Hello world, and welcome to my Capstone blog! I am Cassidy Williams and I am majoring in Computer Science with a Cybersecurity focus. I live in the Portland area with my four-year-old son and two cats. In my spare time I enjoy running, yoga, painting, and adventuring with my son.
I have always enjoyed working with computers, despite not growing up in a technologically friendly household. As a child, I enjoyed tinkering with broken electronics to see if I could fix them or figure out how they worked. As a teen, I took as many computer classes as my school offered (which was not many!) and tinkered with my own computer in my spare time. My first computer “project” that I was proud of was fully customizing my laptop to be Matrix themed, including playing Matrix quotes during boot up and requiring clicking on the correct pill to log in. While it was not very technically complicated, I had a lot of fun with it and began working more in depth with my computer afterwards. I became interested in Cryptography (math has always been a passion of mine) and Cybersecurity related topics, as well as general software programming.
I studied Computer Science at PCC for my AS before transferring to OSU, where I have been attending online via eCampus. I have really enjoyed studying Computer Science and especially find project-based assignments to be very rewarding. My favorite classes so far have been Cryptography, Computer Architecture and Assembly Language, Analysis of Algorithms, Operating Systems, Intro to Computer Networks and Intro to Security. I look forward to taking Defense Against the Dark Arts (this term) as well as Digital Forensics (Winter) and Network Security (Spring). And of course I look forward to completing my Capstone Project and graduating next spring!
With this as my final year in school, I hope to make the best of my time and be able to contribute to a Capstone Project that is challenging, personally rewarding, and either builds towards my career goals or has some sort of positive real-world impact.
The top five projects that stand out to me are:
- Malware Analysis: This project interests me because it is related to Cybersecurity and would look good on my resume. This project seems like it would be a healthy challenge for me to learn more real-world application of cybersecurity topics as we will be analyzing malware, which sounds like a great way to get a head start into my intended career path. As I have not yet done any malware analysis, I would appreciate the challenge of this project and I feel it would fit well with some of the courses I will be taking this year as well.
- Website Security Research Project: This project interests me because it seems like it would be very helpful to have on my resume for a Cybersecurity career. I have taken Intro to Security and found the DVWA (Damn Vulnerable Web Application) project to be very fun and rewarding, and this seems like a good way to expand on that by not only attempting penetration testing on the app, but also on hardening the app against our penetration testing results. I feel this project would be very rewarding for me and relevant to my intended career path.
- Math Go!: This project appeals to me because it seems like it would be rewarding and could have a real-world impact to help students have a more fun way to learn and practice math. While I do not have experience with game development, I think that this project sounds like a lot of fun and I could see it being very helpful for students that really struggle with math, as a common complaint is that math “isn’t fun”. In addition, having it help keep students active by encouraging them to seek out the beasties seems like this project would be very rewarding for me to work on. I would love to see my son use a game like this to help him learn math!
- Lidar to 3D Sound Application for the Seeing-impaired: This project interests me because of the real-world impact. I love to see different ways that technology can be used to make the world more accessible to people with disabilities. This project also seems like it would be challenging but very rewarding. I would love to be a part of something that can improve the lives of seeing-impaired, as technology often leaves out marginalized groups when it ought to be used to help them.
- Text Adventure Game for Education: This project appeals to me because I would like to contribute to something with a positive real-world impact. I love the idea of allowing teachers to create their own Text Adventure Games to increase engagement for students. I have known many students who would benefit from a more gamified educational approach, and it seems like as children grow up with more technology as part of their day to day, the benefit of incorporating games into education are greater now than ever before.
Other projects that caught my attention were:
- Citizen Science App for Kids
- A-Life Challenge
- Lets Launch a Game
- Online Trading Card Game Maker
- Cross-Platform Personal Trainer App
Overall I am excited to be able to be involved in a capstone project with other students, and I am looking forward to seeing which project I end up with! I feel that any of these projects would be a great opportunity to apply what I have learned in my studies so far to achieve a challenging goal, and I am excited to be part of creating something that I can show off!
Thanks for your time!
~ Cassidy Williams ~