John Hollis

Graduating senior Mitchell Martinez overcame challenges to reach new heights

Colleen Rich — Mon, 10 May 2021 14:34:35 +0000

Graduating senior Mitchell Martinez overcame challenges to reach new heights Colleen Rich Mon, 05/10/2021 - 10:34

Mitchell Martinez. Photo provided

“When you have the ability to do what you love, love what you do and have the ability to impact people. … That’s having a life of success.”

George Mason University’s Mitchell Martinez has never met former college football icon Tim Tebow, but the graduating senior couldn’t believe more in his definition of success.

That’s how Martinez, 22, also feels as he concludes an extraordinary career of collegiate achievement while at Mason and looks ahead to the next chapter of his life. Overcoming personal and financial hardships along the way, the cyber security engineering major from the Volgenau School of Engineering and Honors College student is poised to become the first in his family to earn an advanced degree and secure a high-paying job.

Martinez is already a cyber security engineer at CACI, where he began as an intern, and plans to eventually pursue a PhD in computer science.

“This might not seem as big of a deal to others,” he said, “but getting here as a Hispanic was not easy, and I want to make it easier for others.”

Working nearly full time since the beginning of his tenure at Mason, Martinez attended classes during the day before going straight to work until late at night and then staying up until the wee hours of the morning doing math homework before starting the day all over again.

Despite the frenetic schedule, he nonetheless found time to be involved socially in the Theta Tau Professional Engineering fraternity and seven intramural title-winning athletic teams. Martinez also spent a semester studying abroad in Switzerland prior to the global pandemic.

He found his passion and professional interest at CACI International Inc., a Northern Virginia-based firm that provides information technology and network solutions for the defense, intelligence and e-government sectors. Martinez has particular interest in offensive security, culminating in a year-long research project that focused on developing a cyberattack platform that can be mounted on working dogs. He then took his experiences to develop a sophisticated attack evasion tool for his senior design sponsor, Lockheed Martin Space.

“In this field, it is the goal of penetration testers and security developers to identify the weaknesses of systems—novel or complex—and work alongside engineers to not only prevent future attacks, but also optimize those systems for usability,” he said.

Martinez, who grew up in Lewis Center, Ohio, before eventually landing in Virginia with his family, attributed his competitiveness and his own innate curiosity for drawing him to computer security.

Martinez, who hopes to pursue a career in cybersecurity management and someday become a professor, credited his mentor Thomas Winston, an assistant professor for cyber security engineering within Volgenau, for having the greatest influence on him at Mason.

Winston called Martinez an “amazing person, with unbounded potential.”

“He was in many of my classes, always did an outstanding job and always showed the very best of student scholarship, motivation, drive and just overall interest,” Winston said of Martinez. “Honestly, I will likely remember Mitch for many years to come. He was a shining star in the cyber security program.”

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Mason to unveil a new Cyber Living Innovation Lab as part of the CCI

Colleen Rich — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 20:23:55 +0000

Mason to unveil a new Cyber Living Innovation Lab as part of the CCI Colleen Rich Thu, 12/12/2019 - 15:23

A Cyber Living Innovation Lab with robotic platforms to evaluate 5G performance and a fleet of driverless cars will provide experiential learning opportunities to students from universities across the region as the anchor of George Mason University’s cybersecurity research expansion, thanks to $2.5 million in funding as part of a statewide initiative.

Mason will use $500,000 in bond funds awarded by the Commonwealth of Virginia to establish the Cyber Living Innovation Lab, which will serve as an integral part of the Mason-led Northern Virginia Node of the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) starting in fall 2020. The facility, which will be housed in Vernon Smith Hall on Mason’s Arlington Campus, adjacent to the future Institute for Digital InnovAtion, will feature 3,000 square feet dedicated to cybersecurity research, training and experiential learning. It will align with the CCI’s strategic aim of growing workforce-ready cybersecurity and cyberphysical system security talent need to meet today’s demands and tomorrow’s economy.

“The Cyber Living Innovation Lab is a fabulous example of shared innovation platform,” said Deborah Crawford, Mason’s vice president for research, innovation and economic impact. “The lab will support cutting-edge research to secure the vast internet of everything, as well as experiential learning opportunities for students across all of the Northern Virginia Node’s partner institutions.”

The lab is the crown jewel of the efforts of a consortium of more than 60 Northern Virginia-based universities, colleges, and private, nonprofit and government organizations all sharing a commitment to building innovation capacity by focusing academic research and development, supporting an entrepreneurial ecosystem and aligning education and training with industry needs.

CCI aims to leverage this collaboration of selected industry partners to build ecosystems, prototypes, and testbeds and be recognized as a global leader in cyber physical systems security.

“Our impact on research and development, talent cultivation and economic impact is magnified by our partnerships and our ability to leverage and combine efforts to achieve our mutual goals,” said Liza Wilson Durant, the associate dean for strategic initiatives and community engagement at Mason’s Volgenau School of Engineering and the director of the Northern Virginia Node of the CCI.

The commonwealth approved $2.5 million for each of the four regional nodes last year, as well as an additional $500,000 each in capital funding for the necessary equipment research that will help educate students through 11 distinct initiatives in the areas of research, talent development and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The Cyber Living Innovation Lab will include autonomous vehicle sensor platforms to study 5G performance and security vulnerabilities. The platforms will support Lidar, radar, stereo and night vision cameras that will be deployed on the Northern Virginia Node’s fleet of vehicles to simulate autonomous driving. The vehicles will be deployed throughout the Northern Virginia Node and may remain in residence at partner institutions for periods of time to collect data.

The lab will facilitate further study of impact of 5G on the security of industry, smart manufacturing and the vulnerability of the supporting power grid. It will also include office space for Northern Virginia Node faculty, other partner visitors and graduate student researchers, while providing classroom instruction to cohorts of community college students and undergraduates so they can apply what they’ve learned to real-world cyber challenges.

“The Cyber Living Innovation Lab will enable research, as well as hands-on experiential learning and will be open to all Northern Virginia Node partners,” Wilson Durant said.

The CCI includes four regional nodes from across the state, each led by an institution of higher learning. The Northern Virginia-based CCI hub coordinates activities across the nodes, relying on the active collaboration of institutions of higher education across the state to contribute their experience, ideas and expertise.

Mason produces more graduates in the computing fields than any other university in the state, and is a key player in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.

Ten percent of the top Cybersecurity 500 global firms are concentrated in Northern Virginia. Fairfax County alone accounts for more than 350 cyber firms, ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Mason plays a key role in the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative

Colleen Rich — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 21:53:48 +0000

Mason plays a key role in the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Colleen Rich Wed, 09/11/2019 - 17:53

Northern Virginia is considered a dynamic tech-centric ecosystem critical to the state’s economy, and George Mason University has been tapped to play a key role to ensure it remains so.

The Commonwealth’s Cyber Initiative (CCI) recognizes the state’s existing leadership position in cyber and is a signal that Virginia seeks to remain a global leader in that realm for decades to come.

“It’s a great honor for Mason to lead the Northern Virginia Regional Node,” Mason President Anne Holton said. “It is consistent with our existing strengths in cybersecurity research and education. Our ability to secure what is now known as the Internet of Things is of paramount importance, and we at Mason are delighted to be playing a part in it.”

The CCI includes four regional nodes from across the state, each led by an institution of higher education. Mason heads the Northern Virginia Regional Node, a consortium of more than 60 Northern Virginia-based universities, colleges, and private, nonprofit and government organizations all sharing a commitment to ensuring Virginia’s continuing leadership in secure cyber physical systems and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Northern Virginia-based CCI Hub coordinates activities across the nodes. Its success will rely on the active collaboration of institutions of higher education across the Commonwealth of Virginia in contributing their experience, ideas and expertise.

“CCI came about to ensure that the commonwealth retains a leadership position in cyber innovation,” said Deborah Crawford, Mason’s vice president for research, innovation and economic impact. “We at Mason are delighted to do our part by convening and connecting our regional partners, generating exciting research breakthroughs that make their way into new products and services, and preparing the cyber innovation workforce of the future.”

Liza Wilson Durant, associate dean for strategic initiatives and community engagement and the director of the Northern Virginia Node of the CCI, welcomed the addition of a research alliance that will create a statewide cyber innovation system.

“The Northern Virginia Regional Node’s research and innovation initiatives will span a variety of focus areas that leverage the expertise of our academic institutions and informed by our government and industry partners on the front lines of implementation of novel cybersecurity technologies,” she said. “Likewise, our workforce development initiatives leverage experiential learning opportunities that help academia align knowledge acquired in the classroom with the skills and abilities required by industry and government.”

Wilson Durant lauded the network’s creation of new partnerships between academic institutions, industry, government and economic development partners that “bring a diversity of thought together as we shape our strategic initiatives.”

Mason produces more graduates in the computing fields than any other state university, so it figures to play a prominent role in that network in a tech-heavy Washington, D.C., metropolitan area that ranks as the nation’s cyber capital and offers unique cybersecurity assets and opportunities that are unmatched anywhere else.

“Ultimately,” Crawford said, “we want to do all we can to help secure the rapidly growing global IoT through cyber innovations created right here at Mason.”