A 2025 graduate in the media studies and production major at Klein College of Media and Communication, Micah Featherson never expected to explore the world of STEM when he started his college journey. Now, he has completed a certificate in cybersecurity and human behavior and co-authored a cybersecurity research paper.
The paper, “Manipulating Minds with Machines: A Cybersecurity Course Project on AI-Driven Social Engineering Attacks,” was accepted into the 15th IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC). Featherson, along with two other students and Dr. Aunshul Rege, criminal justice professor and director of the CARE LabCARE Lab, presented their research at Princeton University this past March.
“It was really cool,” Featherson said. “I’m not bragging on me, I’m more so bragging on Dr. Rege, but I kind of expected it. Just because I know who she is, she’ll make sure things get done and things get done the right way. Working with her, as crazy as it can be sometimes, I know in all confidence that it’s going to turn out well.”
Although Featherson plans to work in the communications field, he has always had an interest in cybersecurity. He took Rege’s Cybercrime class a few years ago, but he did not anticipate taking his interest any further.
“As the class was done, [I thought] I’d like to do more with this, but I’m a media major, so there’s not really that much opportunity,” Featherson said. “So, I kind of gave up on it. I put air quotes there.”
While in her class, Rege immediately took an interest in Featherson. She could tell he was passionate about cybersecurity and saw that he naturally excelled in it.
“You know, there are some students who are just amazing. I enjoyed having him in class. When you have students like that, it makes teaching a lot more fun,” Rege said. “That’s why you teach, right? It’s because you get that passion and drive for the next generation.”
Around this time last year, Featherson and Rege ran into each other at the train station and discovered they had been riding the same line to campus for years without realizing it. He mentioned his interest in cybersecurity, and she asked him to come work with her.
“That’s literally all it took, because—again—he’s a great student. I want to work with him,” Rege said.
Their research focused on educating students about how cybercriminals use AI tools to attack people. Social engineering refers to how bad actors manipulate human behavior to increase someone’s likelihood of being victim to a phishing attack. The explosive rise in AI has allowed attackers to improve their social engineering tactics. Rege believes it is important for students to not only understand how this works but also how cybercriminals decide how to conduct their attacks.
“One of the things that I always try to get my students to do—and this is at the very heart of cybersecurity education—is getting students to understand how the bad folks think,” Rege explained. “If we understand how they think, then we can defend our systems better.”
Rege believes that no matter what field one is in, a knowledge of cybersecurity is no longer optional. Because of the rapid increase in technology and digitalization, an understanding of how AI works and how to best protect oneself from phishing attacks is essential. In addition, Rege stresses the human behavior aspect of cybersecurity. Be it the victim or the attacker, a human is a part of that system.
“We need to have these conversations. We needed to have them yesterday,” Rege said. “We’re behind, and that’s why this is so important.”
Research for the cybersecurity paper took place in Rege’s class. Featherson, along with psychology student Jacqueline Swope, created two websites—one modeled after LinkedIn and the other representing a critical infrastructure company. The students in Rege’s class would then partake in Capture the Flag activities on those websites to find information cybercriminals would use for phishing attacks. Students also called Featherson, Swope and criminal justice doctoral candidate Rachel Bleiman, who posed as company employees while the students tried to get critical information out of them.
Featherson played an active role in the research, from designing the experiments to assessing the student teams and even bringing in his perspective. He learned how much he enjoys working with a team and also took away a new appreciation for the cybersecurity field and the importance of understanding human behavior and technology.
While the research’s content was STEM-focused, Featherson said that many skills he learned from Klein College aided him. He had taken a lot of performance-based classes, and said those courses helped him improvise during the mock phishing phone call activity and allowed him to not be nervous presenting to the ISEC. According to Rege, Featherson’s background in communications offered a unique perspective on the topic, especially as the spread of misinformation and deepfake technology increases. She has frequently worked with students from disciplines outside of cybersecurity and STEM and encourages more to follow suit.
Both Featherson and Rege want to see this research expand. They want to test more AI tools, and Featherson thinks it would be interesting to focus on voice-changing ones. He also encourages other universities and labs to perform similar research to see what variations may occur.
“It’s not just binary zeros and ones. It’s human beings, and the more we can understand that from different perspectives, the better it’s going to be for the domain of cybersecurity,” Rege said.