14-850: Cybersecurity Research Seminar

14-850: Cybersecurity Research Seminar - Fall 2016

aka "The INSuRE Course"



Course Project

Teams of students will work on a collaborative project for the duration of the semester. Teams will be formed based on bids for projects pitched by a variety of sponsors, though students have an option to work with the instructor to create a suitable project if none of the available projects match student skills or interests. Each team will provide the following deliverables through the semester.
  • Project Bid: The purpose of the bidding process is to identify particular interests, knowledge, and specific skills relative to proposed projects. Each student will submit bids for at least two proposed projects. Each student bid must include: (1) a personal statement of interest; (2) a description of the research problem including specific sub-problems/sub-tasks of interest and preliminary literature review; (3) initial idea of approach and expected project outcomes; and (4) description of the student's relevant knowledge, technical skills, research experience, and leadership skills. Project teams will be formed / assigned based on these bids. The bid will count for 5% of the final course grade. Bids are due on Sept 12.

  • Weekly Dashboards: Teams are expected to meet with their project mentor / technical director on a weekly basis. To facilitate these weekly meetings, each team will prepare a dashboard slide that highlights their progress, challenges, and updates since the previous meeting. Weekly dashboards should be emailed directly to your TD and posted to PURR. At the end of the semester, your dashboards will be graded as a single component based on completeness and clarity. The dashboard grade will count for 5% of the final course grade.

  • Statement of Work (aka Proposal): After project teams are formed, the next task will be to propose a Statement of Work (SoW) that clearly explains what the team is doing, why they are doing it, what is novel about the project, and what is the potential impact of the work. The SoW must include a preliminary critical review of previous related work, specific goals of the project, and a project plan. The project plan should include a realistic schedule of milestones, a list of deliverables, a budget (if appropriate), a discussion of potential risks / difficulties, and an appropriate "plan B" in case risks become roadblocks. The written SoW will be due on Blackboard & PURR on Sep 26, and each team will also be required to record their team presentation of their SoW and post a link to the video on Blackboard (links will be shared with all students enrolled in the course). The SoW presentation and report will respectively count for 5% and 10% of the final course grade.

  • Literature Review: The literature review provides a careful, critical, and thorough explanation of relevant prior work on your project. It should be divided into two parts: background and previous work. Background is the basic material that you need to know to begin your research, but not particular research similar to what you are carrying out. Previous work builds on the background and is research that is directly relevant to your project. The literature review must include a critical evaluation of previous work and an explanation of how this project will be different or better. The review will be due on Oct 7 and will count for 10% of the final course grade.

  • Project Progress Update: The purpose of the progress report is to plot a snapshot of the work already accomplished, the work in progress, and the remaining work that will be completed by the end of the semester. Each team will submit a progress report document that includes: (1) a modified project description that captures any issues or changes since the project start; (2) a timeline indicating both the proposed milestones, current progress, and modified milestones; (3) a summary of work completed; (4) a summary of work in progress; (5) a summary of work remaining to be done; (6) any project difficulties experienced (e.g., technical problems, knowledge gaps, team problems, etc.) and how they were handled; and (7) a preliminary plan for archival and sharing of project artifacts for future use by other teams. The progress report can build off the previous SoW/proposal, and any changes to project goals, plan, schedule, etc. should be clearly described. The section(s) detailing items (3)-(5) above should include a brief description of the overall team effort and the engagement effort of the separate team members. Teams must both submit a written report and present a summarized version of the report in class. Progress presentations will be in class on Oct 21 and Oct 28 (with Nov 4 as a make-up day), and the written update will be due on Oct 28. The progress presentation and report will respectively count for 15% and 10% of the final course grade.

  • Final Report: The final report will include comprehensive written documentation of your entire project in the standard form of a technical conference or journal paper, including motivation, problem statement, methodology, evaluation and/or experimentation, discussion of results, summary of open problems and future work, conclusion, and a detailed knowledge and resource sharing plan. The report should contain an informative abstract that explicitly states the accomplishments and results of the work; the abstract should be standalone itself. As part of the final report, each team will also submit a conference-style poster that gives a visually-appealing summary of the project work. Each team will present their work in class in a conference-style presentation that includes enough detail for the audience to understand the problem, the approach, and the contributions. Final presentations will be in class on Dec 2 and Dec 9 (with Dec 16 as a make-up day), and the written report and poster will be due on Dec 16. The final report, poster, and presentation will respectively count for 20%, 10%, and 10% of the final course grade.
Specific details of the team deliverables will be discussed in class prior to each deadline, and slide and report templates and examples will be made available on Blackboard.

Submission Instructions: All submissions should be made via Blackboard. For presentations, a .pdf copy of presentation slides should be submitted. For group submissions, at least one member of each team should submit on behalf of the group; if multiple group members submit a group deliverable, the latest submission will be taken as final. All team member names should be included on the first page/slide of each deliverable.