Mission Accomplished! Space Grand Challenge 2024 was a huge success!

This year’s competition, held on April 26-27, 2024, generated 402 players from middle and high school students from across 13 states—a high water mark for the Space Grand Challenge. The student players this year got to play in brand-new Unity rooms with new challenges—all developed by Cal Poly students.

The winners of this year's competition are:

Advanced:

Del Norte High School: Team Cyber Aegis Satoru

South Pointe Middle School: Team South Point Red Panther

Beginner:
JATC North High School: Team Olympus

Cedar Lane Academy: Team Swinging Monkeys

The competition weekend opened with a ceremony on Friday, April 26. Lt. Col. Jacob Majewski, U.S. Space Force (USSF), Commander of the 65th Cyberspace Squadron gave opening comments, promoting the importance of building cyber skills and wishing all participants good luck. The weekend ended with a closing ceremony where winners were announced, and all participants were thanked for spending their Saturday playing. Dr. Chris Lupo, the Founding Director of the Noyce School of Applied Computing joined the ceremony and congratulated all that played.

During the game day, 370 viewers joined to watch the live broadcast of the competition over Twitch. During that broadcast, multiple industry leaders, alumni, and visiting U.S. Space Force guardians joined to share their thoughts about cybersecurity, industry trends, and prospective careers. The day’s recording can be found here on Twitch. Additionally, throughout the stream, parts of the game were previewed for viewers to better understand what the player experiences were.

Space Grand Challenge continues to be made possible because of the generosity of our sponsors and partners. It is due to their support that allows this event to remain free and teach fundamental cybersecurity skills to the next generation of students. Our sponsors this year included:

Finally, none of this would be possible without the dedicated and tireless student support from the Cal Poly students on the California Cybersecurity Institute team. Our students from the AWS, Discord, Unity, Broadcast, and Newsletter teams brought this event to life.

To continue to support the great work that they do, we invite you to make a tax-deductible donation to the Space Grand Challenge Crowdfund. Every donation goes directly to supporting this unique Learn by Doing opportunity.

About the Space Grand Challenge Program 

The Space Grand Challenge (SGC) Program is a global virtual game-based cybersecurity competition for middle and high school students built by Cal Poly students. The SGC helps prepare the next generation of the cyber workforce by expanding the pipeline of talent earlier, promoting STEM, and developing cyber/IT skills. SGC accomplishes this through a unique use of gamification and esports to promote STEM, space themes, and cybersecurity skills.

About the California Cybersecurity Institute 

The California Cybersecurity Institute (CCI) at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo, California, leads a state and national initiative to address cybersecurity challenges. By bringing together the tech community, government agencies, and educational institutions, the CCI is enhancing cybersecurity defense capabilities at Cal Poly, for the state of California, and across the nation.

This news announcement was written by Parker McKenzie (COMS).