Los Angeles Metropolitan Area
Broad research interests that all point back to "shifting security left" in the software development lifecycle and in tech professionals - sociotechnical aspects covering software security, secure software development, developer-focused studies and education, AI red teaming. 3rd-year Software Engineering Ph.D. student at the University of California, Irvine Advisor: Dr. Joshua Garcia Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, Informatics Department Director of Academic Outreach with the National Upcycled Computing Collective - Industry experience as a security research engineer intern at Samsung Research America, product security intern at GoDaddy, and HR technology intern at Count of San Luis Obispo. - Undergrad research experiences at the University of Southern California's Info. Sciences Institute, California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo. - Contract work done at Turing. - Former software engineering major and psychology minor at California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo.
The National Upcycled Computing Collective (NUCC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that conducts research, education, and outreach centered around upcycled computing equipment and hardware based in Southern California. - Assisting with the management of loaned computing equipment to 10+ student-run cybersecurity clubs, while conducting additional outreach to expand the NUCC member-school network - Attending local cybersecurity professional & hacker meet-ups in Orange County (Irvine Underground, OC2600) to support outreach duties - Have written 3 memorandums of understandings between cybersecurity clubs and universities; templates for donation intake letters & acknowledgements, data destruction certificates
- In charge of an executive board (4 others) and an advisory board (11); all are direct reports - Ensures that club operations run smoothly, including weekly workshops, competition teams (i.e., CCDC) - Focused on continually growing the number of active members and increasing the club's reputation throughout the School of ICS and the university campus - Also played on the club's Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition team for 2 years; became the '24-'25 national champions (1st place at National Finals and 1st place at Western Regional Finals) - Other selected club accomplishments done during my time as president: - Peak number of attendees at a workshop: ~170 students ('25) - Number of attendees at the first CCDC meeting: ~90 students ('24) - Became a UCI Division of Career Pathways (DCP) Club Affiliate, co-sponsored events with CrowdStrike, GEICO Tech, and Veeva Systems as a DCP Club Affiliate - Was featured in a UCI OIT article for AI quality assurance and red teaming
Teaching Assistant Appointments: - INF 113, Requirements Engineering and Analysis with Dr. Joshua Garcia in Fall '25 - INF 43, Intro to Software Engineering with Dr. Jim Jones in Fall '23
Reviewed AI model outputs and data evaluations in the areas of software engineering, systems programming, data science, computer security, DevOps, and application development Curated structured datasets in the areas of computer architecture and digital system design Supported review and curation efforts in non-SME areas, including math, psychology, and education/pedagogy
- Worked with the Knox Security team under the Mobile Platform & Solutions - Business-to-Business (MPS-B2B) lab; mentored by Dr. Luke Deshotels and Dr. Mike Grace - Conducted a software vulnerability and weakness trend analysis using CVE and CWE data to determine focus areas when the security team performs any security reviews. Provided data-driven recommendations on how to raise the level of software security maturity - Observed the systematization of the threat modeling process to provide insights on the challenges and benefits of systematizing a software security process - Created a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) LLM threat modeling assistant (proof-of-concept) using MITRE ATT&CK framework documentation to help match user-specified incident descriptions with a ATT&CK tactic or technique - Became further familiar with software security and secure development standards such as OWASP's Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM) and NIST's Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF)