Team
Erica Clark Data and Infrastructure Wizard
Erica is a senior in Software Engineering at Iowa State. For her first internship, Erica worked at Kingland Systems designing and implementing security solutions. For her second internship, she worked as a performance engineer at LinkedIn processing and displaying video upload metrics. She is an active member of SESAC and ECSEL. She enjoys data processing, API development, and puppies.
Roles:
- Data Analytics Lead
- Website/Content Management
Nathan De Graaf Codes things and algorithms well
Nathan is a senior in computer engineering and mathematics at Iowa State University. His interests are focused around theory of computer science, mathematics, and software development. His freshman internship was in Ames at Ensoft building developer tools for eclipse using Java. The next summer was spent doing theoretical computer science research at the Illinois Institute of Technology. This past summer he worked as a product engineer for Asana in the beautiful city of San Francisco. He loves coding this way our of difficult problems.
Roles:
- Asana Expert
- Weekly Status Report
Nathan Karasch Manages projects like a boss
Most of Nate's project and internship experience has been in full-stack web development. He spent two summers interning at Workiva in Ames and one summer interning at Leidos in Eagan, MN. He likes leading group discussions, and does some of his best thinking on whiteboards. In his former lives, he's been a lifeguard, a rockstar, and a US Marine, but now he's an old guy with two kids who likes to code.
Roles:
- Project Management
- Technical Writing
Jack Meyer Loves all things architecture
Jack Meyer is a senior majoring in Software Engineering at Iowa State University.
Throughout his experiences at Iowa State, Jack has become passionate about the Software Engineering Program's curriculum and helping other students achieve their goals. This has led to his involvement in the Computer Science and Software Engineering Club (CSE), the Software Engineering Student Advisory Council (SE SAC), and the Software Engineering Learning Community (SELC).
Last year, Jack had the opportunity to serve as the president of the CSE club. The CSE club's main goal is to provide networking opportunities between students & students, faculty & students, and industry leaders & students. While president Jack was able to raise the attendance level at club meetings, hosted some of the biggest CSE club events in recent history and started more outreach in the Ames K-12 community by attending STEM nights at Meeker and Sawyer Elementary Schools.
This year Jack is serving as the leader of the SE SAC. The SE SAC's focus is to be the bridge between the student body and faculty members. The SE SAC is continuously listening to feedback from students and using this feedback to provide input and help create changes to the curriculum along with getting more resources for students. The SE SAC host a Student Town Hall each semester for students to come and voice their concerns and thoughts about the Software Engineering Program in a safe environment.
Last year, Jack served as one of the first SELC Peer Mentors and continues in this role for the academic year.
Jack's technical interests includes: Web Development, Software Architecture, Distributed Systems, and DevOps. Over the last two summers, Jack has interned at Telligen in West Des Moines and will be continuing there after graduation!
Roles:
- Communications
- Software Architecture
Nischay Venkatram Javascript enthusiast
Nischay Venkatram is a senior in Software Engineering who really enjoys learning new technologies. He also enjoys traveling and is trying his best to hit various hackathons across the nation this year. Nischay is also actively involved in the Iowa State University community. He was a Google Ignite CS mentor last semester where he taught high school students about problem solving and web development. He joined the Software Engineering Student Advisory Council to bridge the gap between the students and faculty and also to improve the curriculum through increased communication, in ways that would benefit both the future students and faculty.
Roles:
- UI Lead
- Node.js SME
Dr. Lotfi Ben-Othmane Client/Faculty Advisor
Dr. Lotfi ben Othmane is a Lecturer (Teaching Assistant Professor) at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University, Ames, IA. Previously, he was a Research Scientist and then Head of the Secure Software Engineering department at Fraunhofer SIT, Germany. Lotfi received his Ph.D. from Western Michigan University (WMU), USA, in 2010; the M.S. in computer science from University of Sherbrooke, Canada, in 2000; and the B.S in information systems from University of Economics and Management of Sfax, Tunisia, in 1995. He works currently on software security, specifically on (1) the application of empirical methods to address software security challenges and (2) the impact of incremental development on the security of software.