Statement

I am a senior majoring in Computer Science at Elizabeth City State University, located in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. I will be graduating May 7th, 2011 at 9am. My journey toward excellence started in high school, where I became interested in computers, technologies, and programming languages, never foreseeing these interest would further my career in Computer Science. My main goal was to expand my knowledge about Computer Science, but I have come to explore great new possibilities in this field so I can receive my masters degree. Thus far, I have gained a tremendous amount of useful knowledge, skills and gifts while being a part of the Center of Excellence for Remote Sensing Education and Research (CERSER) program. CERSER has a lot to offer, including assistance on obtaining internships at a variety of Universities around the world, networking at world-wide conferences, and excellent undergraduate research experiences on campus grounds. All of these factors have increased my enthusiasm toward higher education.
Over my four year span in CERSER, I have performed Undergraduate Research, attended conferences, and networked with awesome professionals who have an impact on the grounds we walk on today. Building lifelong relationships with these intelligent scholars, has prepared me for graduate school in the next year.

During my freshman year, I began attending conferences where professionals present their research, and give useful information on how to be successful. The first conference I attended was the National Infinite Possibilities Conference ( NIPC) located at North Carolina State University. The 2007 Infinite Possibilities Conference was held to address the discrimination against women in mathematics, create a spirit of sisterhood, and a make a strong connection with those who attended. It also provided information and resources that benefited the participants to succeed in their careers.

The second conference I attended was the National Science Foundation (NSF) Science Technology Centers site visit for the Center of Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) located at The University of Kansas. The purpose of the NSF site visit was to review how CReSIS operates as a center and how the center improved to meeting its objectives.
The third conference I attended was the 2008 IEEE International Geoscience & Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) conference located in Boston, Massachusetts. The purpose of the conference was to allow world-class scientists, engineers and educators to engage in the fields of geoscience and remote sensing, and present their latest activities. Over fifteen hundred participants from all over the world participated in a week full of technical sessions, tutorials, exhibits and social activities. The theme of the conference was entitled "The Next Generation" which defined the focus of the 2008 Symposium on outreach.

In 2009, I attended The National Black Engineer of the Year Awards (BEYA) STEM Global Competitiveness Conference which took place in Baltimore, Maryland February 20-22, 2008. The conference included professionals and students from around the U.S who took part in the Science, Engineering, and Technology fields. It consisted of career fairs, seminars, and workshops to bring students and employers together.
Recently, this summer I had the opportunity to attend the 2010 IEEE International Geoscience & Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) conference located in Honolulu, Hawaii. This year, I had the opportunity to present my 2009 summer research which was recently published.

While being a part of CERSER, I have also completed research during the 2007 academic school year. My freshman year I was on the Oceanography Research Team. Our research was entitled, “A Multiple Linear Regression of pCO2 against Sea Surface Temperatures, Salinity, and Chlorophyll α at Station BATS and its Potential for Estimate pCO2 from Satellite Data.” We obtained field data of alkalinity, dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), temperature, salinity, and chlorophyll α determined at BATS station in the last two decades; calculated pCO2 from alkalinity and DIC; applied the correlation method to test the applicability of the method in the central Atlantic Ocean and found the linear regression to see how accurate the data was.

Continuing into my sophomore year, I was a part of work in support of a larger NASA IPY project to determine the Antarctic’s mass balance (i.e., the net gain or loss of ice from the Southern continent.) The purpose was to determine the ‘Grounding Line’ along a specific stretch of Antarctic coastline, using NASA supplied computer codes written in Interactive Data Language (IDL) 4th generation programming language. It was installed and run in the windows environment. IDL compiling and execution is transparent to the user by clicking on the file name of the desired process, described in the instructions manual and then the code is executed. I have also had the opportunity to create my professional webpage, take classes in programs such Geographic Information Systems, and Linux, and gain knowledge throughout the year, which helped prepare me for my summer 2008 undergraduate research.

While performing research during the academic school year, I have continued to perform undergraduate research during the summer. In 2008, my research was entitled "The Younger Dryas Impact Study". Here, we studied the events precipitating the dramatic, millennial long climatic cooling known as the Younger Dryas, which occurred approximately 13,000 years ago. During my research, I have had the opportunity to do some hands-on learning at the Kimball Bay in Fayetteville, North Carolina. There, we focused on using the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), and Coring. Learning these techniques has given me an idea of what scientist like Allen West and his team have done while investigating what actually caused the impact about 12,900 years ago. This experience has helped me during my second summer internship opportunity at the University of Kansas.

During my second internship, the summer 2009, I had the opportunity to work with CReSIS (Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets). CReSIS is a Science and Technology Center established by the National Science Foundation. CReSIS deals with the development of new technologies and computer modeling to measure and predict the changes in sea levels based upon the mass balance of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. My research was entitled the "Automatic Ice Thickness Estimation from Polar Subsurface Radar Imagery". Here Michael Jefferson and I, along with Christopher Gifford, focused on automating a tedious task of estimating ice thickness from the airborne radar data taken from Greenland and Antarctica. We identified of the ice sheet's surface, it’s bedrocks location, and the interface between the ice sheets. Ultimately, we compared the automatic, human, and active contour approach to see which would benefit CReSIS in helping to determine changes in the ice sheets over time.

In 2010, I worked with the CRISM team. We focused on creating a program using map lab that helped classify CRISM data in a shorter time than classifying by hand. The CRISM research consisted of manually classifying images from Mars and placing them into excel’s data base, downloading images and storing them into Kitoto’s server which return results of the overall images and mineral images. These images can be classified, and showed whether there was evidence of water in the minerals. The five minerals are oxidized iron minerals, mafic mineralogy, hydroxylated silicates, bound water and CO2 water. The images with signs of water on Martian will be examined more closely in later research.

This past summer, I went back to the University of Kansas to work with 4 students from Ghana, along with an ECSU professor. Our research focus on building a prototype surface (Autonomous Surface Vehicle) that could navigate and collect continuous water samples in order to complement data from MODIS and SeaWiFS. The vehicle was routed using gyro and GPS, motor control, coordination of temperature sensor for data storage by an SD card which performed by a programmed microcontroller board. Testing was carried out on a pond close to the center (CReSIS) and data on temperature was collected from GPS locations. Future work would focus on increasing sensor integrations and enabling buoy mode to allow for multiple data sets to make results more meaningful.

Exposure of the many undergraduate and summer research experiences has given me the opportunity to apply to many well know internships, and meet many world renown Doctors and Scientist, network with Universities that interest me for graduate school. Without CERSER, none of this would be possible because the amount of work, training, and involvement is great, and shows through the students involved. I have set the tone for many generations to come, and I will continue to spread the word about how wonderful CERSER is. Achieving this status requires dedication, assertiveness, and continuously making decisions which will benefit my future. I will continue to strive for perfection in my scholastic career, as well as cease all opportunities made possible by perusing a higher education to obtain my Doctorate Degree. Although my studies at Elizabeth City State University are coming to an end, my future educational path will take considerable time, effort, and dedication to work towards my dreams.