Outreach
2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020 Co-Director for CodebreakHERS, a cybersecurity camp for high school girls at USF
I am the co-director for CodebreakHERS which is a cybersecurity camp for high school girls taking place at USF every year. The 2024 CodebreakHERS (https://www.codebreakhers.org/) took place June 24-28, 2024.
High school girls and Hardware security: We teach the campers how to use a linux system with Raspberry Pis that they get to keep after the camp! We demonstrate cyberattackss that use the hardware such as bypassing password protection using a USB stick. Our instructors have plenty of hands-on activities to dive into these concepts.
High school girls and Internet security: The campers learn the basics of network connections and the cybersecurity risks that they pose: for example injections attacks or Denial of Service Attacks.
High school girls and Information encoding and Error Correcting Codes: We will study how to encode information to make it understandable by a computer and how to protect it from errors that happen during communication. There will be an emphasis on binary encoding, hexadecimal encoding, ASCII, UTF8, and Barcodes. We will demonstrate error correction through fun games in class. Time permitting, we will also study QR codes which are just about everywhere these days.
High school girls and Cryptography and Blockchain: Cryptography is the cornerstone of cybersecurity. The students will learn the concepts of encryption, digital signatures and hashing. We will review historical examples such as the Caesar cipher and play games of encryption/decryption. We will demonstrate these concepts by competing in a cryptocurrency challenge developed exclusively for the camp where participants score points by mining on the blockchain.
High school girls and Capture the Flag Competitions: We will illustrate all the new concepts we've learned by playing Capture the Flag Competitions (CTFs) which are challenges where each team scores point by solving problems related to some of the concepts we've learned. We will use the CyberHub platform maintained by the Florida Center for Cybersecurity which contains countless CTF challenges. We will have the assistance of the Whitehatters Computer Security Club (WCSC) who regularly compete in similar events.
2016-2017 and 2015-2016 Executive Member of E3 Middle School Students (Grades 6 - 8) Fair
The E3 Fair Committee is all volunteer - comprised of engineers representing various Rochester engineering societies and community members who want to support this worthwhile event. Middle schools in Monroe County, as well as many schools in surrounding counties, participate in the E3 Fair.
High school students and their parents are also encouraged to attend the Fair, to take advantage of the CAREER OPPORTUNITIES offered by this event. Because of the high level of participation by the Rochester engineering and technology community, there will be an extraordinary concentration of engineering and technical professionals at the Fair, willing to share information and advice relating to career opportunities in engineering and technology.