Post by Princeton ECE

The fifth annual Princeton-Intel REU program hosted eight rising juniors from throughout the country who spent the summer with faculty & grad student mentors from Princeton Engineering and industry mentors from Intel Corporation. Each year, the program provides the opportunity for undergraduates to learn research skills and explore some of the world’s most pressing internet security challenges. This year's projects investigated a variety of topics including how an attacker can track website activity without breaking encryption, detecting elusive attacks to hardware that can leak sensitive information, and ways to improve accuracy for prediction algorithms that forecast events. Tanusri Ramakrishnan, undergrad at Rutgers University, said the experience taught her the importance of looking at both long-term and short-term goals when working on a research project. “We learned to keep a big picture point of view and not pigeonhole into certain problems,” she added. “And we learned that collaboration is very important, whether it be with our cohort or within our team itself.” Congratulations to this year’s scholars: Ayomeide Adekoya, Tamar Spira, Mia Kaarls, Ryan Jeronimus, Tanusri Ramakrishnan, Sarah Yuan, Aaron Tian, and Sharvani Vadlamani (Sharvani V.). Special thank you to Intel program manager Bo-Yuan Huang, all of our Intel industry mentors, and all of our Princeton University faculty, grad students and staff who made the program a success.