Ryan Guide

About Me

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I grew up in State College, PA. In 2020 I earned my Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics. I started learning how to code, and quickly fell in love with it. I joined the Systems Infrastructure and Internet Security (SIIS) Lab at Penn State, where I earned my Master’s Degree in Computer Science and Engineering under Dr. Patrick McDaniel. During that time I worked as a teaching assistant for a Data Structures course.

After graduating in 2022, I started working as a Research and Development Engineer for Penn State. I have worked on a variety of projects; modular simulation software based in C++, anaylsis tools based in Python, React applications paired with AI models, and full stack projects in Java.

I currently live just north of New Haven, CT. In my free time I enjoy hiking, playing video games, reading Star Wars books, and working on personal projects. I am in the process of learning to speak Sinhalese.

Links: LinkedIn GitHub

Signature Intrusion Detection Systems Research

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

My graduate research was focused on Signature Intrusion Detection Systems (SIDS). One of the inspirations for the project was the advent of the log4j vulnerability. We saw the new detection rules for the SIDS Snort come out in real time. Rules for Snort had to be added reactively, which is one of the limitations of SIDS. This rasied the question of how we could adjust these tools to allow for different modes of scanning. Traditionally SIDS are designed to minimize the amount of benign traffic that gets blocked. In our research, we sought to expand the use case of SIDS through iterative modifications.

In 2023, I presented my paper at the MILCOM Conference in Boston, MA.

The publication can be read here.

Sudoku Game and Solver

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Before starting my Masters program, I challenged myself to write an algorithm that could solve Sudoku puzzles. I designed a backtracking algorithm to efficiently solve puzzles.

Years later I decided to return to the project and follow my initial goal of turning it into a full stack application. Utilizing Claude code, I paired a ReactJS frontend with a flask backend.

The full game is hosted here.

I have some ideas for additional enhancements down the line. One of note is adding the ability to take a picture of a puzzle and upload it to the website. Utilizing a text processing model, the puzzle would then be loaded into the board.

Tech used: Python, Flask, React, CSS, Render