Team Members
Sara J. Blount, Communications Specialist
Sara graduated from The State University of New York at Oswego with a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcasting & Mass Communication. At Oswego she was an active member of the campus TV Station, WTOP-TV, serving as Promotions Director on the Executive Board for the ‘05-’06 school year. Additionally, Sara had a show on the campus radio station, WNYO-FM and created, wrote and co-starred in the campus TV show, Pop Rocks, a 1980’s-early 1990’s pop culture show.
Sara began her career in broadcasting while still in college as a part-time disc jockey at WFRY-FM in Watertown, NY. Being on the air, Sara developed her vocal skills and gained valuable experience in the art of multi-tasking. After graduation, Sara took a full time position as Promotions Coordinator at WSEN-FM in Baldwinsville, NY. From scheduling and procuring prizes for roughly six daily contests to engineering remotes and interacting with listeners, Sara gained experience with time management, business etiquette, and marketing.
Switching gears, Sara took on a position with HEILBrice Advertising as a Account Coordinator. With the main office located in Irvine, CA, Sara acted as a satellite office for their Central NY account. With HEILBrice, Sara learned the inner workings of the Advertising world while putting her previous time management and marketing skills to use. Sara ensured that work was done to the client’s satisfaction by deadline while maintaining effective communication between the client and the agency.
Sara joined the Cipher Tech team in March 2010 as the Outreach Team Lead for the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3). AT DC3, Sara works closely with all of the government agencies within he DoD to ensure effective communication. In her spare time, she enjoys playing video games, being outside, and spending time with friends.
Adam S. Eng, VP Business Development
Adam graduated Magna Cum Laude from The State University of New York at Oswego with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. At Oswego he was inducted into three International Collegiate invitation-only Honor Societies. Adam went on to obtain a Master of Science in Finance from Villanova University. His studies included Corporate Risk Management, Derivatives, Financial Modeling, and Probability and Stochastic Processes.
Adam began his professional career at First American International Bank , where he performed financial due diligence and helped plan and implement a new residential and commercial database. Adam decided to join Citigroup Hedge Fund Services as an administrator to five multimillion dollar Japan and African Master/Feeder Funds. In tandem to his full time position with Citi, Adam opened a seven thousand square foot indoor paintball field inside the Palisades Mall, in West Nyack New York. Adam is a silent majority owner of Vendetta Paintball and works full time for Cipher Tech as the VP of Business Development.
Adam spends the majority of his free time evaluating and implementing additional business ventures, playing chess, and reading nonfiction.
Robert J. Hohner, Systems Engineer
Robert Hohner graduated from University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT in 2008 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. Rob’s studies included power electronics, nanotechnology, memory devices, and micro/optical electronic devices.
Rob performed independent research on fabrication of Single Walled Carbon Nanotube Array (SWCNT). His responsibilities included growth and characterization of carbon nanotubes using vapor phase nucleation and building the CNT reactor system for device fabrication. He also researched fabrication of ZnMgTe quantum dot FET’s for memory devices using a vapor phase Metal Oxide Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) reactor. Rob began his technical career as a junior engineer at Universal Voltronics Corp, where he applied circuit theory to diagnose and repair high voltage power supplies and subassemblies. Rob’s experience with fabrication of memory devices lead to an aptitude in reverse engineering the software behind the hardware. With a deep understanding of both hardware and software, Rob now works full time for Cipher Tech as a systems engineer in the field of digital forensics. In his free time he enjoys skiing and sailing.
Debra A.M. Lyon, Digital Forensic Specialist
Debra Lyon graduated Summa Cum Laude from Stevenson University, formerly Villa Julie College, in Stevenson, MD with a Master of Science degree in Forensic Studies with a focus in Computer Forensics. She also received her Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Forensics from Stevenson University. Her coursework focused on all aspects of criminal activity, cyber crime, security, and digital evidence collection techniques.
Debra began her professional career as a freshman in college at Weyrich, Cronin & Sorra Chartered which is an accounting firm in Towson, MD. She worked in the Forensic and Valuation Services Division as a computer forensic intern. Her department handled high profile divorce cases where litigation, business valuations, or marital settlement was required.
Debra started at Cipher Tech in April 2009 as a part-time Forensic Specialist. Upon graduating from college in May 2009, Debra came on as a full-time staff member as the Outreach Team Lead for the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3). She was responsible for planning the 2010 Defense Cyber Crime Conference. In May 2010, Debra became a DoD Certified Digital Media collector after completing the Defense Cyber Investigative Training Academy’s (DCITA) Introduction to Network and Computer Hardware (INCH) and Computer Incident Responder courses. Upon completing her certification, Debra transitioned into the Defense Computer Forensics Laboratory’s Imaging and Extraction Section as a Forensic Technician. She is responsible for handling various types of cyber crime cases.
In her spare time, Debra is a certified professional figure skating instructor and enjoys coaching high school cheerleading.
Andrew Medico, Computer Scientist
Andrew Medico graduated Cum Laude from Northeastern University in Boston, MA in 2008 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Andrew's studies included software development, programming languages, and systems programming. He was a member of the Northeastern University Association for Computing Machinery and the Upsilon Pi Epsilon honor society.
Andrew's first full time position was a co-op software developer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory where he developed Qt-based video capture and processing applications, as well as a number of Perl-based web utilities.
Andrew's next position was also as a co-op software developer, at Integrated Computer Solutions where he developed Qt-based solutions for financial applications, tactical visualization, and more.
Andrew joined Cipher Tech in 2006 as a project programmer, working on Perl, Tk, Access, PHP, and MySQL based projects.
In 2008, Andrew accepted a full time position with Cipher Tech as a software developer for the Defense Cyber Crime Center. At the Cyber Crime Center, he develops software using C, C++, Perl, EnCase EnScript, and C#.Net with a focus on producing high-performance parallel code.
Brian G. Sweeney, Software Engineer
Brian Gerard Sweeney graduated from Northeastern University, in Boston MA in 2009 with a Dual Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Cognitive Psychology. Brian’s studies included software development, computational theory, artificial intelligence, and theories of human cognition, just to name a few.
Brian began his technical career as an intern at TruSecure (now acquired by Verizon business) where he performed quality assurance tasks and load testing on their enterprise risk/compliance management software.
Brian next joined the Staples Middleware Services Delivery team where he configured and deployed an enterprise-wide monitoring system which provided centralized control and monitoring of business critical architecture. While there he also deployed and configured an internal web server usage monitoring system comprised of open source software and custom scripts.
Brian’s next professional endeavor was with MITRE Corp. where he conducted a first order modeling/performance study of enterprise wide database replication architecture.
Brian’s last position was at Northeastern’s College of Computer and Information Science where he worked as a research assistant in the Relational Agents Group of the Human and Computer Interaction department. There he worked on custom multithreaded servers which served content, in real time to experiment participants, provided database administration services for their experiment databases, built software installers for the distribution of experimental software and built custom experiment management applications for internal use by experiment administrators. Brian was eventually awarded the undergraduate class of 2009 Outstanding Research Award by the College of Computer and Information Science for his work in the Relational Agents Group.
Brian now works full time for CipherTech as a software engineer. In his free time he enjoys hiking, camping and backcountry skiing, and continues to work with the NU Alpine Ski Team.