University of Hawaiʻi–West Oʻahu cyber students finished 2020 with a power ranking of 12th in the country, according to a ranking recently published by the National Cyber League.
The National Cyber League is a performance-based cybersecurity competition where individual students and teams compete against all-comers from around the nation. At the end of each season, the National Cyber League publishes the Cyber Power Rankings of schools across the country. Every year, thousands of students compete from hundreds of universities, colleges and schools.
“The 2020 power ranking for UH West Oʻahu, our teams, and individual students is the highest to date,” said Matthew A. Chapman, coach for the UH West Oʻahu National Cyber League students and teams.
Chapman is also a UH West Oʻahu professor of computer science and cybersecurity, and head of the campus’ cybersecurity program.
“I cannot tell you how proud I am of our students for putting in the time, doing the hard work, and demonstrating the motivation and raw talent to achieve our best power ranking ever, particularly during this very stressful time of the global pandemic,” he said.
UH West Oʻahu cyber teams finished 12th overall in the nation and 7th overall in the western region. According to the National Cyber League, rankings are a comprehensive measure of participating colleges based on performance of the college’s top team, the top individual student, and other participants’ performances during the individual competitions.
Three UH West Oʻahu teams finished in the top 10% nationally (out of 749 teams). The three UH West Oʻahu team rankings and students are:
- 16th: Captain Edgar Namoca, Anthony Chapman, Jonathan Chin, Tygue Lopes, Guy Nguyen-Phuoc, Kyle Vetters and Matthew Yamaguchi
- 42nd: Captain Douglas Tavares, Antone Cabral, Sean Griffin, Max Soto, Kaialii Sequeira, Clifton Weaver and Samuel Weinstein
- 71st: Captain Anthony Eich, William Beard, Quan Dong, Ydel Espiritu, Gerry Geronimo, John Stark and Leevi Weinstein
In the individual game, two UH West Oʻahu students—Anthony Chapman and Kyle Vetters—ranked in the top 100 students in the country out of 3,795 ranked competitors.
“A lot of credit goes out to not only our students, but the professors that spent several semesters, or years, preparing these students both at UH West Oʻahu and our partner community colleges—Honolulu Community College, Leeward Community College and Kapiʻolani Community College,” Chapman said. “I am especially grateful for Professors J. Burrell and Mike Miranda for the many hours they put in every day for our cyber programs.”
—By Zenaida Arvman
