GEMS students chosen for forensics contest

Three high school students from GEMS American Academy, Abu Dhabi, were among 12 teams selected for a prestigious digital forensics competition to be held later in the month.
Joseph Baxter, Magnus Christensen and Alec Alexander will compete in the New York University's annual Digital Forensics Competition along with 11 other teams chosen from over 800 teams around the world.
The GEMS team has named their team "Bletchley Park" after the British institute, which cracked the Enigma cipher used by the forces of Nazi Germany during the Second World War. For making it to the finals, the team also received an Dh102,000 scholarship to NYU Polytechnic.
"Cyber Security, and in extension digital forensics, is becoming an increasingly critical field in today's digital society where data leaks and hacking controversies almost seem to be mainstream media," said Kathryn Miner, the principal of the academy.
"In this context, our children's performance speaks extremely highly about their capability and GEMS Education's ability to nurture such talent to compete on the global platform."
The Digital Forensics Competition is held yearly by NYU, working in partnership with the US Department of Homeland Security and IBM, as a recruitment event for future generations of cyber security experts.
The event will also include keynote speeches from cyber security officials and a career fair for the students to learn more about jobs in the field.
"Joseph, Magnus and Alec are avid computer scientists who share a passion for the digital realm. They first heard about this competition from one of their teachers, and they signed up in a heartbeat," Miner said.
"In the two long weeks that they slaved away in the preliminaries, they gained plenty of new and useful skills that will help them in university and beyond."
"Our whole school network is indeed proud of them."
reporters@khaleejtimes.com