EIT-KIC Dual Degree Tracks in Sustainable Materials Engineering postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Most mornings at the plastics recycling plant where I work as a quality control technician, I take a sample from the first bale of the shift and run a melt flow index test before the extruder line is fully up to speed. Clear PET bottles should behave predictably, but a bale contaminated with a few PVC labels or opaque milk containers can change the result enough to affect the whole day's pellet batch. Eighteen months of doing this has taught me that sustainability in materials is often decided by small, unglamorous variables: moisture content, sorting accuracy, residence time in a dryer. I want to study sustainable materials engineering at postgraduate level because I would like to understand those variables at a deeper level and design processes that make circularity reliable rather than hopeful.

My undergraduate degree in materials engineering gave me a solid grounding in polymer science, thermodynamics, phase diagrams and mechanical testing. The modules I enjoyed most dealt with structure–property relationships, particularly how processing history changes the crystallinity of semi-crystalline polymers. For my final-year project I investigated whether shredded fibres from waste PET could be added to cement mortar. I prepared prisms at three fibre contents, cured them for 28 days and measured flexural and compressive strength. Flexural behaviour after first cracking improved at the middle dosage, while compressive strength fell as fibre content rose, which I attributed partly to poorer workability and trapped air. The project was modest, but it taught me to plan a test matrix, keep careful records and be honest about the limits of a small sample set. It also left me curious about the alkaline environment of cement and whether PET degrades over longer periods, a question I could not answer within one term.

At work my responsibilities are routine but genuinely useful. Alongside melt flow testing, I measure moisture with a halogen analyser, check pellet colour against reference samples and log results so the shift supervisor can decide whether a batch goes to a food-contact customer or a lower-grade one. Last year I noticed that our moisture readings drifted on humid days because samples sat uncovered before testing. I suggested sealed sample pots and a fixed waiting time, which the supervisor adopted. It was a small change, but it made our data more consistent and showed me how much a process depends on the people handling it.

Outside work I volunteer once a month at a community repair café, where I mostly sort donated spare parts and help visitors identify what their broken items are made of. Explaining to someone why a cracked kettle base cannot simply be glued has made me better at describing materials without jargon. I also play club badminton twice a week, which keeps me sociable after shifts spent largely with instruments.

I have been reading beyond my degree to prepare. Michael Ashby's Materials and the Environment helped me think about eco-audits and the idea that the use phase, not production, sometimes dominates a product's environmental impact. That changed how I view lightweighting and durability, which I had previously treated as secondary to recyclability. I have also followed discussions of chemical recycling of PET, such as glycolysis, which made me realise that mechanical recycling, the process I work with daily, is only one route.

A programme combining study across more than one country appeals to me because materials supply chains are international, and the regulation and infrastructure for recycling differ between regions. I would like to develop skills in life cycle assessment, polymer degradation and process design, and to work in teams with people from different technical and cultural backgrounds. In the longer term I hope to work in industry on improving the quality of recycled feedstocks, so that more recovered material can return to demanding applications instead of being downcycled. I bring practical laboratory habits, experience of an operating plant and a careful approach to data, and I am ready to build on them with rigorous postgraduate study.