Sumanth Rao

PhD student @
Computer Science and Engineering
University of California, San Diego

Email: svrao AT ucsd DOT edu
Address: EBU3B 3142, 9500 Gilman Dr. #0404
La Jolla, CA 92093-0404

        

Research   |   Education  |  Experience  |  Awards  |   In the News  |  Talks  |   Hobbies

About Me

I am a CS PhD student at UC San Diego advised by Stefan Savage and Geoff Voelker. My research focuses on improving security and privacy through empirical means, encompassing areas like enterprise security, web security/privacy, and internet measurement. I am a member of the Sysnet research group and the Center for Networked Systems at UCSD. In my spare time, I keep busy with several hobbies. My hometown is Bengaluru, India. If you're looking for my photography page, go here.

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Research

"IRRegularities in the Internet Routing Registry"
Ben Du, Katherine Izhikevich, Sumanth Rao, Gautam Akiwate, Cecilia Testart, Alex C. Snoeren, and kc claffy. ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), Montréal, Canada, October 2023.

"No Privacy Among Spies: Assessing the Functionality and Insecurity of Consumer Android Spyware Apps" [poster]
Enze Liu, Sumanth Rao, Sam Havron, Grant Ho, Stefan Savage, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Damon McCoy. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), Lausanne, Switzerland, July 2023.

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Education

		Ph.D. in Computer Science. University of California, San Diego. Sep 2021 - Present.
		M.S. in Computer Science. University of California, San Diego. Sep 2021 - Jun 2023. Specialization in Computer Systems
		Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. PES University, Bengaluru. May 2016 - Jul 2020. Specialization in Data Science

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Experience

Google, San Francisco Software Engineering Intern in Virtual Cluster team at Google Cloud, developing ways to improve the user experience when spawning new Borg clusters (Google's Cluster Manager). Jun 2022 - Sep 2022.

Citrix, Bangalore Software Engineer in the Citrix Licensing team - designing a microservice based (Docker) test automation framework in a hybrid cloud model (Azure Cloud and Citrix's Xen Hypervisors). Aug 2020 - Aug 2021.

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Awards / Scholarship

• Travel grant recipient for IMC 2023 in Montréal, Canada.
• Travel grant recipient for PETS 2023 in Lausanne, Switzerland.
• Recipient of the JN Tata Scholarship from The JN Tata Endowment towards my graduate degree in Computer Science at UC San Diego (2021 - 2022).
• Recipient of Prof. C N R Rao Merit Scholarship for all semesters of study at PES University (2016 - 2020).

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Research in the News

• Featured on UC San Diego News, University of California News. CACM News, Hacker News, Tech Xplore, SCIENMAG, CTV News, German Prevention Congress News, KPBS

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Talks

• "Bypassing Third-Party Email Filtering Services" - Systems Seminar, UC San Diego - March 2023.
• "Having a great GSoC as an Open Source Newbie!". Shared insights based on my Google Summer of Code (GSoC) journey with the Zulip community. Recording available on Google's Open Source YouTube channel - Nov 2022.

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Teaching Experience

• Introduction to Computer Security (CSE 127), by Earlence Fernandes - Spring 2023
• Introduction to Computer Security (CSE 127), by Stefan Savage - Fall 2022
• Graduate Operating Systems (CSE 221), by Geoff Voelker - Winter 2023
• Introduction to Computer Security (CSE 127), by George Obaido - Spring 2022

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Open Source

I spent the summer of 2019 as a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) Student with the Zulip Open Source Project. Here's the project worked on during that period. I later mentored for the 2020 (1 & 2) and 2021 summer programs.

All my contributions are open sourced and most of them are available below.

• https://github.com/zulip/zulip-terminal/commits?author=sumanthvrao
  
• https://github.com/zulip/zulip/commits?author=sumanthvrao

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Services

GradWIC Mentor. UCSD Graduate Women in Computing . 2023.
VP External. Jacobs Student Graduate Council. 2021 - 2023.
Seargent at arms. Citrix Orators Toastmasters Club. 2020 - 2021.

Hobbies

My two favorite hobbies are hiking and running! Some of my favourite himalayan hikes/treks have been - Hampta Pass, Bharmatal , Valley Of Flowers. I've ventured on some beautiful hikes in San Diego - Strawberry Junction on Mt San Jacinto , Anza Borrego Desert Hike, Fortuna Mtn Trail, Black Mountain Trail on Mt San Jacinto (this one has some funny pics), Cowles Mountain, Torrey Pines - to name a few. I'm also into running, badminton, tennis and basketball! I occasionally capture photos here and there - checkout some of my clicks or follow @say__cheeesee on instagram!