Cybersecurity Fall 2025 Capstone Project Showcase
Capstone projects are the culmination of the MICS students’ work in the School of Information’s Master of Information and Cybersecurity program.
Over the course of their final semester, teams of students propose and select project ideas, conduct and communicate their work, receive and provide feedback, and deliver compelling presentations along with a web-based final deliverable. A panel of judges will select an outstanding project for the Lily L. Chang MICS Capstone Award.
Join us for an online presentation of these capstone projects.
Judges
Kristen Beneduce
Head of Security and IT
January
Kristen Beneduce is the head of security and IT at January, a Series B fintech, where her work centers on secure AI and technology enablement and overall security posture. With a core focus on high velocity security and engineering, she is developing AI security engineering guardrails and leveraging automation for system resilience. She has built deep expertise over 15 years in developing frontier security and ML/AI defenses, incident response solutions, and threat intelligence capabilities. Her career path is a nonlinear blend of technology and humanities, including national security roles at the DOE and the Federal Reserve, as well as an early background in contemporary art. A strong advocate for diversity, Kristen is a cybersecurity venture advisor, a founding member of the Firstboard.io Cybersecurity Council, and the founder of the Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) Silicon Valley Chapter.
Nneka Emegwa
Managing Director
Accenture Health & Public Service, US
Nneka Emegwa is a managing director in Accenture and responsible for its business with Google cloud in the US for health and public services (H&PS). Prior to that, she was the global security lead for Google cloud within Accenture. With a career marked by over 20 years of leadership within Accenture and prior engagements in the oil & gas industry, Nneka has deep expertise in applying cloud, artificial intelligence/agentic AI and cybersecurity in solving clients’ problems. She is a certified cloud and network security engineer and holds many cybersecurity, AI and cloud certifications including CISSP, PCNSE, PCA, certified in Harvardx Cybersecurity: Managing Risk in the Information Age, certified in Accenture & Stanford University’s Reinvention with Agentic AI. Nneka’s technical prowess is complemented by an MBA from Aberdeen Business School, Robert Gordon University, UK. Her exceptional financial acumen underscores her ability to bridge business objectives with IT investments, earning her a reputation as a trusted advisor to clients.
As a thought leader, Nneka recently served as an artificial intelligence judge in a Google Cloud led hackathon and speaks at industry conferences where she shares insights on artificial intelligence, cloud and cybersecurity trends.
Rex Fujikawa
Information Systems Division Director
Contra Costa County
Rex Fujikawa is a cybersecurity leader with more than 20 years of experience in information security, network engineering, and public-sector technology operations. As the departmental chief information security officer for Contra Costa Health, Rex leads organizational security strategy, operations, and compliance initiatives. His leadership focuses on building strong, scalable processes, elevating security maturity, and ensuring that essential public services remain resilient and secure.
Throughout a nearly three-decade career with Contra Costa County, Rex has worked across information security, wide-area networking, cloud and SaaS implementations, and infrastructure engineering. From starting as a student intern to becoming a trusted executive advisor, Rex brings deep technical expertise, strategic vision, and a commitment to strengthening cybersecurity in government environments.