working. Simultaneously I was attending my Professional Experience and given I have introduced the idea of business with greenhouse production I asked for support to attend and event called Expo AgroAlimentaria taking place in Irapuato, Guanajuato. The other section of the enterprise had already found an Agronomy Engineer, they attended a summit about Tilapia Fish and Hydroponics. I was granted support and went on the trip which I found surprising, as this was my first view of the size of such business. There were expositors from Canada, Israel, USA, France, Japan, Spain, Ireland, Germany, New Zealand and of course the Netherlands. I did chat with some of them, my task was to get budgets and prices in the case our own project was given funds, I faked a rolled of business leader even If I was just a student and while chatting about a project with a Colombian person that worked for a fund from the Netherlands I was even invited to dinner to your embassy in Mexico City, I did not attend, I was not ready for the business. During the time I was absent I asked some classmates to take care of my tomatoes, sadly when I came back the tomatoes had died of dehydration nobody watered them. You can imagine how I felt, but time later I faced the worst. I restarted some plants, tomatoes, lettuce and cabbages to repopulate my tunnel and I kept those at home. One day I arrived into school and found the Greenhouse destroyed, the plastic was tore the wooden supports broken, the remaining plants unplanted, whoever that did it could not take it off the ground because it was firmly rooted. The project in the school was over I feared I was on behalf the managers as they said it did not look beautiful. Out of all money invested I could rescue a little over the half, I would not surrender. With all the knowledge, little as it might be, I had acquired I had already started shaping my thesis project, Urban Greenhouse Automation. An idea to finish with Alimentary Dependency, to grow local, by local and boost local development, to implement green roofs in the

city installing domestic greenhouses with the option of automating the watering or opening and closing for ventilation. With the preamble finished I decided to rebuild it, now at home. I never had a garden where I lived, it was always small rooms, departments or small house for rent, my mother is a teacher, she herself also committed with society, decided to invest in their sons education, it is till now that she could buy her house with financial aid. Well she disliked the idea of building the small greenhouse on the roof, I am passionate and stubborn and I did build it, perhaps turning the blind eye on her decisions. Now I wanted to grow strawberry, I implemented the electrical installation, bought more PVC pipe, more wood, some thin hose for individual irrigation and set off the building. Pachuca where I lived is a rather windy city round the downtown, the house I lived in was near the top of a hill, a poor neighbourhood that used to be for prostitution some 20 years ago. It is quite windy there and my stubborn construction delayed and became very difficult, again I did it almost all myself I found it difficult to find help, support given that people does not acknowledge yet the nowadays issues with environment, demography and alimentation. I had almost finished the construction of the second version when I finished school, failing to find appropriate thesis and research assessors, who I looked for at ICAP (Agronomy and fishing Sciences Institute) form the UAEH too, and Control and Automation Professors, PhDs who had their own researches and were not really interested in the project, perhaps I was not quite focused by then, I graduated via succeeding the professional examination. While visiting ICAP I offered myself to automate the irrigation of some small greenhouse who were holding an species of pine of the region , reproduced with the goal of reforestation, I did no took course yet again , for lack of funds. The thesis was incomplete, I had already downloaded dozens and dozens of papers and researches and here is where Wageningen UR enlightens the panorama. I was looking for job or to start a Master Degree, but none of them offered Automation and control focused on agriculture, none on that kind of bio process. There was one Master in Greenhouses, that was the name, in the province of Queretaro in Mexico but you had to be Agronomy Engineer first that was not my case. I could also apply for a master in Control and Automation at UAEH but again the projects and thesis topics were mostly decided by the Assessing PhDs, I introduced my case and they argued their lines of research were different. At the end I started working because it was the priority to get an income, I have been a teacher since then, I have taught English (this one for many years), Programming, Analogue Electronics, Microprocessors and Electricity and Magnetism, Mostly at UPMH, and UAEH (UPMH: Metropolitan Polytechnical University of Hidalgo). It was some time later that I revised many of the files a read that I found one that said, The Art of Modelling published on WaCASA, aimed for PhD Students as a workshop, I was looking for information on modelling systems because I knew that what I wanted was to correctly model the environment within a greenhouse, I had already asked an uncle of mine to support with some books, one called Making Things See from ORelleys, to work with Kinect as a project, the other Optimal Control Theory, An introduction as I read in some articles that the most widely used technique for controlling Greenhouses was Optimal Control. This document had the seal of Wageningen University. I had not noticed before but I did now. I looked for Wageningen website, I felt in love, I can still remember the day I found the document the led me to you, I felt so happy I finally found a program made to my size, that will allow me to learn what I was looking for and to broaden my speciation, I was a University like a dream coming true, I beg your pardon if I am to flattering but that is how I felt, that I found my place. And one of the most important things it was in the Netherlands. Throughout my life I found some attraction towards the Netherlands, once we were asked to conform a kind of bulletin board about countries I chose the Netherlands without knowing what was to come. When I presented an exposition for greenhouse Business at Inextia (already mentioned), most of the ideas came from Greenhouses in the Netherlands, while speaking of Mexicos harvest I always compared it to the Netherlands because being a boy I felt impressed that in

such an small extension your harvest was bigger than Mexicans being my country so big and resources rich. My favourite band is Epica and they are from the Netherlands. Mills from the Netherlands have always been my favourites, I have puzzles and some miniature replicas. A society which culture allows them a good way of living, a place where people ride bicycles. I did not know how to ride a bicycle till recent, I learned with the main objective of moving throughout Wageningen or anywhere else in the Netherlands in bicycle, I am even starting to learn Deutch with a Babbel App for windows. While surfing the site I checked most of the pages and got to the MsC Programas and identified Biosystems Engineering as the perfect one for me. It combined all I wanted, all I needed to bring progress wherever is needed. I hurts me every time I see an injustice happening, it is unbelievable my country suffers from hunger, we have the resources, but, are we not prepared to make use of them? Chihuahua, the biggest province in Mexico is the size of all The Netherlands. There are some fanatics round the globe who are totally against the use of TICS and other technologies, what I believes is that technology and science are but and outcome of human nature, but it is in many cases misled. They are to work together. I am used to analyse the ideas, no to take them always as true but as the best knowledge so far, compare them, I used to believe global warming was totally in human kind fault, when I watched the documentary The Big Global Warming Swindle it all changed. There are many documentaries that have marked me or at least left an impression: HOME, Earthlings, The Burning Season, The big Global Warming Swindle, The World According to Monsanto, the Shock Doctrine. I do watch them for knowledge, it would be a mistake to regard them as ultimate true, and everything is questionable. What is a fact is that I identify myself with the social issues struggle, I myself have suffered to an extend of the differences in acquisition power, I would not be able to the expenses of studying at Wageningen thats why at the same time Im applying for the Masters in Biosystems Engineering Im also applying for a Mexican government scholarship so that I can attend the program, CONACYT is the name if the governmental dependency that approves scholarships, at the expectancy I succeed in being admitted I will add the acceptance letter I need to follow that process. Nowadays the mini greenhouse is in the third version, the techniques used to maintain the greenhouse on the houses roof worked but it was so windy that the very weather took charge of the second version with little crops and some nursed trees. The third version is bigger and now, with the incomes of job I have acquired new material, reinforcing the structure with more wood, now fixing the plastic with profile and zig zag wire, with penta layer, 25 % shade plastic but it is not finished yet, what is now in process is an android app for the system itself. There are some researchers at the UPMH, working on obtaining biofuel out of a bio digester with whom I have held some conversation for a possible future collaboration. I collaborated with Bio Alimentaria in the part of research for building our own system of instrumentation, they later started a semi subterraneous greenhouse at the UPP (Polythecnical University of Pachuca). I worked for the Renewable energies engineering as teacher for UPMH, and took a course called Basic Crops at ICATHI Mineral de la Reforma (ICATHI: Adult Training Institute for Work of Hidalgo). Now I plan to study from now till August, the books recommended for applying for the test of Agronomy Engineering. My idea and project will still be to implement urban greenhouses, as there are some that are already being developed and installed such as the concept of Green sky scrapers. I am also a fond listener of BBC, the podcasts The Forum, 60 seconds Idea to Improve the World, Green Planet, Click and some other have had an amazing impact in the way I think, and my ideas. Speaking, and in general knowing English have given me the possibility the access the information that is not broadcasted for the public in Mexico, to acknowledge the real state of the world and what is being done at the time. It is my responsibility to act, once we know we must help, if I see I can help I believe I must. A system of monitoring variables and controlling some actuators working as a Domestic Urban Greenhouse is what I plan to implement as ordinary furniture, making it Open Source as Arduino, available for everybody in behalf of progress. It will not be a

weekend project I really plan to implement it world-wide if possible, I need to learn how to distribute it, to troubleshoot it, make it modular, and adjust it for different seasons and regions. All my life I have prepared and have put in my best effort in my education, personally speaking knowledge is the key to happiness, not only personal but social happiness and realization, I have been an outstanding student and I have deep feelings for society, I owe it to my mother who being alone did her best in my education, that despite being public I made use of it, and to the society that allowed public schools to exist as a promise of a brighter tomorrow for everybody. It is now time to give back, I do want to study at Wageningen University because I do strongly believe it is the correct place to develop academically, personally, to learn what is the cutting edge technology in Alimentary Science while simultaneously contribute to such technology. The MsC Biosystems Engineering is the now the name of many of my objectives, during the Masters and once I graduated I will put in all my being, all I could know in practice, effort, an untamed dedication to make peoples time, resources and funds worth it, I want to make my fellows life better.