Posted: July 29, 2004

About the Winners
Kami Vaniea is a senior at Oregon State University majoring in computer science. She is a first-time summer intern at Sandia/CA, working under the mentorship of Steve Hurd in the Center for Cyber Defenders (CCD) institute. Kami’s plans after graduation aren’t quite set yet, but she is seriously considering going to graduate school, and is taking full advantage of being at Sandia this summer to get advice on the different options here.

Kami has a wide range of hobbies, most of which involve being in the great outdoors—including hiking, canoeing, kayaking, and swimming. She also enjoys weaving, dancing, sewing, and computers, of course.

Rose Yao is a Sandia intern alumnus who spent three summers interning at Sandia from 2001-2003. She recently graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering. Rose’s internship experience began in the CCD institute working under the mentorship of Fred Cohen for two years, followed by an internship in the Embedded Reasoning Institute (ERI) with mentor Nina Berry.

When asked why she keeps coming back to Sandia, she responded, “Every summer I’ve been here, I’ve worked on something completely different. I really enjoy having that experience every time, because it challenges me to think and to learn.”

Rose loves to travel, and her favorite city is Paris, France where she studied abroad in summer 2002. Her interests include art, music, and dance.

About the Scholarship
The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship honors the legacy of Dr. Anita Borg (1949-2003) and her impact on furthering women’s education and their careers, particularly in the fields of computer science and information technology. The scholarship was awarded to female undergraduate and graduate students earning computer science degrees during the 2004-2005 academic year. Winners were selected based on academic performance, responses to essay questions, and letters of recommendation. There were eight undergraduate and graduate winners this year who received $10,000 cash awards, along with eleven scholar honorees who received $1,000 scholarships. (Both Kami and Rose were awarded the $10,000 scholarship.)

Learn more about the scholarship.

About Their Work at Sandia
As a CCD intern, Kami’s research is focused on computer security, specifically on Red Teaming. Red Teaming is a group of security experts who pretend to be the “bad guys” and attack a computer system. The idea is to find out just how much damage can be done and come up with solutions to prevent that damage from occurring.

As a CCD intern, Rose worked on a several projects dealing with networking including creating a graphical interface that monitors network traffic, and designing a network that is very difficult to shut down. Her last summer as an ERI intern in 2003, Rose’s research project involved making improvements to the super computer cluster’s performance through intelligent agents.

Congratulations, Kami and Rose!