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Hi! I’m a 2nd-year software engineering Ph.D. student at University of California, Irvine (UCI)’s Informatics Department. I am advised by Dr. Joshua Garcia.

My research interests include:

Software Security - threat modeling, secure software development, open-source software
CS Education - software engineering & security education, AI in education
AI & Security - AI red teaming

Highlighted accomplishments/work:

Summer-Fall 2024: Security Research Engineer Intern @ Samsung Research America, Knox Security
Summer 2024: A Deep Dive Into How Open-Source Project Maintainers Review and Resolve Bug Bounty Reports accepted at IEEE Security & Privacy ‘25 (as a second author)
Summer 2024: Codesafe: Scenario-Driven Software Engineering and Security Education Platform is 1 of 6 proposals selected for the Catalyst Award ($50,000) for the DARPA + Tools Competition ‘24 Building an Adaptive and Competitive Workforce Competition (first author)
- See here for the article featured in UCI ICS Communications.

Here’s my CV.

I actively compete with Cyber@UCI’s Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) team as the corporate subteam lead for the ‘24-‘25 season (corporate subteam member in the ‘23-‘24 season). We compete in Western Regional CCDC (WRCCDC). Accomplishments include:

1st place at WRCCDC ‘25 Regionals –> Advancement to CCDC Nationals!
1st place at WRCCDC ‘25 Qualifiers
4th place at National CCDC ‘24 Nationals
2nd place at WRCCDC ‘24 Regionals, 1st place at National CCDC ‘24 Wildcard
3rd place in WRCCDC ‘24 Qualifiers

Steven Ngo