Madison Lopez
B.S., Computer Science, 2026
What drew you to come work at the Cal Poly California Cybersecurity Institute?
One of Madison’s friends who participated in game jams with previously worked at CCI. She let Madison know about the job opening. Madison thought it was the perfect time to join the team so she could apply what she knew about games with the CCI’s flagship event, the Space Grand Challenge (SGC). After watching past esports broadcasts, she knew she wanted to be involved withi making the future rooms of the game.
What interests you about cybersecurity or technology?
Madison has been passionate about computers and playing games since she was young. Additionally, she has always had an interest in graphics and how they are rendered. Her interest in cybersecurity started upon arriving at Cal Poly, with bug fixing and preventing people from getting into servers.
What have you been working on at the Cal Poly California Cybersecurity Institute? And what skills have you learned or applied during your tenure?
Madison is working on the moon base room for SGC 2024 Project Luna, implementing challenges for the competition, and working on debugging. She and her team have already built up a couple bare bone rooms and challenges. She is extremely excited to see how the players react to them in April. Additionally, Madison has also enjoyed working in a team environment, allowing her to build up her communications skills. Working through bugs and roadblocks as a team has proven to be a very positive experience and is helping her be day one ready for her career.
How does the Cal Poly California Cybersecurity Institute fit in your future career?
Once done with her bachelors, Madison wants to pursue a master's degree in graphics programming. She would like to eventually work within a small team, similar to what she has been doing at CCI. She believes that a because graphic programming is a niche program there will be a lot of opportunity in the space. She is thankful to CCI for giving her an opportunity to work with a smaller team.
5. What are you excited for with CCI coming up in the future?
“I am super excited for SGC Luna and have all the players see the new rooms, because they look awesome, they look so cool. I am also excited for our future projects, as there have been some issues with Unity and moving forward, we might change to a different game engine like Unreal or at least a new version.” Madison is extremely excited for the 2024 SGC—Luna. She can’t wait to see how players react to all the new rooms, as she is very proud of them. She is also looking forward to future projects with SGC, especially with the potential of using an updated version of Unity or even moving to a new game engine like Unreal.
This student profile was written by Parker McKenzie (COMS).