Rachel Bleiman, M.A.
I am a PhD candidate in the Criminal Justice Program at Temple University, working as a graduate research assistant under Dr. Aunshul Rege on her NSF SaTC EDU project, and I am a member of the CARE Lab research team. I founded and served as the Temple chapter of Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) president. My research interests focus on the human factors in cybersecurity, with my dissertation research focusing on human perceptions of political deepfakes and their authenticity-discernment decision-making processes. I have further interests in cybercrime, mis/disinformation, ransomware, social engineering, and online privacy. I have experience designing, organizing, and leading social engineering competitions and awareness & training workshops. I am proficient in statistical analysis using SPSS, ArcGIS, and Stata, and I have experience programming in Python, Java, R, and SQL.
In 2022, I earned a Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice, and before joining the program, I earned a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice with minors in Psychology and Information Science and Technology from Temple University in May 2020. During my undergraduate career, I worked with Dr. Aunshul Rege as a research assistant studying the social science perspective of cybersecurity. As part of my university honors program, I designed and implemented a research study on the effectiveness of social engineering tactics among college students. I am the recipient of multiple awards and honors, such as the LAURA Award, Livingstone Undergraduate Research Award (Social Sciences), NSF SaTC PI Meeting Undergraduate Travel Grant, CARAS Travel Grant, and Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society.