Statement of purpose Marziyeh Khavari

I am Marziyeh Khavari from Afghanistan. I graduated master of Horticulture from Tehran University, Iran, in 2019. Now, standing where I should choose what to do next, I plan to continue my Ph.D. in the TKI project ’Branching in tomato’ position. I believe that a Ph.D. in plant breeding from Wageningen University would set me miles ahead to reaching my goal.

For my master thesis under the advising of Dr. Reza Fatahi, I worked on six commercial hazelnuts to detection tolerant and productive hazelnut with some supportive material such as Salicylic acid, Kaolin, Nitric oxide. Recently I submitted part of the result of my research on the Scientific Reports Journal. Moreover, one of my desire is to draw the relationship between annual productivity and climate parameters. Beyond my proposal thesis, the stability of six cultivars during 2011-2018 through combined linear regression and neural fuzzy network analysis were performed for modeling hazelnut production considering Karaj climate change parameters. I am going to submit the results of this research in the article until next month.

As time goes, I become interested in the Linux operating system. People have often said that I am intelligent in computer statistics and related software. I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to work and learn with the research team of Dr. Mohamad Reza Naghavi in computational biology and bioinformatics. That developed my knowledge regarding genomics and discovery or prediction of the regulatory sequence of transcription factor (TF) genes, marker (SSR and SNP ) from RNA-seq sep data. I extended my research by prediction and identification of some transcription factors, genes, microRNA and other non-coding RNA (ceRNA, circRNA, lncRNA) in the pathway that regulator abiotic stress (heat stress) and secondary metabolic (Taxol) using Genome-wide statistical analysis I will complete our draft and write an article as soon as possible.

While I was studying for master, I took the additional course with Dr. Houshang Alizadeh who is one of the best scientists in the field of genetic engineering in Iran. I believe that this course gives me more insight into how this knowledge helps my research. I have done my final assignment at this course entitled ‘application of CRISPR cas 9 to increase of secondary metabolite) Taxol in hazelnut cell culture’ and obtained the best grade compared to my peers. I want to perform this technique in my thesis because of simple, cost-effective and efficient for targeted genome editing but I could not due to lack of equipment and grant since the economic sanction of Iran.

Recently I am working for CellKGP company (Implement the Laboratory Services) as data and computational biology analyzer. This job provided an environment that’s very important to intellectual development and coincides perfectly with my interests.

Ultimately I want this Ph.D. position because I believe this will allow me to focus on different accept of crop science such as plant breeding, bioinformatics, genetic engineering. Also, I firmly believe that the framework of this position helps me to pursue and satisfy my goal in my master thesis. A future career goal of mine is to work in partnership with developing countries especially in the Afghanistan economy in the marketing of horticulture products, which is achievable by enhancement of knowledge in plant breeding in the scientific field. I am confident that the initiative, problem-solving skills, and energy I have shown in the past have prepared me intellectually and emotionally for graduate school at Wageningen University. I am eager to begin the process by my commitment to research. It is my goal to become highly skilled and to contribute real value to the projects.

Thank you for considering my application

Sincerely