- Current Position: Software engineer at NetApp
- Undergraduate degree: B.S. in Electrical Engineering, University of Washington
- Duke ECE Path: Master of Science (MS)–Coursework path
Why Did You Choose Duke?
I value the close ties that Duke has with the industry. I wanted to be able align my studies at Duke with the current challenges facing the industry. Studying for a master's degree at Duke allowed me to do that.
Tell us about your master's project
One of the most exciting projects I worked on was the implementation of a fully encrypted file system, with a focus on performance. I came up with a solution to decrease encryption/decryption latency by exploiting concurrency when possible.
Why did you choose that topic?
I was surprised to see that most of the well-known block cipher modes are sequential in nature in favor of security. I was motivated to explore alternative existing methods to encrypt by allowing parallelism without sacrificing security.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
I realized that in most cases, the term "unbreakable encryption" pretty much means "just not enough time and hardware to break it."