Outstanding Senior Spotlight: Ashley Bilbrey

For Ashley Bilbrey, who will be graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science this spring, engineering is a way to combine her passion for computers and technology with helping people.  

“I love to learn about the world around me, and I am constantly seeing how engineers make people’s lives better with technology,” she said.  

Earlier this year, Bilbrey led the Cyber Security Club at UC Davis to place fourth overall and third in defense among 22 teams at the Western Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. Teams are given a simulated corporate network and must work together to keep different services, such as websites and email, up and running while hackers are trying to attack the network. Bilbrey detailed her the club’s involvement in the competition and the benefits of its collaborative working environment in a blog post earlier this year.  

With her computer science and cybersecurity experience, Bilbrey will go on after graduation to join the industry and protect computer systems as a security engineer.  

During her time at UC Davis, Bilbrey worked on research at the Center for Mind and Brain with neuroscience professor Lee Miller creating a new advanced hearing aid. She says that experience taught her how powerful it is to tackle problems as a team.  

In addition to getting hands-on with projects as soon as possible in your college career, Bilbrey says the most valuable lesson she learned at UC Davis was that there is so much one can do when tackling a problem as part of a team.  

“Working on projects helps you be more experienced with design thinking and teamwork,” she said. “There's a limited amount of good an individual can achieve by themselves, and working in a group allows people to leverage each other to achieve big goals.”