My name is Thomas Hilton Johnson III, and I am Freshman who attending Elizabeth City State University at Elizabeth City, North Carolina. I gained a passion for technology at the age of four when I reset the language on the family computer to Chinese. From there, science fiction stories were my main source of reading material as they brought forth the technology the human mind could imagine. Under various teachers, especially my Exploring Technology teacher Mr. William Wall and the wise high school teacher Mr. Arthur Close, I began to have a fixation on technology, mainly driven by a curiosity of how devices worked or could be improved. Rewards in the form of an Exploring Technologies trophy and induction into the career-focused National Technical Honor Society allowed for more concentration in the field of technology until high school graduation.

Over the summer of 2015, the Engineering and Technology camp of Envision Experience opened its doors to allow me to explore breadboards and coding that was among the many elements of exposure. An internship under the guidance of Mr. Steve Coleman at the Joint School of Nanotechnology and Nanoengineering provided me with exposure to nanotechnologies and the scales to which human beings can actively induce change in the universe.

I am currently taking part in the Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education and Research (CERSER) program at ECSU that encourages the attainment of Master’s and Doctoral degrees. CERSER, provides a great amount of exposure to the applications of various computer systems and software packages.
As technology grows and more platforms become dependent on efficient computers to run advanced tasks, CERSER is providing the skills needed to handle the developments in coding and operating systems that are revolutionizing the world. Training sessions in Mac Operating systems, Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop will prove useful in the future in the development of web pages for documenting my research. Throughout the CERSER program, there is an emphasis on the construction of well-organized resumes and professional statements.

In Spring 2017, I entered a research group under my mentor Jerome Mitchell in the usage of machine learning algorithms to classify particle collisions obtained from the supersymmetry dataset. The purpose of this research was to examine whether backpropagation or linear regression was more effective in classifying the data within the supersymmetry dataset. This effectiveness was examined through measuring the accuracy of both the linear regression and backpropagation algorithms and comparing the accuracy of both. This was my first exposure to machine learning which is critical in modern times with ever-growing importance of big data and the necessity of programs that are adaptive in nature to accomplish more complex or challenging goals.

I am also a member of the Pi-Byte club which gives its members opportunities to explore coding disciplines while providing a hub within ECSU for computer science and mathematics majors to congregate to assist one another in gaining capabilities to stay ahead of the curve in the global market.

In the future, pursuing a Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate Degree in Computer Science will be a priority. Giving back to the communities that have added to my education will be a goal for my future as I pursue a career in programming or nanotechnology.