After struggle to learn English, Bladensburg graduate excels

"I used to take appliances and toys apart just so I can see the mechanics and the working pieces inside," the 25-year-old College Park resident said.

Years later, Hyousseu is finishing an engineering internship with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, where he is working on developing cutting edge technology in underwater sonar dedication.

Hyousseu immigrated to the United States with his family in 2000. They came, in part, "to live in better conditions," he said. It would have been extremely difficult for Hyousseu to find a job in Cameroon after he finished his education because of the nation's poor economy, he said.

The family settled in Bladensburg and Hyousseu attended Bladensburg High School. He came to the school with limited English proficiency, and was set back a year in school because of it.

"It was kind of challenging," he said. "I needed to improve my English first, so I tried and worked on that first."

He soon exceeded expectations, earning 4.0 grade point averages and taking advanced physics and calculus classes, he said. He then attended Prince George's Community College and transferred to Morgan State University in Baltimore. He graduated in 2006 with a degree in engineering physics, and began work on his graduate degree in electrical engineering at the school.

Although Hyousseu has held numerous internships in the past, he was still excited to receive this one sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.

"With the hard work that I put in and the seriousness and dedication I poured into my work, I somewhat expect recognition somewhere down the road," he said.

He is working on technology that will make underwater sonar dedication, a sometimes arduous and long process for computer hardware to compute, much quicker and more efficient.

His Oak Ridge research mentor, Neena Imam, said Hyousseu is dedicated and "a quick learner."

"He puts in extra hours all the time," she said. "He obviously is extremely bright. I can just tell by interacting with him that he catches onto things very quickly."

Hyousseu hopes his internship, which began on May 27 and finishes on Friday, will help further his engineering career. He will graduate with a master's degree in December and he hopes to go on to get a doctorate.

"If he applies himself in the future the way I have seen him do, then I have no doubt that he'll have a great career in science," Imam said.

E-mail Elahe Izadi at eizadi@gazette.net.