Hi! I’m Alex, a junior studying Computer Science and International & Public Affairs at Brown University.

I’m specifically interested in cybersecurity, data privacy and international migration, and I’m currently working as a student researcher for the ETOS Group at Brown. I’ve also been enjoying doing some graphic design for fun. Feel free to check out my projects or experience!

كنتُ أدرس اللغة العربية منذ سنتين أيضاً في صفوف الجامعة وأقراءة الكتب السهلة في اللغة. إن شاء الله سأدرس في شمال إفريقيا في المستقل لأنه لا يزيل أمامي الكثير لأتعلم. درستُ سابقاً الفصحى غلباً لكن أنا متحمس لأتعلم أكثر من العامية في السنة القدمة. الآن أقرأ خارج المكان من إدوارد سعيد وأرشحه جداً.I’ve also been studying Arabic for the past two years. Hopefully I’ll study abroad in North Africa some day, because I’ve still got a lot to learn. I’ve been learning Modern Standard Arabic, but I’m excited to start learning more dialects next year.

experience

• 'ETOS' Operating Systems Research Group, Undergrad Research Assistant

  Contributing to Alohomora, a system for practical end-to-end privacy-compliance in Rust.

  Created a small-scale chat app using Alohomora to automate testing of the system’s privacy guarantees.

  Ported the backend of a production Czech web app (numbering ~6k LoC) to the system for streamlining its ease of use in actual deployment.

  Designed & implemented a system for safe sandbox reuse between privacy regions (areas of code run in sandboxes to prevent leakage of privileged data)—lowering the setup/teardown overhead of Alohomora sandboxes by ~6.5x.

  Currently working on more efficiently serializing sandbox function arguments to further reduce overhead.

• State of Rhode Island, DoIT Endpoint Management Intern

  Coordinated the removal of 300 redundant personal devices from the State’s Intune and SCCM networks, working closely with 14 Technical Support Managers to follow protocol and balance departmental needs.

  Used ServiceNow ticketing system to provide endpoint tech support to 18k state employees.

  Occasionally shadowed the department’s CISO and Security Analysists to learn about security architecture and organizational IT/security frameworks.

• Brown University CS Department, Undergrad Teaching Assistant

  CS0300 | Fundamentals of Computer Systems - Spring 2024
  Assisted with grading, led weekly instructive sections of 20+ students, and held office hours.
  Evaluated by head TAs as “exceeding expectations” in all categories & “very, very communicative”.

  CS1650 | Software Security & Exploitation - Fall 2024
  

• Brown Fullstack Club, Lead Developer

  Working for Dr. Shekhar Pradhan on building a site for Brown’s Conversational AI Lab, complete with a blogging system and forum to facilitate discussion of AI at the university.



• The ARC (Morris County Chapter), Recreation Specialist

  Organized and led full-day social / recreational programming for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).

  Met clients’ unique needs for physical, social and verbal assistance to help them build their independence with daily activities like reading, eating, going on hikes, socializing, and resolving interpersonal conflict.

  Constantly ensured that clients felt heard, supported and valued, even while resolving occasional behavioral crises and performing first aid.

  Drove clients to The Pizza Pub (I’d totally recommend if you’re ever in jersey) every week for fan-favorite ‘Pizza Fridays’.

projects

• MIGR, predicting asylum application outcomes

  Developed machine learning pipeline using Python (pandas, scikit-learn) to predict asylum application outcomes in the EU, improving upon baseline RMSE by 33.9%.

  Summarized findings in a series of presentations and detailed report on the process.

• PAPER EXCHANGE, stock trading with ml

  Developed paper trading system to train, evaluate & visualize machine learning models that trade stocks.

  System was made in C# (old habits die hard) and built on daily stock data for the past 9 years that was scraped from the nasdaq's online database.

  Attempted to implement various machine learning models based on trading heuristics and best-practices I’d read about (like linear regression analysis & mean reversion). Unfortunately, none of them significantly outperformed a random baseline :( and I haven’t had time to return to the project since I created it in 48 hours at the 2023 Hack@Brown hackathon.

  

  a demo of manually trading over historic data with my system. the median, 25th and 75th percentile linear regressions over the past year are shown.

• "REFUGEE WAREHOUSE ...", research on the Syrian Refugee Crisis

  Worked with NYU Professor Colette Mazzucelli and the Syrian Emergency Task Force to research developments in the Crisis and their connection with the rise of far right populist governments in Europe.

  Final paper was described as an "excellent addition to the literature".

• SMARTSKY, eco-conscious ml flight planner

  Built simulated plane navigation system and evolutionary machine learning algorithm in C# from scratch to make simulated flight paths 24% more fuel efficient—reducing carbon emissions and airlines’ fuel costs.

  I presented the system at a local exhibition and it was awarded a rare perfect score by International Baccaleaureate graders when submitted as an IB Personal Project in 2020.

  

  me & my parents at the conference.

about me

When I was thirteen, I wrote my first piece of malware. It might’ve just been a silly applescript program that would keep opening tabs of the viral ‘keyboard cat’ youtube video (while locking your computer’s volume at max), but that was the exact moment I got hooked on cybersecurity. By the end of the school year, I’d figured out how to disguise payloads as images, hide them from the application list while running and design them so that they could only prank specific friends--I think I was worried they’d end up spreading like actual viruses.

Since then, I’ve worked at the State of Rhode Island's IT Division, and within Brown's CS Department as a teaching assistant for security & systems courses, and my interest has only grown.

This summer, I’m working as an undergrad researcher: continuing to contribute to the ETOS group’s Alohomora project for end-to-end privacy compliance by design in Rust. I’m also working on getting some cybersecurity certifications, and I’ve been really enjoying learning more about enterprise security architecture as part of that!

In my free time, I enjoy trying to master the art of banana bread, going to the gym, cloud-watching, movies, bothering my sisters and watching the sox.

Feel free to contact me, i’d love to hear from you!