Personal Statement By: GAO Chen I was born and brought up in an intelligent family, and my parents are diligent professors in one of top universities in China. When I was just a little girl, my father told me doing research is the most fascinating activity in the world, form which mysterious phenomena can be explained, great theory can be discovered, and various inventions that benefits humanbeing can be invented. From then on, I have special emotion in research activity and hope to be as intelligent as my parents one day. In 1999, I started my university study in Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (BUAA), which is the top university that specialized in aerospace technology in China after graduating from the best high school in Beijing with excellent performance. During the four years of undergraduate study at BUAA, I took a wide range of courses on aerospace technology which includes flight structural design, flight control design, and space aircraft design and formed a solid foundation of aerospace engineering. In university, I always encouraged myself what Einstein said: ‘Genius is 1% of inspiration and 99% of perspiration’ and spent most of time in studying. As results of my hard work, I have achieved an excellent academic record and awarded several scholarships and honors. When I finished my college study, I realize flight control design is a very attracting field to me, and I do hope to choose it as my career to which I could dedicate my intelligence and energy. In this situation, I choose Navigation, Guidance and Control at BUAA as my master program and awarded with government financial support due to my outstanding mark in entrance exam. After one year of graduate study, I entered the national key laboratory of Precision Instruments and Machinery (PIM) of BUAA and supervised by Professor Li Huifeng, who is the vice head of PIM. I spent three years in PIM key lab, and had a very good time there. The research experience at PIM incited my original interest in flight control technology and gave me a chance to comprehend how to construct the whole GNC system for an aircraft. One of the main goals of this lab is to design advanced GNC devices such as gyroscope, accelerator, star tracker and sensor and so on. Another is to develop modern GNC algorithm. I have participated in several projects which help to enlarge my aerospace knowledge considerably. At the very beginning, I was encouraged to be in charge of star tracker simulation design, which is a vital component in celestial navigation system. In order to valid the performance of navigation algorithm, a highfidelity star tracker simulator is necessary. After half of year’s hard working, the simulator has been successfully finished, and the output data performs as a real star tracker, which won broad praise from my supervisor and team colleagues. After that I participated integrated navigation system for certain aircraft, and have done some theoretical work in integrated navigation system. Due to this project, I accumulated lots of practical and theoretical knowledge on navigation system design and form a solid foundation in measured data processing, filter design, integrated navigation system design. While I was doing this project, I finished two papers. One is “The Model and Implementation of Star Tracker Simulator” that published in 6th International Conference on System Simulation and Scientific Computing. Another is journal
paper named “Design and implement of Star Track Simulator.” In December 2005, our lab began a research program on reentry flight control system design. From then on, my work focus on nonlinear flight control system design because reentry flight has feature of highly nonlinear dynamics. Modern nonlinear control theory such as dynamic inversion, sliding mode control, backstepping, Hinfinity control have been fully studied and implemented in reentry flight simulation. Besides, I also did some valuable theoretical work on two kinds of new emerging nonlinear control methods that are statedependent Riccati Equation (SDRE) and theta D method and applied them in different models. Based on these work, one conference paper named “Reentry Tracking Control via Statedependent Riccati Equation” published in the 8th International Conference on System Simulation and Scientific Computing, and has been selected to be published in Communications in Computer and Information Science published by Springer Verlag Press. Another conference paper named “New Suboptimal Control Design for Reentry Phase of Reusable Launch Vehicle” published in 11th International Space Conference of Pacific basin Societies. Because of the reconfiguration of PIM key lab, I have the chance to enter the state key laboratory of Advanced Flight Control (LAFC) of BUAA and supervised by Professor ZHANG Ping, who is the head of Automation Science Department at BUAA. In this lab, I learnt lots of theoretical knowledge on Flight Control and Simulation especially in nonlinear control technique. Continuing my nonlinear control research, I propose a unique idea to select optimal weigh matrix in SDRE and ThetaD method, and published one paper in Journals of System Simulation, one paper in Chinese Control and Decision Conference, both of which are indexed by Engineering Index. After that I participated into a platform simulation construction which is designed to test the valid of various control algorithms. Because my outstanding performance in graduate study, I awarded two times of Guang Hua Scholarship, and got “excellent” in my master thesis design. Besides research activity, my spare time is also colorful. I am a member of Chinese Folk Music Association because I have enthusiasm in traditional Chinese instrument. Meanwhile I am also good at playing badminton, and a member of the BUAA badminton team. Since I am so interested in aerospace technology, I realize that it is necessary to pursuer a further study in aerospace study especially in flight control technique. UTIAS known as a leading institute in aerospace engineering is my dream place to study. I believe that my solid theoretical background and my diligence will be competent for research work and promise impressive achievement supervised by the distinguished faculty.