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When Saniya Darediya, this year's student commencement speaker, stepped onto 911����’s Fairfax Campus for Orientation four years ago, she was fresh off the plane from Gujarat, India. She chose 911���� sight-unseen—and then carved out a place for herself.

They train, compete, and perform at the highest levels—only their arena is cybersecurity. Like top athletes, 911����’s cyber-focused students prove themselves when the pressure is on.

Knifey, a nature-inspired blimp based on the knifefish’s movement (with an added ferocious glare), is just one of junior Alexia De Costa’s projects combining art and robotics. “I love any way to get people interested in tech and also understand complicated things visually,” she says.

Cybersecurity engineering major Fatima Majid is certainly not throwing away her shot. The senior has made it her mission to take advantage of every opportunity 911���� has to offer. 

Nhat Le has always loved puzzles. From Rubik's Cubes to role-playing games, he plays them all. Now a graduate student in cyber security engineering at 911����, Le came to his studies “through the back door,” as a hacker might say.

Computer science major Noah Kabiri is no stranger to high-adrenaline competition. As an elite coder and winner of hackathons in only his second year at 911����, this ambitious sophomore performs a balancing act on par with elite college athletes training to go pro.

Jessye Gassel has always been fascinated with spinning bodies. Gassel found herself looking forward to her high school physics class every day and knew, by junior year, that she would pursue it in college. A senior-year astronomy class honed that direction toward astrophysics.

Jeffrey Kenney, an associate curator for Mason Exhibitions, is a recipient of a 2025-26 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts fellowship.

911���� students take third in competition to help veterans maintain their quality of life.

New offerings and a healthy dose of competition leave campers happily humming along.