CEC students

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

A one-woman team puts many eyes in the skies

Nathan Kahl — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 19:37:27 +0000

A one-woman team puts many eyes in the skies Nathan Kahl Wed, 10/01/2025 - 15:37

In This Story

Mohamed Gebril

Fatima Majid, a �鶹��Ƶ senior majoring in cyber security engineering, was not just the only one-person team in the top 10 award winners at a recent National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) cyber competition, she was the only student team. Majid placed ninth out of 51 teams, most of them comprising industry experts.

“I went in, and they were all professional teams, like from Lockheed Martin. I thought, ‘I want to go home,’” said Majid with a laugh, describing her initial cold feet. “But I told myself I could do it. It helped that it was hosted at George �鶹��Ƶ, and I had professors there giving me support.”

Her project focused on how the Department of Defense (DoD) can protect critical U.S. infrastructure against low-cost drone attacks at scale, informed by Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb,” which used 117 drones to attack Russian air bases in June 2025.

Majid spent the summer in Richmond during a public policy internship. Photo provided

Majid’s lightbulb moment came with a flash as bright as a Virginia speed camera catching a lead-footed driver. Considering the significant network of traffic cameras in the commonwealth, she conceived SkyEyes. This applies an artificial intelligence (AI) model to the live feed of the Virginia 511 camera network, which provides real-time traffic information to citizens and transportation officials. SkyEyes demonstrated how a low-cost, AI-enabled surveillance layer could differentiate threats from non-threats, employing geofencing logic to define safe versus threat zones around sensitive sites.

“I understand how drones work because of what I’ve done at George �鶹��Ƶ’s MIX lab—and since I know how to build it, I also know how to jam it. I trained the AI model on a data set provided from a contest sponsor, and that data set had drone imaging and drone prototyping,” she said. “The camera feeds can find objects flying, but what if it’s an Amazon drone, for example? Then I added geofencing and threat analysis to observe the behavior of the drone—if it's a drone at 2 a.m., for example, maybe that's sketchy. So, the model gets smarter.”

Majid said that to access the cameras, all she had to do was make a phone call to the right person and explain her project. She cited time spent this summer at the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine in the Undergraduate Policy Program (VASEM UPP) in Richmond as giving her confidence and exposure to how government works.

K. L. Akerlof, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at George �鶹��Ƶ, said, “The VASEM UPP is a unique opportunity for undergraduates to learn about opportunities in science policy at the state level. The immersive experience of spending a week in Richmond visiting the General Assembly and state agencies, while getting a crash course in how research evidence relates to public policy, can open new doors and career pathways.”

Majid said the strong showing gave her tremendous exposure to influential professional contacts. She fielded several questions about her simulation and future professional plans from a man she only later realized was Retired Brigadier General and NDIA Executive Vice President Guy Walsh.

“Because he showed interest, after he walked away, a crowd of people gathered around to ask me questions. It was very validating.”

She also had a long conversation about her project with Harley Stout, acting chief digital and AI officer at the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Majid is still pleasantly shocked by her top-10 finish. She is working with Mohamed Gebril, an associate professor in Cyber Security Engineering, on expanding the research. She is confident that such a cost-efficient solution for critical infrastructure protection against drone attacks will attract more funding opportunities.

She credited the supportive culture at �鶹��Ƶ—and her family—for keeping her grounded and encouraging her throughout, saying their support made the accomplishment even more meaningful.

Topics

Cyber Security Research

competitions

Drones

Artificial Intelligence

The MIX

Defense and Security

Cybersecurity student hopes to use his powers for good

Shayla Brown — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 15:49:25 +0000

Cybersecurity student hopes to use his powers for good Shayla Brown Fri, 08/29/2025 - 11:49

When �鶹��Ƶ cyber security engineering major Connor Wadlin learned about ransomware attacks on organizations, such as the one on the Health Service Executive in Ireland, in his CYSE 445 System Security and Resilience class, it confirmed his commitment to dedicating his educational and professional career to protecting and preserving human lives.

“There’s nothing more important than protecting and defending others. As an engineer, I’m driven to get important work done by thinking about complex problems and finding suitable solutions,” said Wadlin, who is from Leesburg, Virginia.

Since winter 2024, the Honors College student has been interning at the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) Northern Virginia Node, George �鶹��Ƶ’s branch of the statewide network dedicated of excellence in cybersecurity research. CCI’s mission includes workforce development through training the next generation of cybersecurity experts.

CEC student and Commonwealth Cyber Initiative intern Connor Wadlin. Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding.

“It’s a super exciting job because I get to work with AprilTags, which are on objects that the drone's camera then sees and scans. Instead of sharing data, the tags utilize location information for navigation, tracking objects, or pathing purposes,” he said.

Wadlin is also simulating drone flight with the Microsoft tool Air Sim, a project he presented at the CCI Symposium in April. “I created a model with a 98% accuracy, really high F1 score—higher than what we could find on the market—detecting collisions so the drones would be able to respond to anomalous factors such as objects that get too close, environmental variables, cyber-attacks, and more,” he explained.

Wadlin learned about many of the tools he’s currently using for CCI in his classes with College of Engineering and Computing professors, such as his mentor Mohamed Gebril, an associate professor in the Department of Cyber Security Engineering.

“George �鶹��Ƶ supports people where they are to get them where they want to be,” Wadlin said.

The skills Wadlin has acquired during his time at George �鶹��Ƶ and in his work with CCI have enable him to help other students in their studies.

“Connor is a very skilled student and has been able to develop different programs, as well as 12 labs for sophomore- and freshman-level students at George �鶹��Ƶ. He even assists the students during our workshops,” said Gebril.

Wadlin is participating in George �鶹��Ƶ’s Bachelor’s to Accelerated Master’s Program and will to pursuing a master’s degree also in cyber security. Gebril said he’s looking forward to having Wadlin in his classes again as a graduate student.

“It will be a smooth transition from the undergraduate to the graduate level because the curriculum aligns well with the CCI mission, which is to equip our students with the tools to conduct research activity and develop cutting-edge technology,” said Gebril.

Wadlin’s team is also working to develop a first-of-its-kind cyber drone race that incorporates cybersecurity challenges and artificial intelligence for undergraduate students.

Wadlin was diagnosed with autism at 19 and sees this diagnosis as working to his advantage by allowing him to see things from different perspectives and approach problems with his own unique ideas.

“As an engineer, you have to ask yourself ‘how is this making the world a better place?’ That's always got to be the end goal,” said Wadlin.

Explore the College of Engineering and Computing

In This Story

Mohamed Gebril

Topics

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

Honors College

Cybersecurity

Biomedical internship yielded lively experience

Jennifer Pocock — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 18:22:51 +0000

Biomedical internship yielded lively experience Jennifer Pocock Fri, 08/22/2025 - 14:22

Jacob Lockey improved his pipette and professional skills in his summer at Athari Biosciences.

Jacob Lockey (right) with his Athari Biosciences mentors, Sanskruthi Sreepangi (middle) and Mahaniya Srinivasan (left).

When Lockey, a bioengineering major through the bachelor’s accelerated master’s program at �鶹��Ƶ, accepted his internship at Athari Biosciences, he knew that he would have a different experience than his fellow students at larger companies.

Athari is a small health equity accelerator lab in Sterling, Virginia, that performs biomedical R&D, lab testing, and educational services. Lockey is interested in nanomedicine, especially researching nanocarriers.

“A nanocarrier is a nanoparticle that has been engineered to hold something—in some cases, a drug—and deliver it to a target, such as a cancer cell,” he said. “The internship was very useful for stuff I’d be doing in the future.”

Lockey worked on several different projects, including helping calibrate a robot that automates assays (experiments or tests). He also optimized and built different assays, including one using E. coli bacteria to see how it would react to novel antibacterial drugs. This allowed him to explore options for new drugs that could not only kill E. coli bacteria but also make it less likely to become drug resistant.

“My favorite part overall was the last day,” he said. “Athari hosted a friends and family presentation day. We got to present our work in what would be a real scientific setting, but it was with the C-suite at Athari and our friends. It was the culmination of everything we did at the company all at once.”

Lockey said that George �鶹��Ƶ prepared him “a million percent” for the internship through both his technical classes and the soft skills he gained during group work and hands-on projects. “The biggest thing I’ve gotten from school was approaching problem solving and thinking like an engineer. Going from an academic setting to a corporate setting, �鶹��Ƶ did a great job in helping us get there.”

And when he got there, the experience was top-notch. “Athari was very warm and welcoming,” he said. “Taking on interns is a big lift for a small company, but they put a huge emphasis on training and developing the next generation. I learned tons of new skills that I didn’t think I’d get to learn.”

Some of these included wet lab experience, assay development, and testing. Not to mention pipette work. “I have shaky hands and they really helped me. By the end, I was pipetting like a pro.”

Topics

CEC internships

Biomedical

Bioengineering

Bioengineering students spend the summer exploring career pathways at AstraZeneca

Jennifer Pocock — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 17:35:31 +0000

Bioengineering students spend the summer exploring career pathways at AstraZeneca Jennifer Pocock Thu, 08/14/2025 - 13:35

George �鶹��Ƶ prepared students for real-world experiences ahead of their senior years.

Ayham Elayan (top) and Eileen Robles (bottom) spent their summers gaining professional experience. Photos provided.

Ayham Elayan and Eileen Robles, bioengineering students graduating from �鶹��Ƶ’s College of Engineering and Computing in December, spent their summer breaks at AstraZeneca—one in operations, and one in the lab. Their experiences demonstrate two of many possible paths in bioengineering.

Elayan is interested in entering the biotech industry when he graduates this winter. He went to AstraZeneca hoping to explore different aspects of the pharmaceutical industry and ended up working on the tech transfer team.

“My team was responsible for the transfer of knowledge of drug manufacturing between sites. If AstraZeneca wants to open a new manufacturing site, for example, we figure out what action or equipment needs to be taken or installed,” he said. “We also make sure that the equipment works and is standardized and nothing affects the medication quality.”

Elayan said that the experience taught him just how many different teams and steps it takes to get reliable drugs to the public. “There were two best parts of the internship. The first was taking my first steps into the industry and getting a lot of exposure and experience,” he said. “The second was meeting so many different people with tons of experience that they shared with me. It’s a global company and I’ve gotten to work with people from around the world.”

Robles’s experience was less strategic and more hands-on, which excited her. “Bioengineering is such a broad field with so many different pathways,” she said. “It was great to experience something you can’t learn in a classroom.”

She interned in a wet lab, working on improving methods to purify a specific protein used in medicines. “I compared two different resins that help capture the protein, tested them for unwanted contaminants, and analyzed the results. The goal was to figure out which resin would work best for making the purification process more efficient, helping ensure future medications are safe and effective.” She said that she hasn't worked on much faculty-led lab research in during her degree program, so the internship expanded her interests and confirmed that "I value hands-on experience.”

Robles said George �鶹��Ƶ was helpful in preparing her not just through relevant classwork, but also by assigning hands-on group work. “That [team work] really helped me to work in this type of environment where you have to collaborate with different people,” she added.

Both Robles and Elayan emphasized that the professional teams they joined were supportive and made them excited for life after graduation. “Everyone there really respects each other and wants to help you out,” Robles said. “I spoke to employees who have moved between different roles. It helped me approach my career with more flexibility and less pressure to find the perfect job immediately.”

Topics

Bioengineering

CEC internships

Patriot Profile: Jackson Herbert

Katarina Benson — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 14:17:12 +0000

Patriot Profile: Jackson Herbert Katarina Benson Thu, 08/14/2025 - 10:17

Spending another summer in Southern California playing beach volleyball isn’t just fun in the sun for �鶹��Ƶ student athlete Jackson Herbert. The nuances and physical demands of the faster-paced beach game are considerably different from indoor volleyball, but he said playing has significantly elevated his indoor game. Now Herbert, a junior and men’s volleyball opposite from Ashburn, Virginia, feels he may be primed for a breakout season with the Patriots this year.

George �鶹��Ƶ men's volleyball player Jackson Herbert. Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

“When I’m playing indoors, I feel like I’m flying because there’s nothing holding me down,” he said.

Herbert playing beach volleyball in California. Photo provided

Training Is a Beach: This summer, Herbert trained in the Los Angeles area, where his daily regime involved two to three hours of practice in the sand, followed by a dip in the ocean before grabbing a bite to eat, weightlifting, and recuperative time in the hot tub. Before finishing the day, he might have another dip in the ocean. Rinse and repeat.

Doing It All: Opposites, also known as the right-side hitter, are versatile players who rotate through both the front and back row, with key responsibilities that include hitting, blocking, and occasionally setting. The two-person beach game requires all that, and then some. “You have to be able to pass, set, and serve well,” said Herbert. “You have to be able to do it all.”

All in the Family: As a kid, Herbert would tag along with his parents who played in a co-ed league for Dulles Beach Volleyball. His mother soon enrolled him in volleyball clinics, and by age 10, he was competing in indoor volleyball. “My love for the sport grew from there,” he said.

Home Away from Home: When it came time to choose a college, Herbert considered two things: location and brotherhood. As the oldest of three, he wanted to stay close to home so he could be involved in his siblings’ lives, supporting them at their tournaments and games whenever possible. He also values the tight-knit, open-door culture of George �鶹��Ƶ’s men’s volleyball team. “I knew some of the guys before committing, and every interaction pulled me closer to George �鶹��Ƶ,” he said. “It made the decision really easy.”

Balancing Passions: A member of the Honors College, Herbert’s interest in technology comes naturally—his dad is a software developer, which inspired him to take cybersecurity and software development classes in high school. Enjoying what he learned, he decided to pursue computer science as a major.

Jackson Herbert (right) with Team USA teammate Kai Rodriguez. Photo provided

All the Way with Team USA: In October, Herbert, who previously played for the U.S. Beach Volleyball U19 and U21 teams, will join the U21 squad to compete in the 2025 FIVB U21 Beach World Championships in Puebla, Mexico. “It was an amazing experience,” he said of his previous opportunity with the national teams. “I’m excited to do this again.”

Setting His Sights: Herbert hopes to earn spots with the U.S. Collegiate and U23 Beach Volleyball National teams next summer. Beyond college, he would like to play professionally on the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour—the premier professional beach volleyball league in the United States. “I’d like to continue doing this at the highest level.”

Volleyball at George �鶹��Ƶ

Topics

Patriot Profile

Student Athlete

�鶹��Ƶ Athletics

Honors College

Long Nguyen and Kimmy Duong School of Computing

AI’s blind spots, one PhD student’s clear vision

Ryley McGinnis — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 18:36:42 +0000

AI’s blind spots, one PhD student’s clear vision Ryley McGinnis Mon, 08/11/2025 - 14:36

When artificial intelligence makes a mistake, the consequences can be annoying—or they can be life-altering. For one �鶹��Ƶ computer science PhD student, the stakes are clear: biased algorithms in health care aren’t just a technical flaw, they’re a human risk. And with internship experience teaching him crucial skills beyond the classroom, Fardin Ahsan Sakib is ready to make a difference in health care.

Sakib’s research in natural language processing (NLP) addresses concerns that many may have when working with emerging large language models (LLMs), but when it is applied to health decisions, there could be deeper negative risks. Tools like ChatGPT pull from vast amounts of information, but they have sometimes been known to “hallucinate,” or make up information.

“Sometimes these systems are taking a shortcut to get you an answer,” said Sakib. “But regardless of where it comes from, it can provide you incorrect information.” And in the health care space, these LLMs could aid doctors, but not when they could be driving improper care.

In electronic health records (EHRs), patients’ diagnoses, medical history, and demographic data are stored and organized. This information includes social determinants of health, like employment status, family situations, or housing conditions, hidden in records.

Fardin Ahsan Sakib is seeking to bring accurate and reliable large language models' capabilities to healthcare.

“These factors can affect up to 80% of health outcomes,” Sakib said. “So it's very important that we can extract them correctly from clinical notes and that the model is not introducing any bias.”

Sakib poses a scenario: A doctor is using an NLP tool to quickly assess a new patient’s health. The LLM is pulling from the patient’s records, and the physician asks the system, “Is this patient a smoker?” The system quickly sifts through the data, and says that yes, this patient is a smoker. The physician then proceeds to make care recommendations based on this information. Maybe they order a lung cancer screening, or they speak with the patient about smoking cessation resources.

But what if that answer was incorrect? The LLM decided to take a shortcut, because, based off the information it has, it discovered that most people with similar demographic data to the patient are indeed smokers, but this one isn’t.

“There are two things at play: bias and hallucination,” said Sakib. “First, algorithms can only use the information they have, and if that information is missing an entire racial or ethnic group, it can be biased. Second, these models can use this biased information to take shortcuts, leading to them delivering false information.”

Sakib isn't simply identifying these problems; he's developing solutions. His recent research on detecting and mitigating shortcut learning in health record processing was accepted for presentation at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2025), one of the premier NLP conferences.

That desire to build reliable and trustworthy NLP tools has driven Sakib’s academic work and his professional pursuits.

At Brillient Corporation, where he interned last summer, Sakib worked on creating a retrieval augmented generation system that connected an LLM to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) knowledge base to make accessing and retrieving information faster and grounded in facts. He and his colleagues submitted a patent for this effort.

This summer, he's deep into another high-impact internship at Amazon. “Amazon wants to automate support so that when you ask for help, a large language model can try to solve the problem before handing it off to a human,” he said.

Despite the different settings, he sees clear continuity between his internships and academic work. “The industry experience helps me in my research, and my research experience helps in industry. It goes both ways,” he said. “In academia, collaboration is usually focused within a lab or research group. In industry, I’ve worked with engineers, product managers, and domain experts all at once, spanning from health regulators to AWS cloud architects. That diversity of perspectives changes how you solve problems, and I’ve brought that mindset back into my research collaborations.”

It’s that dual perspective—academic precision paired with industry scale—that he plans to take with him into industry after graduation.

“George �鶹��Ƶ has prepared me for a lot. From day one, all of the professors have helped me grow as a researcher, a person, and as a team member,” said Sakib.

More on AI Research at George �鶹��Ƶ

Topics

Artificial Intelligence

large language models

computer science

Engineering students in Ecuador give locals a leg up

Jennifer Pocock — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 18:37:38 +0000

Engineering students in Ecuador give locals a leg up Jennifer Pocock Wed, 06/11/2025 - 14:37

In This Story

Ketul Popat

Shani Ross

Sixteen students from George �鶹��Ƶ’s College of Engineering and Computing took an early summer ROMP in Quito.

Computer engineering major Darion El shapes a prosthetic as ROMP prostheticist Mireya Moreno supervises.
Photo by Shani Ross

It could have been just another frivolous start to the summer, full of parties and pools before kicking off internships and jobs. Instead, these students opted to change lives: those of amputees—and their own.

From May 16 to 26, 16 students in the BENG 417 Bioengineering World Health class with trip leaders Claudia Borke and Shani Ross worked in Quito, Ecuador, with the Range of Motion Project (ROMP) to fit locals with high-quality prosthetic devices. Ketul Popat, chair of the Department of Bioengineering, brought the ROMP program to George �鶹��Ƶ after a successful run at Colorado State University.

“This was the first year that we did this,” he said. “The goal was to give more hands-on experience to students so they could see how a background in engineering could make a difference in people’s lives instantly.”

Different styles of prosthetics are displayed with shoes at the ROMP workshop. Photo by Darion El

The students absolutely felt the difference. Nicolas Garcia Callejas is a rising senior who began his academic career as a pre-med nursing student, earned an associate’s degree in health science, and is now hurtling through undergrad and straight into a master’s in bioengineering with George �鶹��Ƶ’s Bachelor’s Accelerated Master’s (BAM) program.

“We got to know the patients and help them through the process. Then we got to do everything from scratch in making the prosthetics,” he said. “We went from taking measurements, doing the sculpting and molding, refinements around the socket, and building the prosthetic. It was a full 9-5 job, but the time flew by because I was having fun.”

This trip, Garcia Callejas said, lit a fire in him to continue working with ROMP. Not only did he get to help others, as he wanted to do as a nursing student, but he could also make things hands-on and use his language skills to help translate. “ROMP was a really cool experience. I fell in love with the people there.”

Andres Miguel Cruz Guzman was another student who transferred to George �鶹��Ƶ from a community college with an associate’s degree in engineering. This mechanical engineering major wants to eventually work on solar and water technology projects, but the personal and hands-on aspect of the Ecuador program attracted him.

“I liked that we were going to work directly with the patients,” he said. “The prosthetics are going on their bodies and will be something they wear for the next three years. I was intrigued by that challenge.”

One thing he didn’t anticipate, however, was the emotional aspect of the work. “I saw one 12-year-old boy walk for the first time. It didn’t hit me at the moment, but at bedtime the impact that we had on his life overwhelmed me,” he said.

Popat said that one thing that struck him was how quickly the students adapted to the work. “I went on the third day, and it didn’t seem like the students were new there,” he said. “They were already very comfortable with what they were doing.”

And that’s the kicker (pun intended). These programs are so valuable because they enable students to see, in a very short time, how their years of study prepared them to make a difference in the world.

Topics

CEC Global Engagement