Claire Casalnova
SUCCESS STORIES > HACKING FOR DEFENSE
Claire Casalnova
Rochester Institute of Technology, Spring 2021
Team CRATER, Catastrophic Resurgence Aiding Tomorrow’s Emergency Rescues
About Claire
Claire graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in Fall 2021 with a dual BA/MS degree in Computer Science and Computing Security. She currently works as a Cybersecurity IT Specialist for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a part of the Department of Homeland Security. As part of the threat-hunting team, Claire works on incident response and threat hunting for a number of different customers. When not active on threat-hunting, she works on research development to improve their processes.
Claire’s Team CRATER originally tackled the National Geospatial Intelligency Agency’s problem of how to improve satellite imagery analysis to make it less manual and time-consuming. During the course, her team took this initial problem statement and narrowed it down to satellite analysis specifically for natural disaster prediction and prevention.
Claire joined the Common Mission Project at the Hacking for Defense Congressional Briefing on Thursday, April 20, 2023. There, she spoke to members of Congress about her H4D experience:
“The program experience for me was an exciting new way to approach learning and innovating all while providing value and ideas to government organizations and it had tremendously impacted my federal career in a positive way.”
Interview
Q: What value do you feel you got from taking this course?
A: "One of the things I benefit from the most in my day-to-day life now is the soft skills I developed while taking the H4D course. My presentation skills, and ability to create creative and engaging presentations, have made me much more effective when talking to clients. Making presentations week in and week out, presenting to peers, and getting feedback during the duration of the course was very valuable, and my ability to talk to people through interviews really helped me develop informed questions to get the answers I need.”
Q: How did the H4D program impact your thoughts about working in government?
A: "I was actually already working for the government when I took the course, as I was interning with the team I’m working on now, so the H4D program had no direct impact on my motivations to work in the government. However, taking the course allowed me to speak and converse with a number of individuals in government through the beneficiary discovery process. Through this, my team and I learned about government language, how to effectively work as a government employee, and more about how the government operates."