Reston STEM Camp Aims To Spark Interest In Cybersecurity, Coding Careers

RESTON, VA — Middle and high school students from around the DMV got first-hand experience last Thursday about what it would be like to have a career in cybersecurity, during ID Tech’s STEM summer camp program at Microsoft’s headquarters in Reston Town Center.

As part of a four-year partnership between Microsoft and ID Tech, the camp provided resource-limited students a chance to learn about coding and cybersecurity. Activities included programming remote controlled cars and playing KC7, a free cyber detective game.

“Our mission is to provide life-changing STEM experiences to embolden students to shape the future,” said Ylka van Bemmel Reiis, social impact executive at ID Tech. “We've never moved away from that. Our reach is K-12, so we start at the age of 7 and go all the way up to 19.”

Find Out More About ID Tech's Summer Camp Program

The goal of Thursday’s camp was to put students in the shoes of Microsoft employees to help them visualize their future, according to van Bemmel Reiis.

One of those employees was Simeon Kakpovi. In addition to being a senior threat intelligence analyst at Microsoft, he is also the founder and president of the KC7 Foundation, which promotes the KC7 game he designed.

“KC7 is a cybersecurity game that teaches people how fun and exciting cybersecurity can be, but also gives them a free resource to upskill into a cybersecurity role,” Kakpovi said on Thursday. “I got into cybersecurity using a game, and I wanted to make that game available to more people.”

The game was designed to give students a deeper understanding of cybersecurity by having them conduct an actual investigation using the same tools that Kakpovi and his colleagues at Microsoft use every day.

“Usually, they're a little bit apprehensive at first,” he said. “Once they start playing it, they're like, ‘Oh, this is not so bad.’ It demystifies it. As they go through the game, they get more excited as they can see that they have the actual skills and it's actually something that they will be interested in. We're really excited when we see that light bulb flip and they realize it's something that they can do and that they might want to pursue.”

Sarah, a recent graduate from St. Timothy School in Baltimore, Maryland, found out about Thursday’s STEM camp after she participated in a similar camp on video game development.

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Since there weren’t a lot of opportunities at her school to learn about coding or designing video games, she was always on the lookout for any program that would help expand her skills.

“It's been really interesting to actually engage in cybersecurity,” Sarah said, about Thursday’s camp. “In the past, I have coded in JavaScript and Python to mainly do data analysis. But, talking about cybersecurity and actually practicing what it is to be an ethical hacker or defending against cyber attacks would be really cool. I really enjoyed this today.”

Sarah’s experience is just one example of what Microsoft and ID Tech were trying to accomplish with their STEM camps, according to van Bemmel Reiis.

“You never really know what's going to resonate,” she said. “Even though you might not see a reaction immediately, just having this experience and having bits of what I call STEM curiosity and turning it into a career — some of these students are 17 — they're thinking of their next step. What happens after this? Is there a future at a company like Microsoft?”