MOTIVATION LETTER

My name is Taufik Abidin; This year, I am 27 years old. I took my bachelor

degree (2010) in Pharmacy and Apothecary (2011) from Institut Teknologi
Bandung (ITB) , while my Master degree was from National Taiwan University of
Science and Technology (NTUST)
I was born in a family that has a close relationship with education and strong
values. My Father is a university lecturer and my mother is a teacher. During
my childhood my parents raised me to have strong values and hold it tight
even in hard situation, and teached me keep going on whenever I met a block,
trying to find new ideas and ways to overcome the difficulties. As a result, I do
things and solve problems not only diligently but also look at it from many
perspectives.
In my last year in senior high school, I learned that chemical engineering is one
major where one must look from various perspectives: economy, physical,
chemical and for some, even biology and microbiology. And then there is
pharmacy, which is closely related to health, but also a lot other of discipline.
These two majors have a big impact in the world, as production of goods and
drugs is a critical issue. I applied for these two in the best technical university
in Indonesia and was accepted for pharmacy. In my undergraduate years of
pharmacy, I had acquired a strong fundamental in the four main groups of
pharmacy : chemistry, pharmacology, pharmaceuticals and pharmacognosy. I
leaned more towards chemistry and pharmaceuticals as I loved to do analysis
and production of pharmacuticals.
Of course, the most important task as an undergraduate was to lay a firm
groundwork in terms of the basic knowledge and experimental techniques so
that more advanced studies could be pursued. Based on this, I decided to
dedicate myself to all kinds of learning, to understand the principle underlying
of each phenomenon and how each principle was derived. To reach this goal, I
had to gain a thorough understanding of all the textbooks and supplement my
classroom education with information from the internet, the library, the lectures
and all possible sources.
I am very interested in saccharides and polymer materials. My undergraduate
final project entitled HPLC Method Development for Determination of
Sucralose in Food Suplement was done under the supervision of Prof. Dr.
Slamet Ibrahim S., Apt, head of the pharmacy chemistry group in the Pharmacy
Department of ITB . My final project was self funded. It was interesting because
I deepened my knowledge about saccharides and how to validate an analytical
method. I then continued to pursue apotechary and had some practical

knowledge about the pharmacy world by doing internships in PT . Kalbe farma,

PT Kimia Farma pharmacy and BPOM (the FDA of Indonesia). These experience
gave me the knowledge on the needs of pharmacutical standard ingredients
and robust plus versatile analytical methods to detect various chemicals

I then continued my master degree at National Taiwan University of Science

and Technology (NTUST) in the Chmical Engineering Department. Under the
guidance of Prof. Der-Jang Liaw, I worked on my thesis entitled Novel
Conjugated Polyfluorene with Unsymmetrical Triarylamine Containing Pyrene :
Synthesis, Theoretical, Optical, Electrochemical and Electrochromic Properties
. In this work, I synthesized a polymer and researched its properties. It was
funded by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan. This was the time I learned and
practice the organic synthesis, purification and analysis deeply. I had difficulties
on the synthesis and purification, mainly the yield was too low or the need to
search for a new way to purify the compounds, but with hardwork, help from
my Labmates and my supervisor gudance, I was able to finish it.
I often must go to other departments and even another university to do the
analysis of the samples. It was difficult to do the paperwork as Im not too
proficient in Mandarin and sometimes had difficulty to communicate.
Nevertheless I succeeded to overcome these difficulties and obtain my master
degree.
After obtaining my master degree, I then worked as an assistant in the polymer
labarotory in ITBs Chemical Engineering department, working on some project.
I worked on the Ethylene Bis-Stearamide production project in the Ministry of
Industry, becoming a trainer for Industrial Plastic Basic Training and working on
the Hazardous Materials Mapping in 18 Province of Indonesia.
Throughout my life, I have learned and gained many valuable experiences
which was not only the fruit of hard work, determination and intelligence of my
own, but also because of the people around me, which leads me to share what I
have done with others and do my best to help them. I have an overwhelming
desire and thirst to learn, invent and teach something new and useful to others
that led me to continue my education by pursuing a Ph.D degree. I believe
here, at your university, is the place where it can offer a great environment for
research and education because of its world class facilities, faculty members
and wide scientific community. I also have faith it provides a great chance to
improve myself socially and scientifically. I am ready to meet new challenges
and embrace the positive things in order to adapt to the new environment.

Someday, after I finish my degree, I would be a researcher and lecturer who

devotes himself to his land. I want to develop new drugs and technologies
based on polymers which can be obtained from local resources that will make
production and purification easier and cheaper. I am sure that have the ability
to share my knowledge to the people of Indonesia. I hope Indonesia will give a
great contribution in order to bring happiness to this world.