Students at TMI – The Episcopal School of Texas will participated in the eighth season of CyberPatriot’s National Youth Cyber Defense Competition. Beginning Oct. 17, members of TMI’s Texas Military Institute Corps of Cadets (JROTC) and other students will enter the CyberPatriot Middle School, Open High School and JROTC divisions against similar teams from across the country. This is the first year TMI will have five separate teams competing and the first to compete in the Middle School and Open divisions.
CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Education Program created by the Air Force Association, a non-profit, civilian education organization, to inspire students toward careers in cybersecurity or other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines critical to our nation’s future.  The program features an annual competition, in which teams across the United States and Canada, as well as from Department of Defense Dependent Schools abroad, compete in a series of online rounds through regional and state competition. for a chance to earn a trip to the in-person CyberPatriot National Finals Competition on April 10-14, 2016, in Baltimore. There, students have the opportunity to win scholarships and network with industry leaders.

The goal of every CyberPatriot competition is to find and fix vulnerabilities in images that appear on contestants’ screens. Some rounds also include networking challenges in the form of quizzes and other activities. Teams also can gain points by answering questions about their actions on the image.

“When I heard about this program, I was very excited,” said TMI CyberPatriot Team Captain Parker O’Berg, a senior who also has been active in the school’s robotics team. ”I believe that more opportunities for exposure to STEM-related topics are important, especially in today’s world. For me personally, this is not only something that I find interesting, but also something that I am considering doing in the future.”

CyberPatriot sponsors include the Northrop Grumman Foundation, AT&T Federal and the AT&T Foundation, Cisco, Microsoft, USA Today, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Secretary of Defense,  Facebook, Riverside Research, Splunk, Symantec, the Air Force Reserve, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Leidos, MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and the University of Maryland University College. For more information about CyberPatriot, visit www.uscyberpatriot.org.
 
About TMI
Founded in 1893, TMI is a private, co-educational, college-preparatory school for grades 6-12, with optional Junior ROTC and boarding programs. For information, visit www.tmi-sa.org or call 698-7171.