Hello, World!

Hello and welcome to my capstone blog! In this first post, I want to take you through a brief recap of how I ended up in Oregon State University’s Computer Science Postbacc program, the opportunities in CS I’ve had so far, and my hopes for my future.

The Past

Presumably like many of you, I grew up a power user of computers – regularly experimenting with software downloaded from random sites on the internet and modifying my parents’ home computers to my heart’s content. Despite being a complete nerd who would sit on the computer all day if given half a chance, when I went off to college for my first undergrad degree I never really considered studying CS. Instead, I went on to study business which eventually led to a career in consulting. Along the way, I realized that my true passion lay in learning how computers work under the hood. (I remember being fascinated by how floating point errors can cause rounding issues and how algorithms such as RSA allow us to create cryptographically secure systems.)

I ended up spending several years self-studying popular computer science textbooks before even thinking about applying to school, because I felt like I wasn’t capable of succeeding in a real program. However, once the pandemic hit I realized if I didn’t apply then, then I would never achieve my dream of obtaining a computer science degree. And so that was how I started my journey at OSU, which has been the best decision of my life so far.

The Present

I knew going into the program that I wanted to focus on producing something beneficial. I don’t have any interest in helping drive advertisement views, increasing social media engagement, or developing the next crypto scam. Combined with my passion for learning low-level aspects of computation, these ideals have led me to focus on two main areas within computer science: embedded systems and cybersecurity. I’ve been extremely fortunate to have worked on some seriously cool projects within those domains over the course of 4 amazing internships.

• I’ve created satellite payload flight software that has already flown in orbit (and may soon be running on the International Space Station!).
• I’ve written code that helps pilots determine when it is safe to take off and land executive jets.
• I’ve worked on software tools that enable cybersecurity researchers to more quickly reverse engineer and patch blackbox firmware.
• And now I’m working on satellite software that could bring in over $1Bn in new business all while pushing the envelope on Digital Engineering (for which I’ve even presented to a group of NASA scientists).

The Future

If all goes well, once I graduate this December I hope to start my new job as a cybersecurity researcher at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, focusing on reverse engineering. To that end, the Malware Analysis project is the capstone project I’m most hoping to work on due to its applicability to my future career. I’m excited and nervous to start my new job, and I hope that gaining additional hands on experience with reverse engineering will help me in my next career transition.

Thank you for joining me as I approach the conclusion of this journey. I’ll see you in the next post.

Marc Zalik