Sumanth Rao

MS 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

About Me

I am a MS candidate at the University of California - San Diego in the Computer Science and Engineering department. I am broadly interested in efforts to improve security and privacy in technology systems. At UC San Diego, my master's thesis research is advised by Stefan Savage and Geoff Voelker, and I am a member of the SysNet research group. In my spare time, I keep busy with several hobbies - hiking, photography, and jogging to name a few. My hometown is Bengaluru, India.

Research

Working on using empirical methods to measure the deployment of email filtering services and how they can be bypassed by an adversary - as a part of my master's thesis research (September 2022 - Present).
"No Privacy Among Spies: Assessing the Functionality and Insecurity of Consumer Android Spyware Apps"
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 (To Appear).

Education

		Master's degree, Computer Science. University of California, San Diego. Sep 2021 - Jun 2023. Specialization in Computer Systems
		Bachelor's degree, Computer Science. PES University. May 2016 - Jul 2020. Specialization in Data Science

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.

Teaching

Teaching Assistant CSE 221: Graduate Operating Systems, UC San Diego - Winter 2023,

Teaching Assistant CSE 127: Introduction to Computer Security, UC San Diego - Fall 2022, Spring 2022.

Scholarship / Awards

JN Tata Endowment Scholarship Recipient of the JNTE Scholarship for my graduate studies in Computer Science at UC San Diego. 2021 - 2022.

Prof. C N R Rao Merit Scholarship Recipient of Prof. C N R Rao Merit Scholarship for top performers, for all semesters of my undergraduate studies at PES University. 2016 - 2020.

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

Invited Talks

"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.

Services

VP External. Jacobs Student Graduate Council. 2021 - 2022.

Seargent at arms. Citrix Orators Toastmasters Club. 2020 - 2021.

Hobbies

I love going hiking! Some of my favourite himalayan hikes/treks have been - Hampta Pass, Bharmatal , Valley Of Flowers. Recently, I've ventured on some beautiful hikes in San Diego - Strawberry Junction on Mt San Jacinto , Anza Borrego Desert Hike, Fortuna Mtn Trail, Cowles Mountain, Torrey Pines - to name a few. My other hobbies include occasionally playing badminton and basketball. I love playing the Piano - and my favorite piece right now is this. I also love photography - checkout some of my clicks or my instagram page @say__cheeesee!