My name is Cedric Hall, and I am a senior attending Elizabeth City State University (ECSU), with the assistance of a scholarship from the New Hampshire Space Grant managed by Dr. George Hurtt. I graduated from William Bodine High School for International Affairs in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the age of sixteen. I immediately proceeded to enter the realm of higher education at ECSU. I chose to pursue a major in Mathematics with an Aviation Science minor.

My short-term goal is to graduate from ECSU with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics. After receiving my B.S. degree, I have a goal to obtain a Master's degree followed by a Ph.D in aerospace engineering. Upon completion of both my graduate and post-baccalaureate studies I intend on having a career in the aerospace industry. Being a part of the Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education and Research (CERSER) scholarship program, I have been introduced to many aspects of the scientific world, especially conducting research. I am open to and interested in research in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. I have a great interest in conducting research in the aerospace field because I would like to pursue a career in the aerospace industry.

In the summer of 2009, I attended the Undergraduate Research Experience in Ocean, Marine, and Polar Sciences (URE OMPS). As a part of the Gambit team, we researched the formation of the Carolina Bays. We used Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to try to determine the age of Rockyhock Bay in Edenton, North Carolina. Soil analysis was performed to detect and extract impact related markers including carbon spherules, magnetic grains, charcoal, and glass-like carbon. Each part was done meticulously and repeated for accurate results (Samples used were taken from Sandra Kimbel Bay). Carbon spherules, charcoal, and glass-like carbon have a low specific gravity, which causes them to float. Therefore, a floatation procedure was used to separate them. Magnetic materials are denser and sink to the bottom with the slurry, beneath the water. In order to extract the magnetic fraction, a super magnet was used. Our primary aim was to present evidence to form a better understanding of the environment after the Last Glacial Maximum. This evidence would represent the changes that took place on Earth and serve as a record and model of consequences of either natural events or extraterrestrial events that affected human civilization.

During the 2009-2010 academic school year, I was apart of the Oceanography research team in CERSER. The goal of our project was to look for a correlation in Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and Hurricane and Tropical Storm frequency and intensity. We analyzed remote sensing satellite data and made plots according to wind speed and ocean temperature. Our results were inclusive because once we plotted our data, there was no correlation to prove that SST was the major contributor to hurricane and tropical storm intesity. In the Summer of 2010 I had the opportunity to travel to the University of New Hampshire (UNH) in Durham, New Hampshire. During my time at UNH I conducted a research project in oceanography. I researched the "Correspondence Between Inherent Optical Properties (IOP) and Net Oxygen Production." This included going out onto the Gulf of Maine and taking profiles in the Gulf with IOP profiling machines. Analysis of the data included finding the euphotic zone, or the 1% light level, and then integrating the properties down to this 1% light level. We wanted to see which property tracked oxygen production the best. The properties that we looked at were chlorophyll concentration, absorption and attenuation at different wavelengths, and also particle backscattering.

In the 2010-2011 academic year, my research team conducting a study on Hadoop and its effectiveness. The goal of this project was to see the advantages and disadvantages of using Hadoop on the server at ECSU compared to the previous system used. Our results suggested that Hadoop did more than our previous system, however there were no real advantage of using Hadoop, the choice to use it would be solely up to the user since it did the same thing as our previous system. During the Summer of 2011, I returned to UNH to be apart of a different research team. This time, we conducted a project dealing with the historic preservation of Strawbery Banke in New Hampshire. We took a survey of the land in order to made a 3D represenatation of the area in ArcMap. In addition we wanted to get an accurate view of the stratigraphy, geomorphology, storm surge, ground-water flow, as well as other things. Since Strawbery Banke is located so close to the shore, and was once a shipyard, there is a problem with salt water intrusion in the basements of these old structures. Due to time constraints we ould not finish the project and it is still ongoing.