Hi! I’m Ayushi Mehrotra, a senior at Troy High School. I am (obsessed) interested in cybersecurity and economics. Other than doing a bazillion research projects, you can find me fixing my Detector Building Science Olympiad device for the 100th time, cuddling my dog Auggie, or planning cybersecurity hackathons around the nation.
Research.
For a while, my research was purely in cybersecurity. Recently, it evolved to more of an interdisciplinary take. Currently, I am interested in machine learning and graph theory with their applications in cybersecurity and economics.
Cybersecurity.
My research interests in cybersecurity revolve around adversarial machine learning, blockchain technology and its applications, and database security. Some current research questions that interest me are: How can we create robust machine learning models that are resistant to adversarial attacks? Are there application-specific properties that may be helpful for this goal?
AdvMed: Detecting Adversarial Attacks in Medical Deep Learning Systems
Ayushi Mehrotra
ISEF 2024, International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging 2024
AT&T Labs. Paper, Poster.
Concept Drift in Malware Classification
Ivan Zimmerman, Ayushi Mehrotra
In progress
Society of Student Research.
Trust Management System for Blockchain Organ Donation Framework
Ayushi Mehrotra
National WiCyS Conference 2023
Troy High School. Poster
Blockchain Databases: Encrypted for Efficient and Secure NoSQL Key-Store
Ayushi Mehrotra
Journal of Emerging Investigators
Troy High School. Paper
Explainable AI.
After getting exposed to explainable AI, I fell in love with the field. Currently, I am exploring how to improve explainable AI methods to include feature interaction and create a realistic representation of the model. I am also interested in the overlap between explainability and causal inference.
Hessian Sets: Uncovering Feature Interaction in Image Classifiers
Ayushi Mehrotra, Dipkamal Bushal
NeurIPS ATTRIB Workshop 2024
Rochester Institute of Technology AI4Sec Lab. Poster.
SnoozeNet: Causality-Driven Transformers for Sleep Stage Classification
Bhavna Malladi, Ayushi Mehrotra, Aadi Hanchante
MIT Undergraduate Research and Technology Conference 2024
Society of Student Research.
Video and Graph-Based Visualizations to Show Performance of Modeling Engagement
Ayushi Mehrotra, Lauren Klein
USC Research Symposium 2021
USC Interaction Lab. Poster
EconCS.
Economics seems pretty out of the blue, but funny enough, I found this area through my cybersecurity research in blockchain technology. I find many intersections between cybersecurity and economics, specifically their need for trust and privacy. I am currently interested in kidney exchanges, mechanism design, and auction theory.
Incorporating Patient and Donor Choice in Kidney Exchanges
Ayushi Mehrotra, Alexander Kurz
American Association for the Advancement of the Sciences 2025
Chapman University. Paper, Poster.
Notes.
Throughout my research, I stumbled upon new fields of cybersecurity, machine learning, economics, statistics, and math. For each new field that I find interesting or useful to my research, I take a deep dive and record notes on the papers or textbooks I read in the form of a slideshow. Think of them as simply lecture notes from a class. They are probably not the best resource to learn from; however, I link all the textbooks and papers that I’ve read. If you want to know what I’m doing, then you can probably find me on one of these slideshows.
Crack the Code.
In cybersecurity competitions, defensive cybersecurity is almost never given the spotlight. Crack the Code is a nonprofit organization that organizes cybersecurity hackathons internationally for high schoolers and college students. Email me if you are interested in holding a hackathon in your community!
Other Shenanigans.
Education.
Troy High School, Class of 2025
UCSD Extended Studies: Linear Algebra, Ordinary Differential Equations
CSUF: Strategies of Proof, Advanced Calculus I
UC Scout: AP Calculus BC
School Activities.
Troy Cyber – Instructor 2022-present
Girls in Technology, Engineering, Cybersecurity – President 2024-present
Society of Student Research – President 2021-present
STEAM for All.
I run OC Coder, a sub-organization under STEAM for All, and we conduct monthly coding related events for over 1000+ participants with 250+ volunteers!
Science Olympiad.
I’m part of Troy Science Olympiad! I do Detector Building, WIDI, WiFi Lab, Cybersecurity, EXPD, Write it CAD it, and probably a lot more…
Honors.
- 1st Place Cybersecurity from National Security Agency at ISEF 2024
- Non-Trivial Fellowship Award from ISEF 2024
- 3rd Place, Mathematics and Software OCSEF 2024
- Cyberpatriot Platinum National Semifinalist
- Science Olympiad National Competitor
- 2023 Write it CAD it Nationals: 3rd place
- 2022 Cybersecurity States: 2nd place
- 2022 Cybersecurity Nationals: 5th place
- AJAS Fellow
- National Center for Women & Information Technology Affiliate Winner 2024
Presentations.
- NeurIPS ATTRIB Workshop 2024
- National Security Agency 2024
- MIT Undergraduate Research and Technology Conference 2024
- International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging 2024
- National WiCyS Conference 2023
- International Forum on Research Excellence 2022, 2023 [unable to attend]