Gernimo Aristizbal Duque

Calle 9 Sur #11-111

Medellin, Colombia
Tel.: (+57) 312 876 9985
email: geronimoaristizabal@hotmail.com

Mr. Vincent Brenier

Director of academic international relations
Mines ParisTech
60 boulevard Saint Michel
75006 Paris
Medellin, 29th of September 2014
Dear Mr. Brenier,

As a Mechatronics Engineering student at Escuela de Ingeniera de Antioquia (EIA), I would like to

apply for the double-degree program accorded between the EIA and Mines Paris Tech.
Since high school I have had a passion for mathematics and physics, studying how things in my
environment work has always fascinated me. As such, I participated in several competitions in basic
sciences and reached high positions in those two subjects at a regional level. Additionally, having
been raised in a family with two doctors, I readily enjoyed looking at ways to apply basic sciences to
the medical field and to my environment in general. During middle-school, my favorite past-time,
along with some of my friends, was to build and unbuild basic machines using electrical engines and
other simple parts in order to better understand their functioning and create innovative projects in
my own house. As an example, when I was 10 years old, inspired by cartoons, I tried to invent a
security system for my room, and had several different attempts at it, each one cleverer than the
last one.
Based on these interests, I decided to start the Mechatronics Engineering program at the EIA. Not
only did this program strengthen my mathematics and physics background but also taught me how
to apply them to engineering problems. I am always keen to try to apply theorems and laws to daily
situations, and try to fully understand the logic behind what I learn. I seem to see these principles
ruling everything and challenge myself to go beyond them, even if its just for better understanding
and not for a specific goal. Lately, I have been particularly interested in applying my knowledge to
my fathers field of work: ophthalmology. I have been able to identify and explain to him how his
tools work through my knowledge of wave physics. Thanks to this approach, I would be really
interested in focusing my future work in biotechnology.
I thus wish to further strengthen my knowledge in physics and mathematics as I strongly believe
that basic sciences are key in solving important social problems and more specifically for medical
applications. On a longer term, I definitely see myself doing research either at a university or in my
own company. My lifetime goal is to discover or build something revolutionary that will have a great
impact on our everyday life, like the internet has.

Mines ParisTech, through the global and generalist vision it provides, appears to me as a perfect
match for the realization of my dreams. I believe that an engineer needs not only technical skills but
also personal development, and being able to correctly approach different situations, not only those
directly related to his job, is vital. Last summer I visited Paris, and was astonished with the beauty
and the culture of the city, from an architectural and historical level to its people. I would love to
have a chance to further expand my knowledge and use my potential, while living in such a rich
environment which will for sure complement Mines Paris Techs mission of improving its students
as a whole.
Sincerely yours,

Geronimo Aristizabal Duque