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Aliya Alsafa

Aliya Alsafa

Stanford BS '26  ·  MS '27

systems  ·  security  ·  ml

$ status:

Hi! I am a master's student at Stanford University focusing on AI, with my bachelor's from Stanford in CS systems. I've done research on packet filtering directly on commodity NICs, worked with a biomechanical AI model simulating muscle activation in piano performance, and I'm a TryHackMe campus ambassador currently planning a cybersecurity event on campus!

In my free time, I play classical piano. That lives at aliyaalsafa.com.

github ↗ linkedin ↗ email resume ↗
experience
Summer 2026
Chainguard
security engineering intern  ·  product security

Working on the Product Security team, focused on AI security. More to come.

2025 — now Stanford
Empirical Security Research Group
research assistant  ·  ESRG

Joined through CURIS (Stanford CS Undergraduate Research Internship). Built Rust modules in the Retina network analysis framework to offload flow-rule installation onto commodity NICs (DPDK, Mellanox). Designed experiments to measure NIC performance under high-throughput workloads. Presented findings in the research poster "Reducing Host Load Via Commodity NIC Offloading" at the Stanford ESRG summer session. Published as a capstone project on the CS 191W research website ↗.

Summer 2024
Redis
security engineering intern

Explored penetration testing, evaluated HackerOne bug bounty reports, and developed an offensive testing guide for software developers. Built and deployed a tool to identify and remediate orphaned corporate DNS records, reducing cloud attack surface. Worked on the Hardening Baselines Initiative using Wiz to scan the cloud environment for CIS Ubuntu compliance, and integrated DoControl into corporate SaaS apps to strengthen data security controls.

research
2025 — now current
Biomechanical Model in Music
research assistantship  ·  AI & music

Working with and adapting an AI model that simulates muscle activation while playing the piano. Research explores how biomechanical modeling can inform music performance and technique. Building on work done for for-elise.github.io ↗.

open site ↗
2025 — now Stanford ESRG
Reducing Host Load Via Commodity NIC Offloading
contributing author  ·  CoNEXT 2026

Contributing to a research paper on network flow offload with commodity NICs. Work builds on my experiments done during Stanford CURIS measuring rule latency and drop behavior in the Retina framework, targeting publication at CoNEXT 2026.

open full paper ↗
education
2022 — 2026
Stanford University
B.S. Computer Science  ·  Music Minor  ·  GPA 3.70

B.S. Systems track, graduated 2026. Coterm M.S. in Computer Science, AI track, expected graduation 2027.

2015 — 2022 New York
Juilliard Pre-College
diploma  ·  piano performance

Trained as a classical concert pianist for 7 years with top piano performance faculty. Private lessons, chamber music, and high-level music electives every Saturday.

coursework
systems
  • CS 80E Dissecting the Modern Computer
  • CS 107 Computer Organization & Systems
  • CS 111 Operating Systems Principles
  • CS 112 OS Kernel Implementation
  • CS 143 Compilers
security & networking
  • CS 144 Computer Networking
  • CS 155 Computer & Network Security
ai & computing
  • CS 106S Coding for Social Good
  • CS 221 Artificial Intelligence
  • CS 148 Computer Graphics & Imaging
  • CS 278 Social Computing
  • ENGR 76 Information Science & Engineering
theory & math
  • CS 106B Programming Abstractions
  • CS 103 Mathematical Foundations of Computing
  • CS 109 Probability for Computer Scientists
  • CS 161 Design & Analysis of Algorithms
  • MATH 51 Linear Algebra & Multivariable Calculus
  • MATH 52 Integral Calculus of Several Variables