- May 05, 2026
- By Heather G. Markle
University of Maryland graduate engineering students recently clinched national and global titles at a pair of competitions testing cyberattack-stopping skills.
On March 27, the students who are all pursuing a Master of Engineering in Cybersecurity in the A. James Clark School of Engineering, clinched the national title at Hack the Madness, a bracket-style competition known as capture the flag (CTF), sponsored by cyber readiness platform Hack the Box.
Outmaneuvering 63 other university teams, including Ivy League rivals, were Abhijeet Kumar, Srihari N. Narayan, Joshua Alwin, Dyanesh Swaminathan, Narasimha Tiruveedula, Manish Kumar Upadhyayula, Akshay Anand and Jnana Ramakrishna Chodisetti, collectively called the RandomHackers.
Less than a month later, over April 18 and 19, Kumar and Tiruveedula took on the Global Ynov Partners CTF, an international gauntlet featuring elite squads from Singapore to France. Operating against teams boasting 13 or more members, the pair solved all 38 technical challenges to secure first place.
“It is an amazing achievement,” said faculty adviser Michael Wittner, who also works for the U.S. Department of Defense. “They had to learn a lot of new skills along the way, including cyber skills and team building. These competitions are one of the best ways for students to get hands-on experience prior to joining the workforce.”
RandomHackers’ trophy case already included first-place finishes at the BugCrowd Student CTF, BSidesNYC AI CTF and the Diana Initiative DEFCON33 CTF.
The team’s stakes, however, extend beyond trophies. Through the Maryland Vulnerability Disclosure Program on the Bugcrowd platform, the students are applying their MAGE-honed skills to live government infrastructure. Kumar recently identified a vulnerability, which he reported to the state of Maryland.
“It was an intense learning experience regarding ethical boundaries and responsible reporting,” he said.
George Syrmos, assistant dean for continuing education at MAGE, sees the team’s success as a reflection of the program’s core mission: to provide a hands-on learning environment where students bridge the gap between advanced academic theory and immediate, real-world utility.
“Watching these students evolve from the classroom to the top of international leaderboards—and then into defending our state’s own infrastructure—is exactly why we built this program,” he said. “We aren’t just educating engineers; we are cultivating the next generation of security leaders."