About
I earned my Ph.D. in Cyber Security and Digital Forensics from Sam Houston State University in 2025 and joined San Jose State that July. Before academia, I worked cases as a digital forensic examiner in Texas, supporting attorneys in criminal, employment and family matters.
That casework shapes how I teach and research. Students work with real tools and realistic cases, and my studies begin with questions investigators actually face.
Tools I work with
- Magnet AXIOM
- Cellebrite
- Autopsy
- FTK Imager
- Oxygen
- X-Ways
- Volatility
- Wireshark
- iLEAPP
- ALEAPP
- EnCase
Research
Four lines of work, each starting from a place investigators struggle to find evidence.
IoT and LoRa security
Forensic analysis of LoRaWAN gateways and sensors, encryption performance in LoRa networks, and machine-learning detection of tampered radio transmissions.
Browser and app forensics
Which artifacts remain after people use Discord, Slack and dating apps in web browsers, compared across operating systems and tools.
Mobile and memory forensics
Extraction and connectivity isolation for eSIM and iSIM phones, and volatile memory analysis of privacy-focused systems such as Tails OS.
AI in investigations
Deep-learning emotion detection and synthetic-content methods for fake news detection. Undergraduates co-author much of this work in the Silicon Valley Digital Forensics Lab.
Publications
Peer-reviewed work, newest first. Every entry links to its DOI.
Accepted and under review
Teaching
Students learn by handling evidence, not just reading about it.
Digital Forensics
Evidence acquisition, preservation and analysis through hands-on labs and real case studies.
Cybersecurity and Computer Networks
Core security and networking concepts, with attention to where systems leave traces.
Mentoring
I supervise projects and theses on evidence collection, artifact recovery and data integrity, and mentor undergraduate researchers through UROP.
Experience
Listed in order, the way a chain of custody would be.
Assistant Professor
San Jose State University
Digital Forensic Examiner
Rubio Digital Forensics, Plano, Texas. Best of 2024, Top 3 in DFW.
Research Analyst, Digital Forensics
Centex Technologies, Killeen, Texas
Intern Digital Forensics Scientist
Houston Forensic Science Center
Research Assistant
Cyber Forensic Intelligence Center, Sam Houston State University
Education
- Ph.D., Cyber Security and Digital Forensics, Sam Houston State University, 2025
- M.S., Information Systems, Youngstown State University, 2020
- B.S., Computer Science, Sam Houston State University, 2018
Honors and certifications
- Best Researcher Award, International Research Awards on Sensing Technology
- Certified Cyber Crime Examiner, NW3C
- iOS and Android Forensics, Belkasoft
Service and outreach
University and profession
- Undergraduate Curriculum Committee and Forensic Science Program and Curriculum Committee
- Advisory committee, Silicon Valley Digital Forensics Lab Club
- Technical committee, CIDDF 2025
- Reviewer for ISDFS and Elsevier's Digital Signal Processing
- Member, IEEE and Texas Association of Licensed Investigators
Talks and community
- Co-chaired "Digital Detectives: AI & the Future of Forensics," Silicon Valley Women in Engineering Conference, 2026
- Welcome remarks, SWGDE meeting hosted at SJSU, 2026
- Guest speaker, MetroED and Branham High School
- Sciencepalooza forensic investigations, Synopsys Outreach Foundation