iSchool Student Spotlight: Jeremy Hyland

Jeremy: Before I came to UW I did two years at community college as a running start student - that means instead of going to high school my Junior and Senior years I attended college.

Silverfish: Why did you choose the Informatics program?

Jeremy: I chose Informatics because I was really interested in technology but I didn't want to deal with all the pain of computer science. Programming and math aren't really my thing, I prefer the more information science side of technology and I think the human-centered approach taught in Informatics is essential.

Silverfish: What is the topic of your capstone project?

Jeremy: The general topic of our capstone was information security. We worked with members of the Honeynet project (Honeynet.org) to create an interface to look at data captured from honeypots. Honeypots are basically dummy computers used to observe network attacks. The goal of the Honeynet project is to understand the data gathered from these attacks to help prevent future exploitation. We wanted to create an interface that would make it easier for them to analyze their data.

Silverfish: What was the experience of putting the project together like?

Jeremy: The capstone project requires a huge amount of effort. Starting at the beginning of the quarter we had to plan out the schedule that we wanted to follow as our report came together. Sticking to this schedule was tough sometimes, but we had to because there was no way we could get a project like this done in time. With three of us, sometimes it was difficult to make all our efforts come together. In the end, we produced a report that was over l00 pages in length, and a working prototype system. When I look back at the amount of work it required, I just want to cry.

Silverfish: What is your favorite thing about the project?

Jeremy: My favorite part of the project was the day we turned it in. It was a great feeling. Beyond that I really enjoyed working with my two group members, and I enjoyed the experience of getting to observe network security people interacting with their Honeypot. It was a very informative experience.

Silverfish: What was the hardest part of working on the project?

Jeremy: I would say the hardest part would have to be the coding of the actual system. This took an immense amount of time and frustration since a lot of the technologies we used were new to us. I remember the pain I went through when I had to learn CSS in only two days so that I could finish our front end in time.

Silverfish: What are your impressions of the Informatics program?

Jeremy: The Informatics program definitely has a lot of good points. But, as a very new program, it also suffers from a lot of kinks that will hopefully get worked out over the next few years. Personally, I would like to see Informatics offer specialties in the future. So, say you could get an Informatics degree with a concentration in user centered design, Information architecture, or maybe even Information Assurance. This way students would be able to dive deeper into one area of interest. I find that now that I have completed the Informatics program, I know a little about everything, but I lack some of the deep knowledge I would like to have learned.

Silverfish: Are you graduating in June?

Jeremy: Yes.

Silverfish: What are your plans after graduation?

Jeremy: Everyone in my group is graduating in June, and we are really not sure what we are going to do yet. I've been accepted into Carnegie Mellon's Information Security master's program, but I don't plan to attend until August 2005. That gives me a year or so to bum around and hopefully get a job.

Ashley Lam, Jeremy Hyland & Linda Casey

View the abstract for HiVE – A Honeywall Data Analysis System.