Krista Grothoff

Welcome to my little home on the web!

My name is Krista Grothoff, and this site is pretty much perpetually under construction.

If you're looking for professional information about me (research interests, publications, etc.), please check out the professional page. If you're searching for more informal personal information (including photos - it's been a long time since I updated my photo galleries here), please see my blog or the blurb on the personal page.

If you're looking for enlightenment, well... you're in the wrong place :)

I'm a computer geek/code monkey, occasional tech writer, linguist, researcher, and constant troublemaker who lives in scenic Colorado with her evil German husband, Christian, and our amazing little boy. I spend most of my time trying to avoid ever returning to Southern California, even for money.

I received my MS in computer science at Purdue University in 2002, and my BS in computer science in 1999 from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I also hold a CELTA certification (the University of Cambridge Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults). Up until recently, I was a doctoral student (ABD) in the Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics at Purdue University, studying adult second language acquisition under the fabulous Margie Berns before deciding my heart was really somewhere other than linguistics.

My primary research interests revolve around privacy and censorship issues, anonymity, steganography, and other areas of information security. I have been a member of CERIAS (Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security) since my arrival at Purdue in 2000. I have also worked as a research assistant both with the Purdue CS Secure Software Systems Lab on the OVM open virtual machine project as well as with the Purdue Sign Language Linguistics lab on automatic recognition of American Sign Language (ASL).

Outside of my life as a computer geek, I love to travel, read, write (no, you can't read my novels from the 2005, 2007 or 2008 National Novel Writing Month!), and study foreign languages. I used to occasionally sing with the Rivenstar Madrigal Singers, a fun and mostly harmless band of singers associated with the SCA group at Purdue, and I'm trying to start playing french horn (my first college major!) again in a concentrated effort to annoy the neighbors. I also secretly enjoy bike tours (except for the injuries), but don't tell my husband. He'll make me bike through the Himalayas if he finds out...