My First IEEE Conference: ICCST 2025

Last week I made the drive from Midland to San Antonio to present my first ever IEEE-published paper. The conference was held at the UTSA School of Data Science, and walking in, I had no idea what to expect. Walking out? I left with two awards, new connections, and a completely new perspective on where I want my career to go.

What is ICCST?

ICCST is the IEEE International Carnahan Conference on Security Technology. It's one of the longest-running security conferences in the world, sponsored by the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society Lone Star Section.

This year's edition ran from October 13-17 and brought together researchers, industry professionals, and students presenting work on everything from physical security systems to cybersecurity research.

For a student presenting their first paper, it was both intimidating and exciting.

Presenting VeriPhish

My paper, VeriPhish, is an explainable phishing detection system. The core idea: most ML-based security tools tell you what they detected, but not why.

VeriPhish uses LIME, SHAP, and LLM integration to explain exactly why an email is suspicious in plain English.

The 15-minute presentation felt like 2 minutes. I explained the problem, walked through the architecture, demoed the explanation system, and answered questions from the audience.

"This email was flagged because the sender domain 'google-security-verify.com' doesn't match Google, and the phrase 'Urgent Action Required' is a common phishing indicator."

When I showed how the system translates technical SHAP values into human-readable explanations, people nodded. They got it. That was the moment I realized I was onto something.

Two Awards

At the closing ceremony, they announced the student paper awards. When they called First Place Student Paper for VeriPhish, I honestly didn't process it for a few seconds.

Then they announced Second Place Order of Merit for overall papers, and I was genuinely shocked. Walking up to receive those awards in front of researchers who've been in this field for decades was surreal.

It validated months of work and late nights debugging feature extraction code.

The People

The awards were great, but honestly? The best part was meeting people who care about the same problems I do.

Over five days, I had conversations with researchers and students from different universities and backgrounds. I learned about IEEE as an organization, how conferences shape research directions, and heard about projects tackling similar challenges from different angles.

For someone who's been coding mostly in isolation, it was eye-opening to see how research gets shared and built upon in person.

What I Learned

A few takeaways from my first conference:

1. Present your work early. Feedback from the community is valuable.
2. Talk to everyone. The person next to you at the coffee break might be working on exactly the problem you're stuck on.
3. Networking happens naturally. Genuine conversations about shared interests lead to real connections.
4. Imposter syndrome is normal. Everyone I talked to admitted they felt it at their first conference too.

What's Next

ICCST 2025 was just the beginning. I'm already working on extending VeriPhish based on feedback I received at the conference.

To anyone thinking about submitting to their first conference: do it. The worst case is rejection with feedback. The best case? You end up with new perspectives and people who actually care about the same problems you do.