Meredith L. Patterson
Encyclopedia
Meredith L. Patterson is an American technologist
, science fiction
author
, and journalist
. She has spoken at numerous industry conferences on a wide range of topics. She is also a prolific blog
ger and software developer
, and a leading figure in the biopunk movement.
to pursue her Masters
degree in linguistics
and PhD
in computer science
. Patterson attended Kingwood High School
from 1990 to 1994. She supported herself doing odd-jobs from website designer, technical writer
, math teacher, professional restaurant critic and reporter for the Houston Press
, She served as the Treasurer
of the Mars Society
Houston branch in 1999. That same year, at age 22, she traveled above the Arctic Circle
as a NASA
correspondent for a Mars
simulation mission.
and its applications to computer security. In 2005, she presented the first parse tree
validation technique for stopping SQL injection
attacks at the Black Hat
conference in Las Vegas
.
She has integrated her support vector machine
datamining library inside of PostgreSQL
to provide a "query-by-example" extension to the SQL
language, allowing DBAs to quickly and easily form complex datamining requests based on example positive and negative inputs. While this work was initially funded by Google's
Summer of Code
program, Patterson's datamining work now forms the basis of her startup, Osogato, which couples the datamining database with acoustic feature extractors allowing users to create playlists from their own music collections and find new music based on the inherent properties of the music they provide as sample inputs. Osogato was launched at SuperHappyDevHouse
.
Prior to founding Osogato, Patterson worked for Mu Security (now Mu Dynamics
). Before that, she was a PhD
student at the University of Iowa
. She did her undergrad in linguistics
at the University of Houston
and received her Masters
in linguistics
from the University of Iowa.
Patterson has contributed to multiple open-source database software projects, including SciTools, Klein, QBE, and written patches to PostgreSQL. Her "Dejector" library integrates with PostgreSQL to implement the SQL injection approach taken in her Black Hat paper. Patterson is also credited with contributing to the Summer of Code project Firekeeper, which her husband
mentored.
In 2009 at BlackHat, Dan Kaminsky
presented joint work with Patterson and Sassaman, revealing pervasive flaws in the Internet's certificate authority
infrastructure. Their work revealed that existing web browsers could be fooled into accepting fraudulent X.509
certificates.
, Strange Horizons
, in compilations such as The Doom of Camelot and The Children of Cthulhu, and is credited as contributing to the Steve Jackson Games
game GURPS Villains
. Her poetry has been influenced by her scientific research; for example, her poem "Leaving Devon Island" is in reference to the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station
on Devon Island
, Nunavut
, Canada
.
, biohacking, the Military Commissions Act
, Proposition 8
and civil rights
issues, and programming languages on her personal blog. Patterson has also contributed multiple articles to the popular blog BoingBoing.
In spring of 2008, she published a paper with David Chaum
and Len Sassaman
in a USENIX
workshop criticizing the lack attention paid to user-privacy
in the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) computer.
for Integrated DNA Technologies
, Patterson is a key figure in the biohacker movement, with H+ Magazine referring to her as the doyenne d'DIYBIO. She has collaborated with her husband to design glow-in-the-dark
yogurt using GFP
plasmids, and is also working on other synthetic biology
projects, such as creating a low-cost melamine
contamination field test, and a strain of yogurt bacteria
that completes the metabolic pathway
for vitamin C
, to prevent scurvy
. She is a regular contributor to the DIYbio
group discussions and a user of the OpenWetWare
wiki.
Patterson is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Lifeboat Foundation.
presenter, Patterson married the co-organizer of the event, Len Sassaman
, after a public proposal at CodeCon 2006. As Sassaman was famous among the geek community in his own right, their marriage was held up as an example of a geek power couple.
Sassaman commited suicide in 2011.
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
, science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
. She has spoken at numerous industry conferences on a wide range of topics. She is also a prolific blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
ger and software developer
Software developer
A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...
, and a leading figure in the biopunk movement.
Early life
Patterson spent her first 24 years living in and around Houston, before moving to Iowa City, IowaIowa City, Iowa
Iowa City is a city in Johnson County, State of Iowa. As of the 2010 Census, the city had a total population of about 67,862, making it the sixth-largest city in the state. Iowa City is the county seat of Johnson County and home to the University of Iowa...
to pursue her Masters
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
degree in linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
. Patterson attended Kingwood High School
Kingwood High School
Kingwood High School is a Humble ISD secondary school located in the Kingwood community of Houston, Texas, United States.Melissa Hayhurst is the current principal of Kingwood High School....
from 1990 to 1994. She supported herself doing odd-jobs from website designer, technical writer
Technical writer
A technical writer is a professional writer who designs, creates, and maintains technical documentation...
, math teacher, professional restaurant critic and reporter for the Houston Press
Houston Press
The Houston Press is an alternative weekly newspaper published in Houston, Texas, United States. It is headquartered in Downtown Houston....
, She served as the Treasurer
Treasurer
A treasurer is the person responsible for running the treasury of an organization. The adjective for a treasurer is normally "tresorial". The adjective "treasurial" normally means pertaining to a treasury, rather than the treasurer.-Government:...
of the Mars Society
Mars Society
The Mars Society is an international space advocacy non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the human exploration and settlement of the planet Mars. It was founded by Robert Zubrin and others in 1998 and attracted the support of notable science fiction writers and filmmakers, including Kim...
Houston branch in 1999. That same year, at age 22, she traveled above the Arctic Circle
Arctic Circle
The Arctic Circle is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. For Epoch 2011, it is the parallel of latitude that runs north of the Equator....
as a NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
correspondent for a Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
simulation mission.
Computer science and academic career
Patterson is known for her work in computational linguisticsComputational linguistics
Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective....
and its applications to computer security. In 2005, she presented the first parse tree
Parse tree
A concrete syntax tree or parse tree or parsing treeis an ordered, rooted tree that represents the syntactic structure of a string according to some formal grammar. In a parse tree, the interior nodes are labeled by non-terminals of the grammar, while the leaf nodes are labeled by terminals of the...
validation technique for stopping SQL injection
SQL injection
A SQL injection is often used to attack the security of a website by inputting SQL statements in a web form to get a badly designed website in order to dump the database content to the attacker. SQL injection is a code injection technique that exploits a security vulnerability in a website's software...
attacks at the Black Hat
Black Hat Briefings
The Black Hat Conference is a computer security conference that brings together a variety of people interested in information security. Representatives of federal agencies and corporations attend along with hackers. The Briefings take place regularly in Las Vegas, Barcelona and Tokyo...
conference in Las Vegas
Las Vegas metropolitan area
The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...
.
She has integrated her support vector machine
Support vector machine
A support vector machine is a concept in statistics and computer science for a set of related supervised learning methods that analyze data and recognize patterns, used for classification and regression analysis...
datamining library inside of PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
to provide a "query-by-example" extension to the SQL
SQL
SQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....
language, allowing DBAs to quickly and easily form complex datamining requests based on example positive and negative inputs. While this work was initially funded by Google's
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
Summer of Code
Google Summer of Code
The Google Summer of Code is an annual program, first held from May to August 2005, in which Google awards stipends to hundreds of students who successfully complete a requested free or open-source software coding project during the summer...
program, Patterson's datamining work now forms the basis of her startup, Osogato, which couples the datamining database with acoustic feature extractors allowing users to create playlists from their own music collections and find new music based on the inherent properties of the music they provide as sample inputs. Osogato was launched at SuperHappyDevHouse
SuperHappyDevHouse
SuperHappyDevHouse is an international series of social events which organizers originally conceived as parties for hackers and thinkers. Founded May 29, 2005 by Jeff Lindsay and David Weekly , SHDH in Silicon Valley began by hosting 150 to 200 people every six weeks at rotating venues throughout...
.
Prior to founding Osogato, Patterson worked for Mu Security (now Mu Dynamics
Mu Dynamics
Mu Dynamics is an American private venture-funded company that makes hardware and software to test network services, to quantify their product's or service's reliability, availability and security.-Products and services:...
). Before that, she was a PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
student at the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
. She did her undergrad in linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
at the University of Houston
University of Houston
The University of Houston is a state research university, and is the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. Founded in 1927, it is Texas's third-largest university with nearly 40,000 students. Its campus spans 667 acres in southeast Houston, and was known as University of...
and received her Masters
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
from the University of Iowa.
Patterson has contributed to multiple open-source database software projects, including SciTools, Klein, QBE, and written patches to PostgreSQL. Her "Dejector" library integrates with PostgreSQL to implement the SQL injection approach taken in her Black Hat paper. Patterson is also credited with contributing to the Summer of Code project Firekeeper, which her husband
Len Sassaman
Len Sassaman was an advocate for privacy, maintainer of the Mixmaster anonymous remailer code and remop of the randseed remailer.He was employed as the security architect and senior systems engineer for Anonymizer...
mentored.
In 2009 at BlackHat, Dan Kaminsky
Dan Kaminsky
Dan Kaminsky is an American security researcher. He formerly worked for Cisco, Avaya, and IOActive, where he was the Director of Penetration Testing...
presented joint work with Patterson and Sassaman, revealing pervasive flaws in the Internet's certificate authority
Certificate authority
In cryptography, a certificate authority, or certification authority, is an entity that issues digital certificates. The digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate...
infrastructure. Their work revealed that existing web browsers could be fooled into accepting fraudulent X.509
X.509
In cryptography, X.509 is an ITU-T standard for a public key infrastructure and Privilege Management Infrastructure . X.509 specifies, amongst other things, standard formats for public key certificates, certificate revocation lists, attribute certificates, and a certification path validation...
certificates.
Professional author
As a science fiction author, Patterson has published numerous short stories in such magazines as Fortean BureauFortean Bureau
The Fortean Bureau was an online magazine published from Laramie, Wyoming, between 2002–06 and edited by Jeremy and Sarah Tolbert. It was published monthly from July 2002 to December 2004, then quarterly in 2005, with the final issue published in April 2006. There was a total of 33 issues.The...
, Strange Horizons
Strange Horizons
Strange Horizons is an online speculative fiction magazine. It also features speculative poetry in every issue....
, in compilations such as The Doom of Camelot and The Children of Cthulhu, and is credited as contributing to the Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...
game GURPS Villains
GURPS
The Generic Universal RolePlaying System, or GURPS, is a tabletop role-playing game system designed to allow for play in any game setting...
. Her poetry has been influenced by her scientific research; for example, her poem "Leaving Devon Island" is in reference to the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station
Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station
The Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station is the first of two simulated Mars habitats established and maintained by the Mars Society.-Background:...
on Devon Island
Devon Island
Devon Island , claimed to be the largest uninhabited island on Earth, is located in Baffin Bay, Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is one of the larger members of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the second-largest of the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Canada's sixth largest island, and the 27th...
, Nunavut
Nunavut
Nunavut is the largest and newest federal territory of Canada; it was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, though the actual boundaries had been established in 1993...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
Blogger
Patterson frequently discusses such issues as copyright reformCopyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
, biohacking, the Military Commissions Act
Military Commissions Act of 2006
The United States Military Commissions Act of 2006, also known as HR-6166, was an Act of Congress signed by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006. Drafted in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision on Hamdan v...
, Proposition 8
California Proposition 8 (2008)
Proposition 8 was a ballot proposition and constitutional amendment passed in the November 2008 state elections...
and civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
issues, and programming languages on her personal blog. Patterson has also contributed multiple articles to the popular blog BoingBoing.
In spring of 2008, she published a paper with David Chaum
David Chaum
David Chaum is the inventor of many cryptographic protocols, including blind signature schemes, commitment schemes, and digital cash. In 1982, Chaum founded the International Association for Cryptologic Research , which currently organizes academic conferences in cryptography research...
and Len Sassaman
Len Sassaman
Len Sassaman was an advocate for privacy, maintainer of the Mixmaster anonymous remailer code and remop of the randseed remailer.He was employed as the security architect and senior systems engineer for Anonymizer...
in a USENIX
USENIX
-External links:* *...
workshop criticizing the lack attention paid to user-privacy
Privacy
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...
in the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) computer.
Biohacker
In addition to her professional work as a bioinformaticistBioinformatics
Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...
for Integrated DNA Technologies
Integrated DNA Technologies
Integrated DNA Technologies, Inc. , headquartered in Coralville, Iowa, is the largest supplier of custom nucleic acids in the U.S., serving the areas of academic research, biotechnology, clinical diagnostics, and pharmaceutical development...
, Patterson is a key figure in the biohacker movement, with H+ Magazine referring to her as the doyenne d'DIYBIO. She has collaborated with her husband to design glow-in-the-dark
Fluorescence
Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation of a different wavelength. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore lower energy, than the absorbed radiation...
yogurt using GFP
Green fluorescent protein
The green fluorescent protein is a protein composed of 238 amino acid residues that exhibits bright green fluorescence when exposed to blue light. Although many other marine organisms have similar green fluorescent proteins, GFP traditionally refers to the protein first isolated from the...
plasmids, and is also working on other synthetic biology
Synthetic biology
Synthetic biology is a new area of biological research that combines science and engineering. It encompasses a variety of different approaches, methodologies, and disciplines with a variety of definitions...
projects, such as creating a low-cost melamine
Melamine
Melamine is an organic base and a trimer of cyanamide, with a 1,3,5-triazine skeleton. Like cyanamide, it contains 66% nitrogen by mass and, if mixed with resins, has fire retardant properties due to its release of nitrogen gas when burned or charred, and has several other industrial uses....
contamination field test, and a strain of yogurt bacteria
Lactobacillus acidophilus
Lactobacillus acidophilus is a species in the genus Lactobacillus. L. acidophilus is a homofermentative species, fermenting sugars into lactic acid, which grows readily at rather low pH values and has an optimum growth temperature of 37 °C . L...
that completes the metabolic pathway
Metabolic pathway
In biochemistry, metabolic pathways are series of chemical reactions occurring within a cell. In each pathway, a principal chemical is modified by a series of chemical reactions. Enzymes catalyze these reactions, and often require dietary minerals, vitamins, and other cofactors in order to function...
for vitamin C
Vitamin C
Vitamin C or L-ascorbic acid or L-ascorbate is an essential nutrient for humans and certain other animal species. In living organisms ascorbate acts as an antioxidant by protecting the body against oxidative stress...
, to prevent scurvy
Scurvy
Scurvy is a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C, which is required for the synthesis of collagen in humans. The chemical name for vitamin C, ascorbic acid, is derived from the Latin name of scurvy, scorbutus, which also provides the adjective scorbutic...
. She is a regular contributor to the DIYbio
DIYbio
Founded by Mackenzie Cowell and Jason Bobe, DIYbio is a network of individuals from around the globe that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and do-it-yourself biological engineers who value openness and safety...
group discussions and a user of the OpenWetWare
OpenWetWare
OpenWetWare is a wiki whose mission is "to support open research, education, publication, and discussion in biological sciences and engineering."...
wiki.
Patterson is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Lifeboat Foundation.
Personal
A two-time CodeConCodeCon
CodeCon was an annual conference for hackers and technology enthusiasts, held every year between 2002 and 2009. CodeCon was not intended to be a computer security conference, but a conference with a focus on developers doing presentations of technologies, rather than products.-History:Bram Cohen...
presenter, Patterson married the co-organizer of the event, Len Sassaman
Len Sassaman
Len Sassaman was an advocate for privacy, maintainer of the Mixmaster anonymous remailer code and remop of the randseed remailer.He was employed as the security architect and senior systems engineer for Anonymizer...
, after a public proposal at CodeCon 2006. As Sassaman was famous among the geek community in his own right, their marriage was held up as an example of a geek power couple.
Sassaman commited suicide in 2011.
See also
- Data privacyData privacyInformation privacy, or data privacy is the relationship between collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, and the legal and political issues surrounding them....
- Information privacy
- Information securityInformation securityInformation security means protecting information and information systems from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, perusal, inspection, recording or destruction....
- Synthetic biologySynthetic biologySynthetic biology is a new area of biological research that combines science and engineering. It encompasses a variety of different approaches, methodologies, and disciplines with a variety of definitions...
- LinguisticsLinguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
- Biohacking
- Open-source softwareOpen-source softwareOpen-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...