Hello, my name is Justin Deloatch and I'm currently a junior at Elizabeth City State University (ECSU). My major is Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics. Computers have always stimulated my interest since my early childhood. This interest influenced me to choose Computer Science as my major. In high school I took every computer class offered to enhance my skills not only for college but for my upcoming years dealing with computers. Completing undergraduate studies and receiving my B.S. in Computer Science is the first step toward starting my career.

Five years from now, I plan to be very competitive in the Computer Science field through having experience in research, presentations, workshops, and an overall knowledge of computers. It is a pleasure not only being a student at ECSU but also being a member of Center of Excellence Remote Sensing Education and Research Program (CERSER). CERSER has and will expose me to current and future improvements in technology, which will help me to accomplish my goals. This program also allows me to learn and gain valuable experiences that I will need for a career development. I plan on being a participating member in this program and I also plan to receive what this program has to offer by learning everything that I can.

As a freshman I also had the opportunity to complete a research project. This project was based on the reconstruction of the CERSER website and the updating of the tiff images from the satellite database. First we had to find out the flaws of the old website and figure out what we wanted to do with the information. In this process we had to create a storyboard which is basically the layout of the webpage. When redesigning the website we use Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) as an easier way to format the website. We also had to update over 1,000 pictures that were from the satellite image database.

During my first internship at ECSU I was a member of the Polar Grid Gateway Team. We used Adobe Dreamweaver as the development tool to create individual portlets and RSS feeds using iGoogle as a portal. GeoRSS namespaces were used to generate points into Google maps. Within Google Maps each point displayed information using HTML tags for designated students including name, location, and an image. In relationship to the Polar Grid project the tags created would have included the radar data, a transformed image, the coordinate locations of taken data, the date, and other various attributes concerning the research of the Project. A second portlet was also created using the framework of the previous gadget. This portlet displays the upcoming events for the NIA web site.

My second internship was with the Ronald McNair Program. We were giving the task of writing a program in Java to simulate a robot navigating itself around obstacles. This was done by giving the robot three methods of choosing which way it wanted to go. These three methods were a stack, queue, and a priority queue. Based off the results that we had, the priority queue was the fastest way of getting from point A to point B.

This computer science field that I have chosen will definitely challenge my mind about the concepts and technology that have been brought into the world. CERSER will benefit me greatly as I prepare for graduate school. It’s not going to be an easy road but as long as I keep a set mind and a positive attitude, I believe that I can succeed in the field of Computer Science.