This summer of 2014, I had the opportunity and chance to put what I have learned so far to use and the opportunity to learn even more about a subject I knew little about. The beginning was intimidating and rough because of how new this was to me, but it was also very exciting! The idea of being challenged further than usual was both attractive and beneficial to my education and personal development. At the start of our research, we began to work on a basic situation in digital forensics involving a suspect using a USB device and portable browsers and soon we started analyzing prefetch files in the Windows operating system. Getting my first taste of research was great, and I was excited for more. As time went by and the more I learned, the more challenging it became. From there, we ended up digging deep into digital forensics with prefetch files and really started to learn how some low level processes work. It was very interesting to realize that there wasn’t much prior work (as searched on scholar.google.com) related to our research and those that existed did not present forensically sound facts. This is when I started to realize how challenging research really was. It amazed me so much to think that we took one fundamental idea we had from the beginning and made it grow into a paper all by studying, conducting experiments and sometimes just by asking interesting questions.
Before this year, I had not thought I was capable of such work or learning capability. Now, looking back on everything I have learned and all the work we have put into our project, I find it hard to believe that I accomplished it. I had the opportunity to learn about reverse engineering, disassembly of executables in Windows, Kernel processes in Windows, exciting aspects of the entire field of digital forensics, and even how to become a much better writer. I feel as if I have learned even more than I could have in a class dedicated to this subject. All of my thanks goes to Dr. Karpoor who taught me more than I believe I could have ever have learned inside of the classroom. He pushed me further every step of the way, and because of that I am very grateful. In the later parts of the summer, when we really began to start putting together our conference article, I had struggled a lot. English is my least favorite subject and writing research papers are even lesser of a favorite for me, but luckily enough for me, Dr. Karpoor was extremely helpful and patient. It took a lot longer than expected and hit multiple bumps in the road but ended up getting through it reasonably well. I am still working on editing my paper and making it better. After everything we have done and accomplished, I feel that if I were given this opportunity again, I would definitely be much more prepared and I feel that it would be much easier writing research papers. In the end, I'm extremely thankful for everything. I have had fun learning about it all, working on it all, and writing about it all. This entire experience has improved my ability to learn, understand, explain, and teach, all through tons of hard work, which was well worth it and I would gladly do it again. I am proud to note that I presented my work as a poster at the College of Science Research Conference at the University of Texas, San Antonio on October 3rd 2014. Thank you very much for the opportunity and I look forward to presenting my work at the Undergraduate Research Symposium in April, 2015.