My name is Jefferson Ridgeway, IV.  I am a junior at Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) located in Elizabeth City, North Carolina with a major in computer science and minor in mathematics.  My love for computers started around the ninth grade and has grown ever since. This love transferred into the decision to major in computer science while at ECSU. 

During the summer of 2013, I attended the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Program at ECSU. While participating in this program, I was able to gain research experience as well as gain six credit hours towards my bachelor’s degree.

The goal of the research project at the LSAMP Program was to determine how to reduce the carbon footprint on the campus of ECSU.  This experiment consisted of utilizing two of the major chemistry gas laws (Charles law and Avogadro’s law).   As a result of this project, it was determined that more gas laws should be applied and further testing was needed to give the University a better assessment of whether hydrogen cell vehicles would best meet their needs.

During my freshman year, I became a recipient of the Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education and Research (CERSER) scholarship.  Through this scholarship program, participants are able to partake in an array of research opportunities and scholarly activities. These activities include programming classes, attending and presenting at conferences, as well as doing research through the academic year and in the summer via internships.

My very first research experience was on the CERSER multimedia team (spring 2014) investigating the update of the CERSER TeraScan Cataloguing System and the TeraScan Image Processing Script.  Through the use of programming languages such as PHP, MySQL, HTML, Adobe Dreamweaver and TeraScan software, the team gained a greater understanding of the usage of TeraScan software, how to annotate images, add grids and overlays to the images, and construct a prototype for a database.

In the summer of 2014, I engaged in an Undergraduate Research Experience (URE) at Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington, Indiana.  This research experience consisted of making a Graphical User Interface (GUI) online for the Cloudmesh database at IU.  In order to accomplish this task, it was critical for one to learn Python programming syntax and Django, which is a web development framework.  Using both the framework’s components and Python syntax, I was able to successfully complete the GUI and input data (such as user accounts, committees, etc.) that was stored in a no-Structure Query Language (no-SQL) MongoDB database.  

As a second semester sophomore (spring 2015), my third academic research experience included documenting the site preparation of new ground stations at ECSU. The goal of the research was to have a detailed account of the new hardware and software systems from SeaSpace and their functionality.  The new hardware systems included 15 new visualization stations, 2 monitoring systems, a Teravault raw storage device, and a TeraScan Rapid Environmental X-treme (TREX) high-powered processor.  The new software included an updated version of TeraScan, GUI’s for TeraVision and TeraMaster, CentOS, which is a Linux-based Operating System.

In my recent research experience (summer 2015), I studied the change-impact analysis of android applications at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. In this research, my partner and I were tasked with gathering android applications that had "bugs"(errors in application that cause issues for the users' android smartphones) invoked by a specific "change" within the applications. This change could be related to the code of the application and/or library change. In gathering these android applications, two applications were picked for a case study to understand the impact of the application as a whole.

By having diverse research experiences, I have gained a deep appreciation for the field of software engineering.  Ultimately, I want to obtain my master’s degree in Software Engineering.  I plan on reaching this career goal by continuing to engage in research and internship programs that will give me the knowledge, skills, and experiences needed for my growth in this field of study.