RMU team won the 3rd place out of 12 teams in the Northeast Regional competition for the 2025 NCAE Cyber Games sponsored by the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) on Feb 15, 2025.
9 RMU students shown below participated in the competition. Connor Quinn (front center) served as the Team Captain. Dr. Ping Wang served as the RMU Faculty Coach.
Front Row: Jorge Pinzon, Connor Quinn (Captain), James Bonacci
Back Row: Chloe Dzuba, Harlon Baker, Mintas Ivaska, Max Barnes, Grant Carvender, Reese Martin
We had an amazing time with our AWS DeepRacer Competition this semester! A big thank you to Amazon for partnering with us. Providing our students with hands-on experiences in AI and machine learning is truly invaluable. Check out the highlights from the competition here:
Several CIS students achieved medals in the National Cyber League (NCL) Spring 2024 season based on their individual and team performance.
Rob Pava, Diamond Medalist Steven Zalenski and Reese Martin, Platinum Medalists James Bonacci, Gold Medalist Peyton Lutchkus, Jerry Cook and Darren Gray, Silver Medalists
On April 5, 2024, 10 teams of RMU students competed in the first ever AWS DeepRacer Competition at RMU!
Student teams spent more than a month learning how to code algorithms in Python to drive AWS DeepRacers (mini autonomous vehicles) using machine learning. The teams trained their models and got to test them out on the AWS DeepRacer League race track in the UPMC Events Center for the competition. All of the winners are pictured below receiving their awards with Dean Frank Hartle and Amazon’s DeepRacer League Pit Crew Leader, Nicole Murray.
The First Place team (pictured below) in the undergraduate bracket was the “Top Secret Racers” team, Kelson Bowman, Anthony Guerrero, and Evan Brooks, whose car finished with a lap time of 00:09.133 seconds. Each of the team members won a $1,000 scholarship!
The Runner-Up team (pictured below) in the undergraduate bracket was the “Track Knights” team, Isaac Arnold and Lipika Ratakonda. Their car finished with a lap time of 00:09.166 seconds. Each team member won a $250 scholarship award.
The First Place team (pictured below) in the graduate bracket was the “Tigers” team, Linfeng Hao, Koushik ReddyDonthireddy, and Koyi Raghavamma (not pictured), whose car finished with a lap time of 00:07.757 seconds. This was an extremely competitive lap time and the team was encouraged to submit their model to the national AWS DeepRacer League! Each of the team members won a $1,000 scholarship.
The Runner-Up team (pictured below) in the graduate bracket was the “Vihan” team, Jason Gao, Deepthi Sri Kommagani, and Ravi Sri Sankar Nukavarapu. Their car finished with a lap time of 00:09.391 seconds. Each team member won a $250 scholarship award.
Congratulations to the winning teams! Overall, the competition was a great way for students to get involved with AI and machine learning, and get some hands-on experience with reinforcement learning models.
A huge thank you to our faculty mentors for all of your support in helping our teams through the coding and training phases of the competition: Dr. Natalya Bromall, Dr. Steve Mancini, Dr. Noory Etezady, Dr. Peter Draus, Dr. Parul Yadav (Rooney Scholar), and Phill Miller (CIO)!
Thank you also to our student helpers, our Announcer, Dakota Rideout and our Track Boss, Harry Lyons! Another thanks to our student PR team who were instrumental in securing sponsors for our raffle prizes: Elise Spath, Ella Donovan, Megan McGinnis, Kennedi Randolph, and Jesse Fitch.
We’d also like to send out a special thank you to our IT Team for such amazing support: Phill Miller, Paul Dewey, Dylan McKenna, and Ian Connolly.
Our sponsors for the raffle prizes were very much appreciated! These included:
M&S Consulting
Eat’n Park
Dunkin’ Donuts
Kendra Scott
The Sewickley Spa
Condado
Piada
Sam’s Club
RMU Colonial Cupboard
And a special thank you to our Amazon AWS Account Team and Pit Crew: Nicole Murray, Justin Marks, Eric Pierson, Brent Everman, Jacob Dishler, Jeremy McGriff, and Ope Usman.
We are so proud of all of our students, and hope that everyone had a great experience at the competition!
Due to student interest, we’ve opened the AWS DeepRacer Competition to graduate students in the CIS department as well! There will be two separate competition tracks – one for undergraduate and one for graduate (see the flyer below for updates).
Due to this change, the deadline for teams to sign up has been extended to February 14th. After the 14th, we will be contacting all teams to provide more information.
Just a reminder that teams will be accepted for RMU’s first AWS DeepRacer Competition until February 10th. You don’t need any experience in machine learning or with AWS to participate in the competition! Once your team signs up, you’ll be invited to an Amazon workshop where you will learn exactly what to do to prepare for Race Day!
Check out this video to learn more about AWS DeepRacer:
And check out what a real-life DeepRacer competition looks like! This is from a previous year’s AWS Championship Cup:
We’re excited to bring this technology to our own competition at RMU!
CIS @ RMU 