Biological Design, MS postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

At the end of every shift in the hotel kitchen where I work, I sort the waste. Peelings go into the food caddy, cardboard is flattened for collection, and the polystyrene boxes our fish arrives in go into general waste because nobody locally will take them. After two years of carrying those boxes out to the skip, I wanted to know whether materials made by living organisms could replace them. That question already shaped my undergraduate dissertation, and I would like to pursue it properly through postgraduate study in biological design.

I studied Biology and graduated with a 2:1. My dissertation investigated whether spent coffee grounds, collected from the campus café, could serve as a substrate for growing oyster mushroom mycelium into small packaging panels. I mixed the grounds with differing proportions of shredded cardboard, packed them into moulds I made from cut-down plastic food tubs, and compared colonisation rates and the density of the dried panels. Contamination was the constant problem: several early batches developed green mould, and I learned to be careful about pasteurisation and sterile handling with very modest equipment. The panels with more cardboard colonised more evenly, but they were also more brittle, so the best mix for growth was not the best mix for the finished material. That trade-off interested me more than any single result, because it showed how a biological process and the qualities a designer needs can pull in different directions.

My reading has followed that tension. Janine Benyus's Biomimicry introduced me to the idea of looking at how organisms solve problems, though I noticed that much of my own project was less about imitating nature than about working with a living organism as a collaborator, one that does not always behave as planned. I have also read about the principles of a circular economy, where waste from one process becomes the input for another. My coffee grounds were a small example of this, and the kitchen gives me daily reminders of how much organic material is discarded.

Work has taught me things a laboratory did not. Kitchens run on timing, labelling and shared standards: if I prep vegetables badly, the chef on the pass pays for it an hour later. I have become reliable under pressure, careful about hygiene and good at communicating with people who are busy and direct. Last year I was asked to train two new porters, which involved explaining routines clearly rather than simply doing tasks myself. I also suggested we keep coffee grounds from the breakfast service separate, and the head chef agreed, so a few allotment holders now collect them for compost.

The allotment is partly a hobby and partly a shared responsibility. I tend a plot with two neighbours, and we organise watering rotas during the summer. It is unglamorous work, but it keeps me thinking about soil, decay and the slow timescales of biological growth. My other regular commitment is a Thursday pub quiz team, where my role is mostly science questions and keeping score.

I am applying for postgraduate study because my dissertation reached the limits of what I could test alone. I would like to develop a stronger grounding in design methods, materials testing and the ethics of working with living systems, and to learn from people who approach these questions from engineering, design and social perspectives rather than biology alone. I am particularly interested in how biologically grown materials could be made consistent enough for everyday use, and in who decides whether they are adopted. I bring practical laboratory experience, patience with failure and the habits of someone used to hard, collaborative work. I want to spend the next stage of my education turning a question first raised beside a kitchen skip into rigorous, useful work.