Software exploitation techniques and state-of-the-art mechanisms for hardening software. With Vasileios Kemerlis.

An introduction to principles of computer security from an applied viewpoint and provides hands-on experience on security threats and countermeasures. Topics include cryptosystems, web security, network security, malware, code execution vulnerabilities, access control, cryptocurrencies, machine learning, and human and social issues. With Roberto Tamassia (2019, 2020) and Bernardo Palazzi (2021).

• 2021 contributions:
  • Interviewed, hired, trained, and coordinated staff of 10 undergraduate and graduate TAs.
  • Recurrent guest lecturer in 9 lectures during the semester; delivered over 4 hours of lecture content during the semester.
  • Co-developed and hosted 8 “sections” covering supplementary course content during the semester; developed “discussion” handouts for the sections to help foster community and student-to-student interaction in a remote learning environment.
  • Developed new course project on cloud storage security and secure systems design. Co-designed and developed an implementation-agnostic, adversarial autograder for evaluating and discovering attacks against student implementations, reducing grading workload from 100+ hours of combined TA work hours to ~10 hours of combined TA work hours.
  • Coordinated homework and exam design with staff and professor. Wrote ~50% of the exam problems for 2021.
• 2020 contributions:
  • Interviewed, hired, trained, and coordinated staff of 11 undergraduate and graduate TAs.
  • Organized creation of new homeworks with a more open-ended, design-based focus; modernized homework content (with questions on cryptography, MPC, web security, networks, data compression, anonymization networks, etc.) and wrote +30 new questions for the entire semester with additional “reserve questions” for future years.
  • Designed new “midterm” component of course focused on open-ended design and security analysis questions; wrote ~80% of the exam problems for 2020.
  • Redeveloped the web security and operating security technical projects to improve learning outcomes and increase efficiency of internal grading processes; facilitiated technical project logistics.
  • Created UTA Manual outlining internal staff processes and responsibilities.
• 2019 contributions:
  • Interviewed, hired, trained, and coordinated staff of 8 undergraduate and graduate TAs.
  • Ported technical components of projects written in Bash, PHP, Javascript, and Go to Google Cloud Platform’s Compute Engine.
  • Automated setup process of sandbox Linux virtual machines for each project using the Compute Engine API, reducing setup times by up to ~92%.
  • Co-gave “Passwords” lecture with hashcat password recovery demonstration (slide deck, video starting @ 33:27).

Explores the principles of modern programming languages by implementation; studies data and their types, including polymorphism, type inference, and type soundness; examines compiler and run-time system topics: continuation-passing style and garbage collection. With Shriram Krishnamurthi.

• 2020 contributions:
  • Interviewed and hired staff of 6 undergraduate TAs.
  • Heavily rewrote 9 assignment specifications on programming language feature implementations in Plait and Racket (examples include “Interpreter”, “Type Checker”, “Type Inference”, “Generators”).
  • Transitioned internal staff infrastructure to Gradescope to automate the majority of grading and feedback distribution; developed autograder framework to emulate a Racket version of Examplar, a research IDE helping students assess their understanding of specifications via example-driven development.
• 2019 contributions:
  • Interviewed and hired staff of 6 undergraduate TAs.
  • Remotely answered student-submitted questions throughout the semester.
  • Copy-edited several assignment specifications written by other TAs.

Functional programming, data structures, and algorithms in Racket and Pyret. Includes a summer component taught using the first half of How to Design Programs, then transitions to content based on portions of Programming and Programming Languages during the semester. With Shriram Krishnamurthi.

• Interviewed, hired, trained, and coordinated staff of 9 undergraduate TAs.
• Remotely organized summer placement process and grading for 174 students.
• Rewrote old assignments (“Tour Guide”) and developed new labs (“Iterating Over Trees”, “Tensorflow”).
• Maintained and added new features to existing, end-to-end Google Apps Script-based pipeline for grading management and distribution.
• Wrote internal handbook for future iterations of course staff, covering suggestions for recruiting and hiring future teaching assistants, organizing course logistics, running existing course scripts, and more.

Introduction to programming in MATLAB and Python, with an emphasis on STEM data analysis and simulation problems. With Dan Potter.

Data-focused introduction to computer science using Pyret. With Kathi Fisler.