Alexandra-CristinaLupșa

Computer Science student at Politehnica University of Bucharest. I like understanding software all the way down, from C and assembly to operating systems. I contribute to Unikraft, an open-source unikernel SDK, and I'm a peer mentor at the Community and Development Lab.

Email me LinkedIn GitHub
Alexandra Lupșa
AL

About

I'm a Computer Science student at Politehnica Bucharest, in the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Science. I enjoy low-level programming and understanding how things work underneath, from C and memory to the operating system.

I've also started contributing to open source on Unikraft, a unikernel SDK, which has been a good way to learn how a larger project and its code review work.

I also like building things with a team. On our container vulnerability scanner I designed the data model and interface the other two build on, and at Innovation Labs I helped build our energy startup, Zattify, and pitched it throughout the program, all the way to the finals.

At the Community and Development Lab I started as a mentee learning Git and open source, and now I'm a peer mentor helping new students get started the same way.

Studying
B.Sc. Computer Science, UNSTPB, 2024–2028
Comfortable with
C, Java, Python, x86 NASM
Currently working on
A container vulnerability scanner, with a team of three
Speaks
Romanian (native), English (C1), French (A2)
Based in
Bucharest, Romania

Projects

Things I've built, from team projects to low-level programs in C and Java.

Container Vulnerability Scanner In progress

Aug 2026 – present · team of 3

  • Compared Trivy, Grype, Syft and OSV-Scanner on five container images and measured how often they agree, from 95% down to 0%. Designed the shared data model and scanner interface the team builds on, and review the team's pull requests.
  • Built the normalisation and correlation core: canonical PURL handling and union-find alias resolution across CVE, GHSA and distribution identifiers, with verdicts that separate "missed" from "could not scan" from "no data".
  • Implemented severity conflict resolution ordered by source authority, keeping every rejected value with its reason. On debian:11, 168 of 243 findings had conflicts and 151 were settled by the distribution-authority rule.
  • Go
  • Docker
  • Security

Zattify Innovation Labs finalist

Mar – Jun 2026 · virtual power plant platform

A real-time application that ingests smart meter telemetry every 5 seconds. The team then pivoted from general smart metering to aggregating prosumer batteries and inverters into one platform. I worked on the implementation and pitched for the team throughout the 10-week program, and we were one of 17 teams, out of 127, to reach the Innovation Labs finals.

  • Real-time data
  • Energy
  • Startup

Asynchronous Web Server

Dec 2025 – Jan 2026

An event-driven HTTP/1.1 server in C that serves many connections at once on a single thread. Static files go out with zero-copy sendfile, dynamic reads go through kernel AIO, and every connection is driven by its own state machine.

  • C
  • Linux epoll
  • libaio

mini-shell

A POSIX shell in C with command execution, I/O redirection, multi-stage pipes and conditional operators, built directly on system calls.

  • C
  • POSIX
  • Linux

Document Scanner

Jul – Sep 2026

An OCR pipeline that corrects the perspective of photographed documents, enhances the image and extracts structured fields from the recognised text.

  • Python
  • OpenCV
  • NumPy

Chess Game

Dec 2025 – Jan 2026

A complete chess game with a Swing desktop interface, user accounts and saved games, built on the Strategy, Observer, Factory and Singleton patterns.

  • Java
  • Swing
  • OOP design

ctf-writeups

Solutions and exploit scripts from CTF challenges in binary exploitation, forensics and network security.

  • Python
  • Exploitation
  • Forensics

Coursework

asm-courseworkLinked lists, structs, Base64, sudoku validation and bitmask enumeration in 32-bit assembly, called from Cx86 NASM
satellite-huffman-treeHuffman-style tree built on a min-heap, with encoding, decoding, lowest common ancestor and distance queriesC
browser-simulationA browser with tabs and page history, built on linked lists and stacksC
numerical-methodsMarkov chains, regression, neural networks, FFT audio filtering, splines and SVD recommendationsMATLAB

Open source

Contributions to Unikraft, a unikernel SDK that builds a single-purpose OS image around one application, and to ROSEdu's open-source teaching materials.

  1. Added a Ruby application to the catalog

    Wrote ruby-hello, a catalog application that runs on Firecracker, in 13 files and about 475 lines. It closes issue #25 and is in review.

  2. Found why the Ruby build had failed since 2021

    The build downloaded a source archive that was missing the generated configure script and the helper files that go with it, so it stopped every time. I proposed fetching the official release tarball, which ships all of them.

  3. Retargeting the port to Ruby 4.0.6 on musl

    Ruby 2.6 also fails to build against newer OpenSSL, and the Unikraft core is missing a few headers the interpreter needs. After discussing it with the maintainers, the port now targets Ruby 4.0.6 on musl, open as lib-ruby #4.

Activities

Mentoring, competitions, summer schools and certifications.

  • Innovation Labs 2026

    Finalist · Developer and pitcher for Zattify

    Romania's national university-based startup pre-accelerator, a 10-week program. I worked on building our virtual power plant platform and was the team's pitcher throughout, from the first pitches to the finals. We were one of 17 teams, out of 127, to reach the finals.

  • Community and Development Lab

    Peer Mentor, Jun 2026 – present · Mentee, Oct – Dec 2025

    Joined as a mentee and learned Git, GitHub and GitHub Actions on open-source projects. As a peer mentor, I help new students understand these concepts and get comfortable using them hands-on. I also refactored one of the lab's workshops to make it easier for beginners to follow.

  • Embedded Android Summer School 2026

    AOSPi · Google

  • Machine Learning Summer School 2026

    ML@AIMAS

  • Security Summer School 2026

    Binary Track · UNSTPB

    Binary analysis and exploitation.

  • Certifications and courses

    • AWS Academy Graduate, Cloud Architecting · course completion badge, Sept 2026
    • NSE 1 and NSE 2 Certified in Cybersecurity · Fortinet, Sept 2026
    • Python Essentials 1 · Cisco Networking Academy, May 2026
Alexandra pitching Zattify on stage at Innovation Labs, in front of the presentation slides Alexandra pitching with a microphone in front of an Innovation Labs slide
Two of the Zattify pitches during the Innovation Labs program

Education

  1. 2024 – 2028

    B.Sc. Computer Science

    Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Science, National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest

    GPA 8.90 / 10. Coursework: data structures, algorithm analysis, algorithm design, object-oriented programming, operating systems, computer architecture, numerical methods.

  2. 2020 – 2024

    Gheorghe Lazăr National College

    Mathematics and Computer Science.

Skills

What I use in the projects above.

Languages

  • C
  • C++
  • Java
  • Python
  • SQL
  • x86 assembly
  • Bash
  • MATLAB

Systems & DevOps

  • Linux
  • POSIX
  • Docker
  • Firecracker
  • GitHub Actions
  • GNU Autotools
  • Make

Frameworks & tools

  • Git
  • MySQL
  • Flask
  • OpenCV
  • NumPy
  • Swing

Let's talk

Reach me by email, on GitHub or on LinkedIn.

alexandralupsa5@gmail.com LinkedIn GitHub