Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

Virginia CyberSlam 2025 at George Mason University brought together nearly 500 high school students from across the commonwealth for a day of talks and hands-on workshops aimed at inspiring future cybersecurity professionals.

Assistant Professor Zhuangdi Zhu is collaborating with the University of Virginia’s Wajih Ul Hassan to develop scalable host-based intrusion detection systems using federated learning, enhancing cybersecurity while ensuring data privacy.

Mohamed Gebril is leading a project to enhance threat detection and cybersecurity response mechanisms using generative AI and large language models (LLMs). He aims to automate traditionally manual processes and develop novel methods to detect and mitigate prompt injection attacks, ultimately creating more effective threat detection systems. 

On October 9, 2024, the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative’s Northern Virginia Node accelerator program (CCI+A) culminated in a final pitch competition at Mason Square. 

A team of George Mason University researchers is probing the psychology behind cyberattacks as part of a U.S. intelligence community program aimed at turning the tables on hackers.

Mason researcher Vijay Shah has joined a $2 million project to develop a system to secure 5G Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) architecture, a collaboration between Mason and Virginia Tech, Penn State University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Two College of Engineering and Computing faculty members, Kai Zeng and Vijay K. Shah, are part of a project awarded $1.7 million by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund.

As plans for Mason Square progress, the Cyber Security Engineering (CYSE) department, the fastest growing department in the College of Engineering and Computing, is eager to leverage the space.

In April, Mason professor Mohamed Gebril took a team of students to Commonwealth Cyber Initiative's BattleDrones Competition.