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Officers

Want to know the people making it all happen at Slug Security? See our current officers who help run the club operations, infrastructure, and outreach. Need to contact us? Email us at slugsec@ucsc.edu.

Executive

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President & Founder

Ex Taranenko

@fbad

Dual undergraduate computer engineering and cybersecurity student. Interested in vulnerability analysis, reverse engineering, and cybersecurity education. Vice President '22-24.

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Vice President & Head of Infra

Jaden P. Maxwell-Comfort

@maxwell

Undergraduate Computer Science student, Cybersecurity Researcher, and Programmer. Main focuses include malware analysis, incident response, and Emacs.

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Head of Outreach

Rudy Chavez

@rudy.chavez

Interested in social engineering and cryptography, feel free to talk to me about project ideas and software.

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Graduate Advisor & Founder

Nancy Lau

@rose

Formerly President (2022-24). CSE graduate student, interested in hardware security and AI.

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Founding Faculty Advisor

Alvaro A. Cardenas

@chibchachum

Alvaro A. Cardenas is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Operations

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Operations & Finance

Dmitry Pleshkov

@dankdmitron

Computer Science student, interested in computer architecture, operating systems, and embedded development. Likes securing and optimizing code.

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Operations

Peter Dobbins

@sixteen4

Undergraduate in Computer Science: Game Design who is passionate about programming, software security, cryptography, system and network infrastructure, and game development.

Outreach & Finance

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Student Outreach

Ian Phan

@heythatsillegal

Current Cognitive Science student, interested in applied cog and dev psych, education and learning technologies, human factors engineering, and social engineering. Busy teaching new hackers at the moment!!

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External Outreach

Julian Barbera

@fish

Electrical Engineering undergrad... Embedded development and hardware security fan. I use arch btw

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External Outreach

Dominick Rangel

@1229.

Applied Math & Cog Sci 4th year interested in applied cryptography and ECC

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Finance

Kevin Sun

@risingsuntzu

Computer Science and Bioinformatics student, interested in cybersecurity, biotechnology, and data science. Passionate tutor, and loves a good philosophical question.

Alumni

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Operations & Head of Infra

Brian Mak

@asian.eggroll

Interested in cybersecurity and systems programming, with a proven track record in numerous cybersecurity competitions. Led the '23 & '24 UCSC eCTF team. UCSC '24.

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Operations

Jeffrey Zhang

@ferns.1115

not fish. UCSC '23.

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Finance

Jackson Kohls

@jdkohls

Math/Econ double major who fell into the joys of cybersecurity and CTFs. UCSC '23.