Blogger 2009-2010, Blogger 2008-2009
Working on: PhD in Computer Science
Grad: Master of Computer Science (Carleton University)
Undergrad: Mathematics (Carleton University)
Email: terri AT zone12.com
Website: terri.zone12.com
Photos: flickr
About Me
I did a co-op degree in Mathematics at Carleton, and took the opportunities there to work with everything from old mainframes and giant databases to tiny new handheld devices. From there I thought I'd go work in industry, but I wound up developing a spam detection system based on ideas from the human immune system, and turned that project into my Master's degree. Although I loved working in artificial intelligence, a girl can only spend so much time talking about junk email, though, so I got interested in computer security for my PhD. I'm currently working on my thesis in web security.
Undergraduate Studies
My choice
My undergraduate degree is in Mathematics, but that's actually not where I started! I switched to math after 4 months in computer science, because I found CS boring. The first year computer courses weren't sufficiently challenging at that time, whereas I could already see the possibilities from my first year math courses. Carleton's excellent math faculty and the terrific folk in the Math Society made my undergraduate degree a wonderful experience.
Graduate Studies
Master's Studies
My master's degree was actually a bit of an accident. In my last year, I took a "Swarm Intelligence" graduate course on a lark because a friend suggested it to fill a spare slot in my timetable. Swarm intelligence looks at ideas from nature to inspire computing, and I found myself particularly interested in the idea of an artificial immune system. I wound up writing my final paper on a system I built to make an artificial immune system for detecting spam (junk email). Turns out, the professor liked the idea, and offered to help me submit a revised version of my paper into a conference paper... to make a long story short, he convinced me to finish up the work as his Master's student, and I got to travel to the Chicago (USA), Canberra (Australia) and Banff (Canada) to talk about my work.
PhD
By the time I finished my Master's degree (about a year later), I'd fallen in love with the ability to choose and do my own research, but had fallen out of love with the problem of spam detection and the struggles involved in getting good email data, so I joined the Carleton Computer Security Lab to find new problems. There, I became fascinated with the problems of web security, and how few of the web security solutions really help regular people and their web browsers. Most solutions focus on ways to help web developers make more secure sites, but if developers don't make more secure sites, regular users are just out of luck. One thing I love about web security research is that it's easy to explain problems in terms of facebook, flickr, or lolcats. It may seem less hardcore than crypto research (which I might be expected to work on given my heavy math background), but all the crypto in the world won't stop developers and users from making poor choices. Web security is compelling because it affects so many people's lives and work directly.
What next?
Sometimes I get tired of getting asked this: just making it through my thesis seems like plenty of stuff to concentrate on! But after I'm done my PhD, I'm hoping to move out of Ottawa and gain some experience elsewhere in the world. I'm not sure yet if I'll be trying to go to academia or industry: I love teaching and would miss it greatly, as well as the ability to choose my own research topics, but this is a great time to work with emerging web technologies and I don't want to miss that chance either!
Women in Science and Engineering
My feelings about being a woman in computer science
When we were in high school, a friend of mind got interviewed and as asked "So what's it like to be a woman interested in science?" and she stared blankly at the interviewer for a bit before saying "I imagine it's a lot like being anyone else interested in science." Even in the face of evidence otherwise, I do like to think of my gender as being a non-issue in a lot of places, and I find often that if I just don't make a deal of it, no one else will either. I know I've been very lucky that way, given stories I've heard from other women, but it seems that more and more of us can just live our lives without having to think about our gender all the time. It's rather nice!
Why I joined WISE
I was fortunate enough to be awarded one of Google's Anita Borg Women in Computer Science scholarships last year, and got to spend a weekend at a retreat with the other women winners. Spending time with all these amazing women made me realize that I may be missing out on meeting the amazing women we have at Carleton!
Why I recommend joining WISE
I maintain mailing lists for a global organization called Linuxchix which supports women interested in open source projects, especially the Linux operating system. One of my favourite messages was from a woman who commented that she hadn't even known she needed a community like Linuxchix until she was part of it. So that's why I recommend people join WISE: you may not realise you're missing a community of women until you have a chance to spend time with one. I love working with all my colleagues, regardless of gender, but sometimes it's nice to spend time with different groups with different dynamics. And even if you don't feel a need for another group of friends, there are some fantastic people in WISE and it's worth coming out to meet them!
Other Interests
You mean I'm allowed to have interests outside of that PhD thesis? Inside school, I love teaching and find working with the computer gaming students particularly rewarding (not only is it fun to teach games, but we get some amazingly talented and motivated students!). I invested in a new camera last winter and have been trying to live up to my photographic equipment ever since -- you'll see me out taking pictures at WISE events. I'm also an avid naturalist and spend a lot of time biking, hiking, or snowshoeing when I can get away from my computer. And when the weather's too much, I enjoy spending the time inside baking or feeding my latest dessert creation to my friends.