whoami

A Picture of Me :O

my profile picture

Introduction

My name is Jessica Lam and I am currently a 2nd year Computer Science student at UC San Diego. I am passionate about cybersecurity and also have an interest in anything cloud and/or infrastructure related. I also love cats, matcha, and basically all of the Studio Ghibli movies!

And a Favorite Quote from a Favorite Book

We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

-Randy Pausch, in The Last Lecture

And Some Random Code?

while alive == True:
    keep_moving_forward()

You’re a legend if you’ve seen/remember Meet the Robinsons :’))

tree

Table of Contents

traceroute journey.me

My Beginnings

I’ve always loved puzzles, the challenge and process of problem solving. So, when I started learning how to code, I knew that this was something I wanted to do for as long as possible.

Later in high school, I got my first sneak peek in the world of cybersecurity when I participated in CyberPatriot, a cybersecurity competition run by the AFA. There was such a high learning curve and I struggled, a lot, but the challenge enticed me.

So, here I am, pursuing a degree in Computer Science at UCSD and aspiring to combine my passion for computer science and cybersecurity in my future career!

Experience

Research

Security Education Research: I have been involved in research with Professor Adalbert Gerald Soosai Raj since my 1st year of university! We are researching the quality of security education in undergraduate computer science curriculum. Currently, we are examining introductory computer systems courses since these are mid-level courses we believe are most suitable for introducing students to security concepts such as buffer overflow

ERSP - Side Channel Attacks Research: As a part of the Early Research Scholars Program at UCSD, I learned how to conduct security research. My group was specifically focused on a type of security attack technique called side channel attacks and created a tool that can detect whether or not a victim program is susceptible to a specific type of side channel attack called CopyCat.

Internship

Summer 2020: I interned under the High Performance Computing division at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). I specifically studied a remote storage access protocol and learned a lot about storage and file systems!

Summer 2021: I interned as Information Security Intern at Apple! I wrote vulnerability scanning modules to scan for 23 critical vulnerabilities across Apple’s infrastructure.

Summer 2022: I will be interning at Meta as a Software Engineer Intern!

Fall 2022: I will be interning at NVIDIA as a Security Software Intern!

Tutoring

I tutor under the Computer Science Engineering Department during the school year. Here’s a list of classes (in reverse chrono):

Spring 2022: CSE 15L - Software Tools and Techniques Laboratory

Fall 2021 / Winter 2022: CSE 8A - Intro to Computer Science: Python

Spring 2021: CSE 3 - Fluency in Information Technology

Winter 2021: CSE 291/190 - Intro to Computing Education Research

Fall 2020: CSE 8A - Intro to Computer Science: Python

Spring 2020: CSE 8B - Intro to Computer Science: Java II

ls ./BoxOfFun/

Fun Facts

  1. I’ve spent hours upon hours upon hours playing Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley
    • I started with Wild World, then played New Leaf, and am now playing New Horizons! I’ve probably logged wayyyy too many hours on these 3 games alone
    • I was also introduced to SV this past year and am already on Summer Year 2 of my farm! I switch between playing casually and going hard-core haha
  2. I love love love art
    • I especially love works created by modern artists like Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami, and Olafur Eliasson
    • I once spent 4 hours walking around the Louvre by myself!… And somehow still managed to not see everything :(
  3. I participated in marching band for all 4 years of high school
    • I was in percussion (drums and mallet instruments) and especially enjoyed playing an instrument called the marimba
    • I also learned and performed a different marimba solo each year of high school (maybe a video or two are still floating out there…)

Bucket List