My interest in the computer science field began when a family friend invited me to his place of work, the technology department of a school system. We began to image computers, manage different networks, and perform maintenance on the server. From that moment, computer science was the major I wanted to passionately pursue. As a mathematics tutor in high school, I enjoyed helping students better understand mathematical concepts. Tutoring coupled with knowing mathematics, has numerous amounts of applications. This is what drove me to pursue a mathematics degree.

Currently, I am pursuing Bachelor’s Degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics. My plan is to continue pursuing my education by continuing on to a graduate school to obtain a Master’s Degree. My aspiration is to seek a Computational Science and Engineering graduate degree program.

Knowing early in my undergraduate career that graduate school was an aspiration of mine, I applied and was accepted into the Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing and Education (CERSER) program, under the mentorship of Dr. Linda B. Hayden. Being an awardee of the CERSER program, one is awarded a scholarship, training in various softwares (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc.) and coding languages (Python, Perl), outside of the classroom setting.  Participation in spring academic research projects is a large focus as well. The most recent CERSER research projects that I have participated in are: “Producing 3D Point Clouds and Digital Elevation Models through Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” and “Documentation and Preparation for SeaSpace Ground Stations at Elizabeth City State University (ECSU)”.  Participating in spring academic research has prepared me to be successful when participating in summer research experiences. The CERSER program’s goal is to prepare one to become a well-rounded candidate for pursuing graduate studies.

My first research project in the CERSER program was “Customizing and Configuring the HUBzero Experience”, under the guidance of Mr. Justin Deloatch and Mr. Je'aime Powell. HUBzero is an open source software package used to construct websites for scientific research and educational activities. The team's project consisted of creating, configuring, and customizing our own hub, called the CERSERhub. The team investigated how HUBzero features are utilized for research, education, and scientific collaboration. A database component was added to the CERSERhub to store collected data from the 2013 Pasquotank River Watershed Research Project.

In the summer of 2014, I took part in the Indiana University Summer Research Opportunities in Computing (IU-SROC). My research project was titled: "Evaluating the Performance of MPI Java in FutureGrid" under the mentorship of Mr. Saliya Enkanyake. Message Passage Interface (MPI) has been the common choice among developers when developing tightly coupled parallel High Performance Computing (HPC) applications and the majority of such applications are based on C, C++, or FORTRAN. My goal was to convert the Ohio State Micro Benchmark broadcast from MPI C to MPI Java and compare the performance results to the standard MPI C benchmark.

As a sophomore, I participated in research entitled “Documentation of Site Preparation for the Installation of SeaSpace Ground Stations at ECSU" under the mentorship of Mr. Michael Osterhouse and Mr. Andrew Brumfield. In September 2014, a transition was made to a direct purchase and installation of SeaSpace hardware and software. The purpose of this project was to document the installation requirements and internal processes at ECSU for SeaSpace hardware and software equipment, also addressing the location of engineering findings, location of installation requirements, repositioning and securing current ground stations, and proper training center needs.

The 2015 Bug Wars REU at the University of North Texas, was my second summer research experience. As a part of software testing team, we participated in the Exploration of Mobile Testing through Automatic Test Case Generation research project under the mentorship of Dr. Renee Bryce and Mr. Ryan Michaels. The team focused on developing a tool for test case generation of Android applications regardless of Android version and emulator type. Additionally, the team explored the breadth of the software testing process, starting with application discovery, test case generation, replaying of test cases against bugged versions of the application, and finally exploring questions of test case analysis, specifically looking at graphical user interface element coverage.

The following academic school year, I conducted research titled “Producing 3D point cloud and digital elevation models through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, Historic St. Luke's Church case study”. This research project was initiated to demonstrate the ability of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to gather elevation and 3D data using only a visible light camera. The chosen test case was the structure and property associated with Historic St. Luke's Church. The primary objective for this project was to produce aerial imagery from which structural and elevation models could be generated. A secondary objective was to make this data available to the church so that it could be used in future archaeological and landscape studies.

During the summer of 2016, I participated in the 2016 Indiana University –Summer Research Opportunities in Computing (IU-SROC). I worked in the Privacy Lab under the mentorship of Dr. Apu Kapadia, Mr. Rakibul Hasan, and Mr. Patrick Shaffer. The project was titled “Counting Faces: Computer Vision and Privacy Application for the Visually Impaired Person”. The team developed a system that would inform a visually impaired person how many people are around them utilizing a Beaglebone Black. Our system used an infrared camera to detect the presence of an individual based on body temperature and an HD camera to capture an image. The image was processed and an output of the number of faces in the captured image was given.

My aspiration istake the knowledge and skills gained from my undergraduate experience and pursue a computational science and engineering graduate program. A degree in computational science and engineering will allow me to solve complex real world problems, present various solutions to a problem, and ultimately lead to selecting the best solution