Sarada Symonds
Application Security Engineer at The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Computer Engineering and Computer Science Degree from Northeastern University
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RESUME RESUME
About Me
Academics
Major in Computer Engineering and Computer Science
Graduating May 2019

Honors and Awards: Honors Program Mentor, Global Experience Ambassador, Northeastern University's RISE award in Engineering and Technology, Dean's List, Connections Scholarship, Distil Networks Women in Technology Scholarship, Box Diversity Scholarship semi-finalist, GE Women's Network scholarship, GEO Video scholarship, Pressman Memorial scholarship

Technical Skills: Python (Django, Scikit, pandas), Javacript (React, Angular2), C++, Java, Matlab, HTML/CSS, Swift, C, Prolog, Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Solidworks, AutoCAD, Xcode

  • Society of Women Engineers Publicity Chair, SAC Representative, and Webmaster
  • NU Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition member
  • Enabling Engineering member
Volunteering
Science Club for Girls
I volunteer at the Science Club for Girls on their Tech Team program, which teaches girls about programming and entrepreneurship. The participants also compete in Technovation, which challenges girls to develop an app and business model that will address a problem in their community. During the first year of the program, I helped develop lesson plans and worked with the girls on their apps. Currently, the program is in it's third year, and continues to accept returning and new members.

Society of Women Engineers Outreach
I have been a member of the Society of Women Engineers since my first semester at college, and have volunteered at several outreach events such as the Strides for Breast Cancer Walk and the Habitat for Humanity ReStore Day. In my sophomore year, I organized Northeastern University’s Women in Engineering Day, which introduced high school girls to various facets of engineering through panels and activities and was attended by over 100 people.
Research
Since my first semester at college, I've been engaged with research on campus. My freshmen and sophomore years I worked with the Northeastern University Computer Architecture Lab developing benchmarks for CUDA, OpenCL, and OpenMP. At the end of my sophomore year, I worked with PhD students in the College of Computer and Information Science to test and develop a demo for Hyperdrive, a cloud testbed to support research on attacks and mitigations on cloud systems, for which I received a publication credit. I also received a RISE (Research, Innovation, Scholarship, and Entrepreneurship) Award for my work with Enabling Engineering on developing a wearable device that will enable therapists to monitor their clients' remote physical therapy.

Writing: I've also written several technical and non-technical blog posts for various online platforms, including the Yeti blog, the College of Engineering blog, and Trinity College Dublin's International Student blog.
Featured Projects
Insight Tweets

This project was created with a team as part of the SheHacks Hackathon in January 2018. We created a Node.js/Express web app that analyzes a user's Twitter history to develop a career personality profile using IBM's Watson API. The results of the profile are displayed using animated charts from the D3js and Chartist libraries. The app is currently hosted on Heroku.

SheHacks Equality Award 2018

See it on Github
Connect Four with Minimax

I created a human vs computer Connect Four game in React, and implemented a Minimax algorithm to choose the computer's next move. The algorithm uses a ratings function to assign a score to a column and looks several turns ahead to predict the best move. The most challenging part was part was finding the balance between minimizing threats (the human player wins) and maximizing potential wins.

See the project page
Simple Web Proxy

This is a simple web proxy created using Flask-socketio and threading. It allows users to monitor requests and block URLs. Proxies are used to provide additional security and privacy to internet users, although they are used for illegal purposes as well. This project was a great way to learn more about OSI layers as well as tools like virtualenv, pip, Flask, and threading.

See it on Github
RDIO

This project was created at the first Husky Hacks (also my own first hackathon). Our group developed an internet radio station using Icecast that would allow users to broadcast music live over the internet, allowing friends to listen to music together even if they were across the country. We looked at many different tools before selecting Icecast, a streaming music server. Much of the project was spent on research, connecting to the server, and developing a frontend.

See it on Github
Exoneration Data Exploration

Due to the hard work of non-profits and new forensic techniques, each year dozens of innocent men and women have their convictions reversed and are released from prison. There are many reasons an individual may not get a fair trail, including an inadequate defense, flawed forensic evidence, mistaken witness testimony, and police misconduct. This Jupyter notebook uses pandas and plot.ly to conduct a data exploration of the context in which exonerations take place.

See the Jupyter notebook
Project W.H.A.M.

Working with Enabling Engineering and the Regame Laboratory, our team has been developing a wearable that connects with an iOS application to monitor remote physical therapy for chidren with cerebral palsy. The goal is to "gamify" the physical therapy to encourage participation. The app also connects with an online database that therapists can access to study their clients' progress.

RISE Award in Engineering

See the project page
Work Experience
PwC
Cyber Services Associate Co-op, Fall 2018
I joined PwC'c Cyber Services consulting division, where I assited on a myriad of cyber security related projects, including the development of vulnerability management programs, web application security assessment, and network analysis.
Lincoln Laboratory
Computer Engineering Co-op, Fall 2017
I worked in the Embedded and Open Systems group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory developing new technologies. My assignments mainly required me to work with JavaScript, Bash, and SQL.
Yeti LLC
Software Developer Co-op, Fall 2016
Yeti is a software design and development firm in San Francisco. During my time there, I worked on developing hardware and software prototypes. I also wrote several blog posts and worked with clients to deliver new features and updates to various products.
NU CCIS, Cloud Security
Assistant Researcher, Spring + Summer 2016
I worked with PhD students in the College of Computer and Information Science to test and develop a demo for Hyperdrive, a cloud testbed to support research on attacks and mitigations on cloud systems.
Publications
Hyperdrive: A flexible cloud testbed for research and education
Amirali Sanatinia, Sanket Deshpande, Apoorv Munshi, Daniel Kohlbrenner, Michael Yessaillian, Sarada Symonds, Agnes Chan, Guevara Noubir
January 2017, IEEE International Symposium on Technologies for Homeland Security
Link
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