Sandy Clark (Mouse) is a security researcher and part-time Phd. candidate in the Distributed Systems Lab at the University of Pennsylvania and is advised by Matt Blaze and co-advised by Jonathan Smith. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanisms involved in the computer security Arms Race, and in modeling the cyber-security eco-system. Early in her career, she wrote the back-up flight control computer for the US Air Force F-16 aircraft, and a gate-level software simulator for NASA), after several years as a sys-admin for Princeton University, she ended up in the hacker community. It was at a hackercon that someone introduced her to Matt Blaze and he invited her to come hang around his lab at Penn. Her first project was breaking wiretap systems and with its success and after much encouragement and mentoring, she got the courage to enroll as a student. It is taking much longer for her to get her degree than she thought (going back to school is hard as a grownup), but definitely worth it!

Her broad experience, excessive curiosity and ability to make connections from many different areas is leading to some interesting new ways to think about systems security. She's still an active member of the hacker community and considers it one of her missions in life to bridge the gap between hackers and academia.

Sandy can be reached at clarks@cis.upenn.edu or saender@cis.upenn.edu