Hello there! :)

My name is Jessy Ayala. I am currently a third-year PhD Student at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), where I am a member of the SORA Lab research group led by Joshua Garcia. My CV is available here.

I study questions centered around securing the open-source ecosystem using a variety of techniques (e.g., empirical and qualitative methods). My current research investigates software vulnerability management (SVM), which is the collection of approaches, processes, and activities undertaken by software developers and security professionals to ensure the security and privacy of software systems and prevent or protect against associated attacks.

Want a brief highlight of my work? Check out a talk I gave at an OpenSSF event in October 2024 regarding vulnerability disclosure practices in open-source. If you want to collaborate, please read my recent work before contacting me.

Before joining UC Irvine, I earned my MS in Cybersecurity from New York University (NYU), advised by Danny Huang, and MEd in Education from UC San Diego (UCSD), advised by Erica Heinzman. I also completed my undergraduate degree at UC San Diego, obtaining a BS in Mathematics-Computer Science.