Makaila Monauni

Cybersecurity Clinic Student

Makaila Monauni is a senior at the University of Texas at Austin majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics with a minor in Business Foundations and a concentration in Cybersecurity. Her interest in cybersecurity began through UT Austin’s Regional Security Operations Center (RSOC), where she has been involved since summer 2025 and is currently completing training to become a Student Analyst. She is particularly interested in security engineering and penetration testing, with a desire to explore the diverse areas of cybersecurity to find where her interests and skills can make the greatest impact.

During summer 2026, Makaila worked as a Cybersecurity and Engineering Intern at ShipStation Global, where she worked on security engineering and automation projects using tools including Tines, GCP, Wiz, and Claude Code. She helped streamline incident response by connecting Jira, Confluence, and Slack to automate ticket and report creation. She also explored penetration testing through a project that used previous security reports and their corresponding fixes to identify similar vulnerabilities in active codebases.

On campus, Makaila is a Cybersecurity Clinic student, a member of Women in Computer Science (WiCS), and part of the UT Handball Club. Outside of academics, she enjoys hiking, traveling, baking, playing pickleball, and spending time on the lake.