Vivine Ishimwe, an international cadet from Rwanda, is a cyber systems major. her interest in STEM started when she was 10 years old.

“I just wanted to prove a point that women belong in STEM,” Ishimwe said.

When she was in primary school, she told her teacher that she wanted to be a doctor and he told her, “women are not a good fit for science and are not smart enough to treat people.”

Ishimwe used this comment as motivation and began competing with the boys in her class for grades. Since then, she started taking science classes. She joined science clubs and participated in different science projects.

Most of the time, she was the only female in science classes which was challenging, but she said she enjoyed every second of her journey because it served as a great learning experience.

Along with four of her classmates Ishimwe built a web application called CadetChat where cadets can post memes and funny pictures. She also worked on a project called “change counter” where she designed and built an automated device that can count and sort coins in accordance with their size.

Ishinwe has written a number of different research papers including “The Impacts of Health Information Being Shared on Social Media Platforms by Healthcare Providers,” where she briefly explained how the rapid development of communication technologies and social media among healthcare providers raises potential privacy issues for patients. She also wrote a paper called, “Cyber Incidents Affecting Healthcare and Public Health Sector” where she did a situational assessment of how cyber incidents affected a hospital.

Currently, Ishimwe is working on an advanced cyber systems research project, where she and three other cadets and are building an image recognition application that will Identify military insignias on buildings and vehicles. She is also pursuing research in one of the maritime cybersecurity topics where she will be researching how cybercriminals exploit maritime cyber security vulnerabilities.

“In the future, I want to continue to pursue a STEM career as a software engineer, Ishimwe said. “My ultimate goal is to continue learning, researching, and finding different ways to be more innovative.”