I am currently getting my Master of Science in Cybersecurity with a focus in Information Security from Georgia Tech. While at GT, I have been accepted into their VIP program, where I help on the open source project Apache Airavata. Apache Airavata is a framework for scientists to create large models that will run on distributed systems, such as a supercomputer.
\nMy latest Bachelor of Science was Computer Science from Oregon State University. I graduated with a 4.0 and a certificate in Cybersecurity. I was one of the admins for OSU's Unofficial Discord Server. There we fostered a safe environment for students to ask questions and get help. We grew the server from roughly 20 students to over 800 by the time I graduated. We offered channels for all CS classes and had a role based authorization for those channels, so students wouldn't feel overwhelmed with the amount of information we had gathered.
\nI have a Bachelor's degree in Secondary Mathematics Education from WGU and have an active teaching certificate for the State of Georgia.
\nI also have another Bachelor's degree in Building Construction from GT. (Graduated in 2011 when the market crashed and never used this degree \ud83d\ude43)
\nI was accepted into GT's VIP program where we work with all levels of knowledge (undergrad - professor) to improve an open source project. Apache Airvata is an open source project that is helping scientists without high levels of knowledge in computer science, to allow them to run their expirements and data analysis on HPC clusters (supercomputers). The current project I am working on is porting Hannah Choi's work on "Stimulus type shapes the topology of cellular functional networks in mouse visual cortex" into a more user friendly environment where other scientists can reproduce her analysis and continue with her work. If you want a high level synoposis of her work, I put it in Google's NotebookLM and produced their podcast style synoposis.
\nI interned for IBM working on automating their QRadar SIEM. It is a cybersecurity application that ingests network log data (as well as other log data) and analyzes the flow of the data to look for anomalies for possible malware or points of intrusion. The application contains multiple distributed systems that all needed to be configured to work together. I created a system where anyone could create a configuration file with their needs and have my program build their desired system.
\nI interned with Cox Automotive working on building a push button solution to update their servers and endpoint devices using Ansible. I also helped porting their PowerShell scripts to be used with Ansible and created a GitHub repository where all of their scripts could live.
\nIn 2018 I received a job offer to work at a school that was a bike ride away (I did ride my bike a few times to school). Some fun facts about Dekalb School of the Arts:
\nWhile the difference in facilities between Alpharetta High School and DSA was staggering. DSA was hosted in an old run down (basically abandoned) high school. The district never seemed to want to spend money to help the school, but it was always listed as one of the top 10 schools of Georgia year after year. And that had everything to do with the students.
\nWhile there I taught Algebra 1 and Pre-Calculus. The class sizes were also fairly small (I had one class of 5). I became the advisor for the Girls Who Code club, where they learned mostly basic HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript. I was able to attend so many more after school events because of how close I lived. The school put on amazing plays, musicals, chorus, dance, and art events.
\nAlpharetta High School recruited me with a week left of the Fall semester in 2014. For all of you counting on your fingers right now, yes that means they hired me when the students were taking their midterms... It was ok, I researched all they learned that semester, looked over their review package, and taught them everything I could in a single day before their midterms. All of the students were incredibly thankful for everything I did for them that week, so it made the next semester flow very smoothly. I was asked to teach Algebra 2, Honors Algebra 2, AMDM (Advanced Mathematical Decision Making), and SAT Prep. The students were great, when they wanted to be lol. I learned as much from them as they did from me.
\nThe first full year there, the county wanted to start rolling out tablet devices to every student. Because our school was the guinea pig and because I had a background in technology, I became the go to person for both teachers and students in learning to use the device. I learned how to use Microsoft OneNote and all its' capabilities in order to allow students to do their math homework on their tablet and allow me to have access to their work without them needing to remember to turn it in. Great for parent teacher conferences, not so great for students who didn't do their homework. I also created the procedure for the school on how to collect the tablets and its' parts. I created a spread sheet that allowed all the collectors to quickly use a scanner to look up the student and mark return information. The county seemed to like it a lot, so they used it. Some students and I started a "geek squad", where students could ask other students for technology help in the library during the morning and at lunch.
\nI helped coach the Freshman Lax team (I knew nothing about the sport, but they needed help and I had time... kinda). I slowly learned about the sport, the rules, the positions, and how to use the crosse. I also helped coach Volleyball, where I started with the Freshman team, then JV, then Varsity. I had some experience in volleyball, mostly adult rec leagues for both indoor and sand. I'm just glad I was able to be there for the students who wanted to do things outside of school and had a real passion for it.
\nOne of the requirements to getting my teaching certificate in the State of Georgia was to be a student teacher for a few months. I'm so thankful to Donna Greenwood who I got to shadow for the fall semester working with students on Advanced Geometry. I was also lucky to have one of my high school's math teachers as my observer, I still remember her going class to class on Pi day doing activities with the students (yes, I was/am a nerd). Getting to help all those kids feel more confident in themselves when it comes to math, really showed me that I was on a right path for myself.
\nI also did some side work as a tutor during my time of getting my degree in math education. I helped students with Algebra 2, Pre-Calc, and Trig.
\nWhile I was getting my second degree in math education, I worked at a couple Old Navy stores. They quickly moved me up to MOD (manager on duty) and gave me keys with security codes. I mostly worked in the back of the store, where we received so many boxes that we needed to remove the clothing from plastic, organize them on rolling carts, place them around the store, and change the overall look of the store. I had/have no fashion sense, so trying to make the store look nice was one of my biggest hardships while working there. Did I mention the truck came in around 4 AM... Guess some skills still transfer from other jobs. My wife says that the best thing I learned was how to fold and hang clothes quickly and efficiently. (Guess who does all the laundry lol)
\nMy sophmore year of my first degree (Building Construction at GT), I received an internship to work with Turner Construction working on extending the Cobb County ADC (Adult Detection Center). It mostly consisted of 4 AM starts in the hot Georgia summers, so the concrete trucks could make it to the site without worrying about traffic. Did you know if a concrete truck gets too hot or is rotating for too long, the consistence can drastically change which could lead to the concrete not setting to the required strength needed for large loads.
\nWhile in high school, I was getting my dual seal degree in technology. The program consisted of multiple technology courses, building a computer from scratch and running MS-DOS (we may or may not have added games onto the schools Z drive). It also consisted of 3 courses that were grouped together: 3D modeling, architecture, and a third class (it so long ago and was taken the last semester of high school, so you can't blame me for forgetting the details). My teacher was a football coach who saw my talent with computers and making 3D models, so he always tested the new material on me first to guage how long it might take others to accomplish. He was a great teacher who allowed me to grow at my own speed, so when they heard of a job working at an architecture job doing AutoCAD revisions he recommended me for the position. Upon interviewing, we figured out that I coached his daughter in soccer, so of course the job was mine. Life is about helping your community, because you never know when you might need help from them. I worked after school doing revisions in AutoCAD (which I needed to teach myself) on electrical blueprints. I can still see the cloud bubbles in my mind, if you know you know.
\nI believe this would be considered the best job a high school student could ever wish for! While I needed to wait until I was 18 (so you could rent/sell R rated movies), it was worth the wait. I got to watch movies on the screens in the store, while helping others find the perfect movie for their family movie night. I worked a lot of hours as a high school senior who was also coaching their sister's soccer and basketball teams. Did I mention you received 5 free rentals a week as an employee perk...
\nStarted working when I was 16, so I could make some extra money on the side. I'd say it was a good first job. We got to get free pizza (if the order accidentally got messed up...), learned to work with customers over the phone (online ordering wasn't a thing yet), learned to work with handling money (I guess I was trustworthy as a 16 year old). Plus I was hired with one of my best friends, so time went by fairly quickly.
\nI am in my 2nd semester and taking a network security course. We have completed projects on:
\nnmap to gather information about the network and any systems present.JohnTheRipper and cewl to mangle lists of common passwords in order to crack encrypted files on the target system.Here is my GitHub page. I know it is a mess of old projects and my newer projects are currently private until I get them to a level where it's secure and best practices are in place.
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