Caleb Chang, UCCS undergraduate cybersecurity student, helped his multi-university team win first place at the VICEROY Symposium Cyber Competition held on March 26, 2025.
The VICEROY competition, co-hosted with the University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA), pitted 60 students partnered into teams against each other. Students used all of their skills to solve quick-paced, simulated cybersecurity problems against the clock for points. Chang’s winning teammates were Gabriel Moreno from Florida International University and Chris Begines from The Ohio State University, who together correctly solved 97% of the challenges given during the four-hour competition.
“These types of events give students a chance to challenge themselves and gain practical experience with real-world cybersecurity skills,” said Dwayne Williams, Associate Director and competition monitor at CIAS/UTSA. “Students may have heard about these topics in class, but this competition allows them to experiment hands-on.”
“The competition tests cybersecurity skills with a series of challenges such as reverse engineering, cyber incident analysis, and password cracking,” Chang said. “Within the team I focused on challenges related to cyber incident analysis and password cracking. I feel that I contributed a lot to the team and, despite meeting each other at the beginning of the competition, felt that we worked well together, and all contributed to our win. Participating in this competition was a lot of fun and a great opportunity to evaluate my cybersecurity skills while meeting students from other universities.”
Along with the competition, students presented their research to attendees of the VICEROY Symposium.
“At this conference, I presented a space cybersecurity testbed that I helped develop as part of my research in the Laboratory of Cybersecurity Dynamics,” Chang said. “As part of development, I implemented and evaluated NASA’s open-source flight software into the testbed which resulted in the discovery of zero-day vulnerabilities within the software.”
“I’m very excited to see Caleb won the first place, together with his teammates at the other VICEROY institutions, but I’m not surprised at all given his outstanding record, including research,” said Shouhuai Xu, Ph.D., Chang’s research advisor and UCCS faculty member in the UCCS Computer Science Department. “He represented both UCCS and our VICEROY program well. I look forward to seeing more of our students excel through our VICEROY program.”
Chang is a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science student and undergraduate research assistant in the UCCS Laboratory of Cybersecurity Dynamics (LCD), run by Xu.
Xu is the Gallogly Chair in Cybersecurity, focused on increasing the cybersecurity talent base through cybersecurity research, competitions, scholarships and grants. He advises over 20 cybersecurity undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. students, all participating in cybersecurity research.
About the UCCS College of Engineering and Applied Science
The College of Engineering and Applied Science enrolls more than 1,700 students and offers 24 engineering and computer science degrees, ranging from bachelor to doctoral. The college is a Department of Homeland Security / National Security Agency Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense and works closely with the National Cybersecurity Center and with more than 250 aerospace and defense, information technology, cybersecurity and engineering organizations in the Pikes Peak region. Learn more about the College of Engineering and Applied Science at UCCS.
About VICEROY
VICEROY is a mission-focused cyber-spectrum leadership development pathway accelerating talent through foundational skills, experiential learning, and operational application. To learn more about the symposium and VICEROY, visit VICEROYscholars.org/symposium.