Young, Scrappy, and Hungry

Cybersecurity engineering major Fatima Majid is certainly not throwing away her shot. The senior has made it her mission to take advantage of every opportunity George Mason has to offer.  

After transferring from Northern Virginia Community College and struggling in her first semesters, Majid persevered, raising her GPA and earning a spot on the Dean’s List. She says her professors were extremely supportive during that time. They helped boost her confidence to keep her in the program. 

Majid says one professor especially kept her motivated. “In a class of 90 people, he pointed me out and said, ‘That girl can code! If you have any issues with the work, she can help.’ It changed my mentality. I realized that I could actually do it.”  

Soon she was ready to take on the competition. When she joined her first hackathon—the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) cyber competition—she thought it was a George Mason student event. Instead, she discovered she was going against professionals in the defense contract industry.  

In the end, she was the only one-person team (and the only student) to place in the top 10, placing 9th out of 51 teams with a project designed to protect against miniature drone strikes like the one that Ukraine launched on Russia.  

Majid’s lightbulb moment for her SkyEyes project came at a traffic light while considering the significant network of traffic cameras in the commonwealth. SkyEyes applies an artificial intelligence (AI) model to the live feed of the Virginia 511 camera network, which provides real-time traffic information to citizens and transportation officials. Majid was able to demonstrate how a low-cost, AI-enabled surveillance layer could differentiate threats from non-threats by employing geofencing logic to define safe versus threat zones around sensitive sites.  

“I understand how drones work because of the work I’ve done at George Mason’s MIX—and since I know how to build it, I also know how to jam it,” she says.  

Majid also credits her summer in Richmond at the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s undergraduate policy program as giving her confidence and exposure to how government works.   

Majid says the strong showing at the NDIA competition gave her tremendous exposure to influential professional contacts. She fielded several questions about her simulation and future professional plans from a man she only later realized was Retired Brigadier General and NDIA Executive Vice President Guy Walsh.  

“Because he showed interest, after he walked away, a crowd of people gathered around to ask me questions. It was very validating.”  

Now in her senior year, Majid is a Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Innovation Scholar and part of a statewide program that comes with a $2,000 professional development award and training in cyber start-ups.  

Eventually, she says that she wants to find a job that’s exciting and fun and isn’t ruling anything out. “I’m taking a bite of everything and seeing where I want to go. I’ve seen the potential that I have.” 

One way Majid takes advantage of every opportunity available is by taking the shuttle from the Fairfax Campus to Mason Square any time an event is offered at Fuse. “I just walk up and start talking to people,” she says.  

Mastering networking and making connections are just a small part of Majid’s range of skills. “Some people think that I get lucky, and these opportunities just fall into my lap,” she says. “But I tell them that they are there for other students to find too. They don’t see all of the effort I put in to do more and be better—that is my goal as a student.”