Greetings! My name is JerNettie Arriel Burney. I am currently a junior at Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) majoring in Computer Science with a minor in Applied Mathematics. In today's society, the use of computers is a must. Learning more technical skills and obtaining research experience will enable me to one day join the industry with other scientists in the development of new technologies and innovations.

Currently, I am funded through the Center of Excellence for the Remote Sensing Education and Research (CERSER) at ECSU under the advisement of Dr. Linda B. Hayden. I am confident that with the guidance of Dr. Hayden and my mentors such as Je'aime Powell and Kaiem Frink, I will be able to accomplish my future goals. As a member of CERSER, I have the opportunity to apply to internships that pertain to my major. CERSER will help me in the development of the technical skills I will need in order to pursue not only these internships but also my future career.

During the year of 2008-2009, I was enlisted as a member of the Water Quality Team. The title of our research project was, "A Study of pH, Salinity, and Clarity of Water Samples from Various Locations around the World". The team took different samples from around the world to test, record, and compare the results of the testing to other water samples that have been studied. The team stored the data in an inventory to be saved for future Water Quality Teams to continue the testing of other water samples in a Microsoft Excel worksheet. This worksheet listed the type of water sample it is, where it was collected, who it was collected by, the latitude and longitude, and if there were any visual aids, it was also included. Through the project, we found that various water samples from out of the country have a high amount of pH, hardness, etc.

During the summer of 2009, I had the opportunity to participate in the Undergraduate Research Experience in Ocean, Marine, and Polar Sciences at Elizabeth City State University under the advisement of Dr. Hayden also. I worked with the Polar Grid team and the title of the research that we did was "A Comparative Analysis of Localized Command Line Execution, Remote Execution through Command Line, and Torque Submissions of Matlab(R) Scripts for the Charting of CReSIS Flight Path Data". The objective of this research was to take the data that the University of Kansas plotted in Greenland and use MATLAB(R) to graph the data in a xy-coordinate plane then submit it in MATLAB(R) command line through the high performance computer, Madogo, located on the campus of Elizabeth City State University. These jobs were also submitted through Quarry's MATLAB(R) command line, the high performance computer located in Indiana State University. Finally, they were submitted using TORQUE through Madogo. The team then did a comparison of how long it took to do the job statistically using ANOVA.

The academic year of 2009-2010, I also participated in the Polar Grid group. The research title of our project was “A Comparison of Job Duration Utilizing High Performance Computing on a Distributed Grid”. The team’s purpose was to test VikeGrid by submitting scripts containing a sieve which is code that generates a large amount of odd numbers. The sieve used for this project was the Sieve of Eratosthenes which is the name of the mathematician who generated the equation to be able to produce odd numbers between 0 and 500,000. After these scripts of code were submitted by using condor, which is a batch scheduler that communicated with VikeGrid, the log sheet of how long it took for each job to be submitted was produced. The team then compared the times that it took for a different number of simultaneous jobs to be submitted and used ANOVA to obtain a statistical variance of the different times.

The summer of 2010, I had the privilege to attend an internship at Indiana University-Bloomington where I worked with Dr. Marlon Pierce on cloud computing. Because CReSIS obtains large amounts of information over a long period of time, it was the duty of the team to research different ways of allowing CReSIS to have a secondary storage place for the data. The reason for this is if the information stored in the computers at Indiana University to be destroyed, CReSIS would want to make sure the data that was lost could easily be recovered from the alternate storage. The main focus of the research was on Amazon Web Storage (AWS). The team found that AWS would only be used as a means for storage for a short amount of time, not long term. The reason for this is because of possible loss of data or the event that the AWS website may completely shut down causing all of CReSIS’s data to be lost.

After graduating with my Bachelors’ Degree in Computer Science from ECSU, I want to pursue a Master's Degree and then obtain my Ph.D. After I receive my Ph.D. I would like to pursue a career in computer software engineering. It is certain however that my experiences at ECSU and my training in CERSER will surely prepare me for whatever career I decide to engage in. When I finally reach my goal, I will be able to come back to CERSER and tell future students about my achievements and that anything is possible if the student are persistent about achieving their goals.

I believe it is important to tell students that will be in the same position that I'm in today that they are needed in the workforce, especially in the science field since it is one of the most underrepresented areas for African-Americans to be involved with. Even though this area doesn't have many minorities in it, it would make a huge difference if children are told why they should participate in it and it is not all about sitting in lab all day trying to formulate equations or figuring out how to construct a supercomputer. They are needed and I feel that if they are told about what the science field requires at a early age, then we will be able to pull more minorities into the science field.