AYSE OKATAN

Electrical Engineering Student | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

(413) 667-7093 okatana@my.erau.edu linkedin.com/in/ayse-okatan

Education

  • Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering
    Expected May 2028 | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU), Daytona Beach, FL
  • Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering
    Graduated May 5, 2026 | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU), Daytona Beach, FL
    • Minor: Computer Science (Graduated May 5, 2026)

Experience

  • NSF REU — Cybersecurity on Unmanned Aerial Systems
    May 2024 - Aug 2024 | Research Intern, Daytona Beach, FL
    • Investigated whether Transformer latent structure can serve as an implicit identity signal or cryptographic primitive in seq2seq model families
    • Designed and executed controlled experiments evaluating cross-model decoder transfer, seed-induced uniqueness, and incompatibility across identically configured but independently trained models
    • Contributed to the research program that resulted in two IEEE CARS 2025 publications and ongoing work on model-to-model authentication protocols
  • Department Front Desk — Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
    Aug 2024 - Present | ERAU
    • Provide front-office support for students, faculty, and visitors while coordinating departmental communication and administrative workflows
  • Outreach Manager — ERAU Volunteer Network
    Oct 2024 - Apr 2025 | Student Engagement & Student Union
    • Managed external email communication with nonprofit organizations to coordinate events, partnerships, and information exchange
    • Maintained the organization's website and supported dissemination of event and program information to the campus community
    • Prepared and distributed campus-wide email communications promoting volunteer opportunities, events, and organizational updates

Technical Skills

Programming: Python, C/C++, MATLAB, Java, Lua

RF/EDA: Altium, KiCad, Ansys HFSS, Keysight ADS

GNSS/DSP: Course-level exposure to GPS L1 C/A concepts (PN/Gold codes, acquisition theory); small lab simulations only

Tooling: Git (GitHub/GitLab), Linux, shell, Azure DevOps, MobaXterm

Productivity: MS Office, Teams, SharePoint

Publications

2 peer-reviewed papers

IEEE CARS 2025

See Publications section for details

Resume

Download PDF View Long Resume Download Long

Projects

Starlink-Based Navigation System for Fixed-Wing UAV
Fall 2025 - Spring 2026 | Senior Design | Presented at NCUR (Apr 2026), FURC, ERAU Discovery Day
Focus on front-end and electrical requirements for a fixed-wing UAV. Integrating teammates' APIs into a React front-end; wiring telemetry, navigation, and status views.
React UAV Navigation Telemetry
View poster ERAU Scholarly Commons ↗
Telemetry & Tracking RF Board (Sounding Rocket)
Aug 2025 - Present | IEEE Club Project
Dual-band front end at 1.575 GHz (L1 GNSS) and 915 MHz (ISM) on a compact 4-layer PCB with controlled-impedance routing. EM simulations (Ansys HFSS) and circuit co-sims (Keysight ADS) to size matching networks and verify antenna/feed transitions for design verification. Launched a design-for-manufacture checklist: stack-up, via fences, return-path integrity, and test points for S-parameter validation.
Altium Ansys HFSS Keysight ADS RF Design GNSS
View 3D model View board layers (Gerber)
Transformer Subspace Authentication — Continued Research
2024 - Present | Advisor: Dr. Berker Peköz
Continued research extending the published work on seed-induced subspace alignment and model-bound latent authentication in Transformer architectures. Investigates how attention subspaces can serve as implicit, weight-bound cryptographic identifiers for cross-model decoder transfer and authentication. See the Publications section for the two CARS 2025 papers that grew out of this line of work.
PyTorch Transformers Cryptography UAS Security
View poster ERAU Scholarly Commons ↗
Seed-Induced Uniqueness in Transformer Models
May 2024 - Aug 2024 | NSF REU – Cybersecurity on UAS (ERAU) | Advisor: Dr. Berker Peköz
Investigated how random-seed initialization induces unique attention subspaces in identically configured Transformer decoders. Demonstrated through controlled trials that subspace alignment governs whether subliminal information transfers between independently trained models — formalizing weight-bound representational uniqueness. Funded by the NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates program in Cybersecurity on Unmanned Aerial Systems at Embry-Riddle.
PyTorch Transformers Subspace Analysis UAS Security
IEEE Xplore ↗ arXiv ↗
Keys in the Weights: Transformer Authentication
May 2024 - Aug 2024 | NSF REU – Cybersecurity on UAS (ERAU) | Advisor: Dr. Berker Peköz
Explored Transformer attention as an implicit cryptographic key in seq2seq architectures: cross-model decoder transfer fails because latent representations are bound to a model's own weights. Built the authentication framework around this model-bound binding. Funded by the NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates program in Cybersecurity on Unmanned Aerial Systems at Embry-Riddle.
PyTorch Transformers Cryptography UAS Security
IEEE Xplore ↗ arXiv ↗
SaLED — Speech & Language Editing Software
Feb 2024 - Jun 2024 | Research Assistant | Advisor: Dr. Liu Jianhua
Python toolchain integrating Whisper/Kaldi with LLM prompts for assisted speech editing. Built interactive dashboards (Plotly/Dash) and reproducible environments (Poetry).
Python Whisper Kaldi LLM Plotly/Dash Poetry
Ambassador Bot
Apr 2024 | IEEE Club Project
Arduino + Python robotic assistant with NLP (TalkLLaMA) and TTS (ElevenLabs); sensor-driven gaze tracking and CRT mouth display.
Arduino Python NLP TTS Robotics

Publications

Leadership & Involvement

IEEE — President/Chair (2025–2026)

IEEE Women in Engineering — President/Chair (2025–2026)

DEI Coalition — Director (2024–2025)

Turkish Students Association — Founder & President (2022–2026)

Awards

Lockheed Martin STEM & Vocational Scholarship
2022–2026
EECS Department Service Award
Spring 2025, Spring 2026

Contact