REUSE Program Helps AI Engineer Land Role at Northrop Grumman
Data privacy research sets student on path to keep sensitive information secure
By Amanda Sapio
Allen Marquez spends most of his time weighing the risks of bringing the latest artificial intelligence technology into mission-critical systems, where security, privacy and accuracy are nonnegotiable.
His path to working at the cutting edge of AI for Northrop Grumman started with 糖心Vlog视频’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Software Engineering (REUSE) program.
“The program gave us a lot of exposure not only to the projects we were working on, but also to meeting other professors, visiting their labs and seeing their work,” Marquez said. “I also had the opportunity to attend presentations showing the research my peers were involved in, which sparked a lot of great ideas.”
While in the program, Marquez conducted research on differential privacy and deep learning with , an associate professor in the Software and Societal Systems Department and Human-Computer Interaction Institute in CMU's . Wu and Marquez’s work focused on a benchmarking platform for differential privacy algorithms with U.S. census data as the main dataset. The project let users and researchers test state-of-the-art algorithms.
“Working with Dr. Wu was one of the most impactful aspects of the program,” Marquez said. “In that lab, we weren’t just looking at individual privacy mechanisms for querying data — we were thinking about how to design a cohesive framework where practitioners and researchers could build, test and compare state-of-the-art differential privacy approaches. That experience of thinking in terms of system design and shared infrastructure has been crucial to how I approach building secure AI systems in my role at Northrop Grumman today.”
Beyond the research itself, Marquez also became familiar with academic research papers through REUSE.
“This program was great for me because I learned how to read research papers,” Marquez said. “In my day-to-day job, I read research papers to learn about emerging trends in the industry. Are there new techniques that labs are trying? How is that going to trickle down to what we do at Northrop Grumman?”
REUSE also helped Marquez, who completed his undergrad in computer science at California State University, Los Angeles, apply for grad school. He is now pursuing a master’s degree in computer science at Georgia Tech.
“Dr. Wu wrote my recommendation letters and was so supportive when I began applying for grad school,” Marquez explained. “He was instrumental in helping me during that process.”
Marquez emphasized that the real-world experience he gained in the REUSE program helped set him apart when he began interviewing for full-time positions.
“When it came time for me to interview at Northrop Grumman, a lot of what I was asked during the interview process was centered around having real-life experiences outside of just taking classes,” Marquez said. “This program gave me the confidence to get to where I am today, and I want other students to have that same experience. It was one of the greatest accomplishments in my career early on, and I’m really proud of that.”
