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Sasha Levy One-Pager

About Me

Hi! I’m Sasha. I’m a current Masters student in the MAS MBC program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Prior to Scripps, I worked in the tech industry for almost 10 years, mainly in cybersecurity and trust & safety. My most recent roles were in incident detection & response. In these roles I codified rules to alert if suspicious activity occurred, created playbooks for analysts to respond to these alerts, and, if the alert was found to be a true positive, often acted as an incident commander managing the response process from end to end.

After reading Ian Urbina’s book

The Outlaw Ocean⁠

, I discovered a new goal: to figure out how to combine my background in security with my love and passion for the ocean. The MAS MBC program was the perfect fit.

About My Program

I’m currently a student in the

Masters of Advanced Studies program in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation⁠

at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. This program is aimed at teaching students from interdisciplinary backgrounds real world, applicable solutions to current marine conservation problems.

The Capstone Project

For 10 weeks from March-June 2025, I’ll be working full time on my Capstone Project. The MAS MBC Capstone Project allows students to design and structure an interdisciplinary, collaborative project that: applies the knowledge gained in the program; enhances student understanding of a marine or coastal issue; builds marketable skills; and has a theoretical grounding and real-world application. Students partner with university faculty, external organizations and agencies to execute projects that culminate in a written paper, film, educational curriculum, business plan, economic analysis, management plan or anything substantial that will prepare students for future employment.

Selected Coursework

Environmental Economics

Ocean and Coastal Law and Policy

Energy Policy in Latin America

Marine GIS

Climate Change Impacts & Adaptations

Economics of Ocean Resources

U.S. National Security & Decision Making

About My Capstone

While attending a talk by

Sherri Goodman⁠

over the summer at Scripps, I learned about the increasing likelihood of security incidents in the Arctic and how they might affect Alaskans. I quickly honed in on oil spills as the topic I wanted to dive deeper into during my capstone quarter.

Through my conversations with various experts in Alaska on oil spills and marine conservation I have narrowed in on community led oil spill response as a subject of particular interest. I am curious how I, as an outsider to Alaska with no oil spill experience but extensive experience responding to cyber incidents, could contribute to research aimed at highlighting the need for increased training for local community members who will be the first impacted in the event of an oil spill.

Additional Research Interests

I have been speaking with folks at the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Work Group and am very interested in the Russian shadow fleet and ways to track ships that either don’t have AIS enabled or have spoofed their AIS.

I am also interested in cases where regulations backfire and result in increased harm to the environment or negative effects on communities and any methodology lawmakers can use to prevent these scenarios.