Sample cover letter for Internship position at EPFL

Respected Professor,

I am a student pursuing third year in B.E. (Hons.) Electrical and Electronics Engineering from BITS Pilani, which is among the top five universities in India. I am writing to inquire about the opportunity of carrying out a Research Internship under your prestigious university École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, inthe summer of 2016 (a period of 10 weeks in May-July'16) for which I may be considered.

My domain of interest includes Embedded Systems and FPGA based system design. Last summer in May-July’15, I had the opportunity to work in Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Delhi, India. The institution is in-charge of military's research and development and is under the administrative control of the Ministry of Defence, Government of India. There I designed and tested a Data Acquisition System (DAQ) Using Xilinx Spartan®-3e FPGA and Arduino UNO. The Data Acquisition System used an eight channel multiplexed A/D converter in conjunction with Xilinx Spartan-3e FPGA. The data was acquired using analog sensors connected to ADC0808n, processed by FPGA and then sent to the computer using RS-232 Serial Communication protocol. The output was plotted on the screen via GUI Processing-2.2.Simulation of the above was done in Xilinx ISE and programming was done in VHDL. I have also completed analog and digital VLSI design projects working on Cadence Virtuoso design environment.

It was my work at DRDO which made me realize that I enjoy working on this field. I believe in the principle to pursue wholeheartedly anything in life that you enjoy doing, giving your cent-percent and also, learning all one can during the whole journey, and most importantly, contributing to others during the way. Henceforth, I've started working myself in this field so as to delve deeper into it.

I have done basic courses including Digital Design, Microelectronics and Microprocessor and Interfacing. In current semester, I am enrolled in Analog and Digital VLSI Design, Digital Signal Processing and in next semester would pursue Computer Architecture, which are relevant to my field of interest. I also worked with Proteus Circuit simulation platform to prepare virtual circuitry for performance analysis.

I am interested in working in fields involving FPGAs, Embedded Systems and VLSI design. I am very excited about the kind of learning opportunities and exposure that I would get working under your world class environment. This internship will also serve as an important stepping stone for my Masters in this field which I wish to pursue upon graduation.

I would be very thankful to you if you consider my application. I’ll be more than happy to provide any further information or documents if required for your kind perusal.

Looking forward to your reply.

Best Regards,