UIC team competes at cybersecurity event

A UIC team competed at Argonne National Laboratory in the annual CyberForce Competition Dec. 1

A UIC team participated in the annual CyberForce Competition Dec. 1, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Teams from nearly 70 colleges and universities competed at seven laboratories across the nation in hands-on cybersecurity challenges. UIC’s team competed at Argonne National Laboratory.

UIC’s team included faculty member Rigel Gjomemo; mentors Chase Lee, Marco Palma and Daniel Stempiewicz; and students Bharat Middha, Tommaso Pozzetti, Riccardo Ficarra, Kyle Dixler, Joanna Kus and RJ Hickok.

“It’s a lot of fun if you can collaborate well with your team and it’s a great opportunity to get your hands dirty with cybersecurity,” said Kus, a second-year computer science student. “The general atmosphere of panic and excitement was the kind I’d grab a bag of popcorn for. It was like watching hackers on some sort of detective show, minus the ridiculous and incredibly unrealistic dramatization of hacking.”

Though UIC did not win the competition, team members enjoyed the overall experience.

“It was a great opportunity and I will apply to compete again next year,” said Middha, a freshman in computer science. “This competition gave my team and me a lot of experience with networking, firewall and using cloud infrastructure.”