Tammara Massey, UCLA

Tammara Massey is a PhD Candidate in the Embedded and Reconfigurable Computing Lab in the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Los Angeles where she is advised by Majid Sarrafzadeh. She also works with her co-advisor, Miodrag Potkonjak. Tammara received her MS in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004. Her current research interests are in embedded medical systems, body sensor networks, and physical security. Her proposed dissertation topic focuses on how to make adaptable embedded systems for medical applications, explores opportunistic routing techniques among people with wearable medical devices, and investigates physical security approaches to malware and biometric authentication.

After Tammara has completed her PhD, she plans to pursue a career in academia. She has participated in various educational projects to increase underrepresented minorities in engineering. Tammara was a volunteer teaching advisor for Engineering 87, a course directed at inspiring underrepresented minorities in college to pursue research activities. Through AGEP and other organizations such as GEM and CEED, she has been a guest lecturer at various events such as the Southern California Diversity Forum, UC EDGE Graduate Recruitment Day, National Society of Black Engineers Regional Conference, and NSF STEP-UP Accelerating Community College Engineers and Scientists. Tammara is currently a student member of IEEE, NSBE, and SWE and has previously held executive positions in UCLA BGSA, Gatech MCS (Minorities in Computer Science), Gatech WCS (Women in Computer Science) while in graduate school.