Panther Profile – Senior Erika Nakagawa
Erika Nakagawa (Las Vegas, Nev.) is a senior on the women's golf team and is a computer science major with minors in Japanese studies and art history.
You interned with BNY Mellon working in cyber security last summer. What was that experience like?
I had an amazing time interning with BNY Mellon. It is easily my favorite work experience so far. I was part of the insider threat detection team where we looked for any employees of the bank who might, "go bad," and steal information or for employees who were hacked by an outsider exfiltrating data. I cannot disclose too much about our methods (for obvious reasons), but I went through proxy logs, system logs, and email logs using a programming language similar to Structured Query Language (SQL) in a user and entity behavior analysis (UEBA) platform. It was the coolest thing I have ever done. You would be surprised how much a company knows about its employees!
What types of events does Middlebury's Women in Computer Science (WiCS) group put together?
WiCS hosts a variety of fun events! Our bigger events include panels where alumni Zoom in to speak about work or research experience. These panels are really important to us because we want to show students that a computer science degree doesn't always lead to a standard software engineering role. Positions in technology can range from being a UI/UX designer to a product manager to a data analyst like myself. We also send member to hackathons at Harvard and Boston University. These are overnight weekend trips and they are so much fun. Our more casual gatherings include biweekly meetings where students come to eat snacks and work on homework assignments together. As the publicity manager, I planned a lot of these events, created fliers and updated our Instagram (@middwics) and website (go/wics/).
What are your plans after graduation?
I will be returning to the same insider threat detection team at BNY Mellon! I am excited to work with them again and finally move to New York! It's been my dream since I could remember.
Gloss