RSAC Scholar
- Scholars
- ~60
- From TAMU
- 2
- Attendees
- 43K+
- Countries
- 140+
RSAC ConferenceINVITED
I’m a Computer Engineering student at Texas A&M University and a first-generation Mexican-American engineer from South Texas. My work lives where hardware, networks and people meet, with a focus on keeping critical infrastructure and AI systems secure.
As an undergraduate researcher at the Texas A&M Global Cyber Research Institute, I build safer ways to uncover hidden vulnerabilities in the industrial control systems that keep water flowing. That work earned me a $25,000 Science Olympiad Alumni Research (SOAR) Grant to build a digital twin of a municipal water system.
I’ve since joined NVIDIA Security, and in 2026 I was one of two Texas A&M students selected as RSAC Scholars. Outside the lab I’m an officer of the Texas A&M Cybersecurity Club, a Support Engineering Team Lead at the Texas Cyber Range and a board member for Texas Science Olympiad.
CAPTURING eth01,284 pkts · 3 alerts
- 12:04:31.120HMI-01 → PLC-01MODBUSFC=03 read holding 40001×4
- 12:04:32.217PLC-01 → HMI-01MODBUSFC=03 resp 8 bytes
- 12:04:33.314ENG-WS → PLC-01MODBUSFC=06 write 40012=0x00FF
- 12:04:34.411RTU-07 → SCADADNP3read class 0 data
- 12:04:35.508SCADA → RTU-07DNP3response 42 objects
- 12:04:36.605HMI-01 → PLC-01TCPACK win=64240
- 12:04:37.702ENG-WS → HMI-01HTTPGET /hmi/status
More than 18,000 municipal water systems in the United States are reachable from the internet, and many of them are running without basic security protections.
Testing those systems live is risky: one malformed packet can interrupt a service people depend on. So Arianna builds a simulated control environment instead, a digital twin where PLCs, sensors and HMIs can be fuzzed and broken on purpose, safely.
The goal is a free, open-source fuzzing toolkit, with deployment guidance, that small water utilities can actually use.
$ python fuzzer.py --target PLC-01 --proto modbus --sim
- cases
- 18,342
- crashes
- 2
- hangs
- 1
- coverage
- 61.4%
- [+] target PLC-01 (sim) reachable · baseline ok
- [~] corpus loaded: 214 seeds
- $25,000SOAR research grant
- 18,000+U.S. water systems exposed online
- ~60RSAC Scholars selected worldwide
- 6Years of Science Olympiad
A snapshot of the programs and awards that have backed Arianna’s work over the last two years, from research funding for critical-infrastructure security to scholarships recognizing first-generation engineers.
Each one points back to the same idea: security work matters most when it protects the systems everyday people rely on.
- RSAC Scholar
- SOAR Grant, $25,000
- WiCyS Conference Scholarship
- Saenger Scholarship, $2,000
- Segers Family First-Gen Scholarship II
Science Olympiad
SOAR Grant
- 01$25,000 grant
- 02CS & Engineering
- 03ICS lab build
- 04Water digital twin
- 05Open-source fuzzing
2025 winnerSOAR
National conference
WiCyS
Student scholarship
2025
Women in CyberSecurity
First-generation engineer
- ↑ $2KSaenger Scholarship
- ↑ $4K/yrSegers Family First-Gen II
- ↑ 4 yrsRenewable support