[4] Trent left Mississippi State in 1940 to accept an appointment at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), where he eventually became head of the Applied Mathematics Branch.
His expertise in acoustics brought him an appointment to a special naval team assigned to do technical intelligence work on sound devices developed by the Nazis in Germany after World War II.
[9] Trent's wife, Eva Mae, was also a mathematician in the Atmosphere and Astrophysics Division of NRL.
In 1963, the NRL granted both of them a leave of absence to study and make recommendations for changes to Dartmouth College’s engineering sciences curriculum.
The Ford Foundation financed the grant for his study of the college's mathematics, physics, chemistry, and engineering courses.
He was an associate professor at the University of Maryland[4] where he also became the Sigma Pi chapter there's faculty advisor.