{"id":201634,"date":"2026-04-02T13:28:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T17:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/02\/2026-umass-dartmouth-team-are-ncae-cyber-games-2026-regional-champions\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T13:40:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T17:40:25","slug":"2026-umass-dartmouth-team-are-ncae-cyber-games-2026-regional-champions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/02\/2026-umass-dartmouth-team-are-ncae-cyber-games-2026-regional-champions\/","title":{"rendered":"2026: UMass Dartmouth team are NCAE Cyber Games 2026 regional champions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.umassd.edu\/news\/2026\/ncae-cyber-games.html\">2026: UMass Dartmouth team are NCAE Cyber Games 2026 regional champions<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.umassd.edu\/news\/2026\/ncae-cyber-games.html\">https:\/\/www.umassd.edu\/news\/2026\/ncae-cyber-games.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-04-02 13:28:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.umassd.edu\">www.umassd.edu<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Author: <a href=\"\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p> Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. <\/p>\n<p>      2026 News 2026: UMass Dartmouth team are NCAE Cyber Games 2026 regional champions<br \/>\n        UMass Dartmouth team are NCAE Cyber Games 2026 regional champions <\/p>\n<p>\t  The team of students from UMass Dartmouth had the highest overall score of any team in the U.S. <\/p>\n<p>The UMass Dartmouth Cyber Games team recently won first place in the regional competition of the 2026 NCAE Cyber Games. The team, comprised of 10 undergraduate, master&#8217;s, and doctoral students, beat out 11 other teams in the Northeast 2 division and earned the highest overall score of all140 teams across the U.S. \u00a0<br \/>\nSponsored by the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) and the National Security Agency (NSA), Cyber Games is a nationwide competition where teams simulate real world cybersecurity scenarios in a controlled environment. The competition is open to students at institutions bearing one of three NCAE designations: Cyber Defense (NCAE-CD), Cyber Operations (NCAE-CO) and Cyber Research (NCAE-R). UMass Dartmouth is one of 97 institutions nationwide designated as a National Center for Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity Research (NCAE-R).\u00a0<br \/>\n&#8220;It was a close competition; we captured the title in the final 20 minutes of the day,&#8221; said PhD student Goktug Ekinci, team captain. &#8220;It was an incredible feeling. After the event, we learned that we scored the most points among all events in the country. It made us all proud.&#8221;\u00a0<br \/>\nEkinci expressed his thanks to the team&#8217;s faculty advisor Dr. Gokhan Kul, who he also credits with his decision to pursue a PhD at UMass Dartmouth. &#8220;As a PhD student, your advisor defines much of your experience and what kind of freedom you will have in your studies. When I met with Dr. Kul during our interviews, I was sure that he was the kind of person that would allow me to communicate openly and express myself. Having these kinds of people is the strongest trait of UMass Dartmouth in my opinion.&#8221;\u00a0<br \/>\n&#8220;I\u2019m incredibly proud of what this team accomplished,&#8221; said Dr. Kul. &#8220;The NCAE Cyber Games demand not only technical skill, but resilience, teamwork, and the ability to think creatively under pressure. Our students demonstrated all of that and more.&#8221;\u00a0<br \/>\nThe 2026 UMass Dartmouth Cyber Games team are:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Goktug Ekinci (Team Captain &#8211; CIS PhD)\u00a0<br \/>\nAndrew Bajumpaa (CIS MS)\u00a0<br \/>\nAdam Trott (CIS PhD)\u00a0<br \/>\nHenry Thompson (CIS MS)\u00a0<br \/>\nStar Rocha (CIS BS)\u00a0<br \/>\nMichelle Kurtz (CIS MS)\u00a0<br \/>\nMayank Raj (Data Science MS)\u00a0<br \/>\nShreyash Tiwari (Data Science MS)\u00a0<br \/>\nWilliam Kelley (CIS PhD)\u00a0<br \/>\nAakash Kardam (CIS PhD)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2026: UMass Dartmouth team are NCAE Cyber Games 2026 regional champions https:\/\/www.umassd.edu\/news\/2026\/ncae-cyber-games.html Publish Date: 2026-04-02&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201635,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.umassd.edu\/media\/umassdartmouth\/news\/2026\/IMG_96082-1200x800-1.JPG","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-201634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201634"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201636,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201634\/revisions\/201636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}