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TDDD17 Information Security, Second Course

Projects Page

Contents


Project rules and examination

A list of available projects will be published here January 31 at 18:00. Projects from this list will be assigned to groups of 2 students, according to the procedure described below in this document. Only students who are officially registered to the course are entitled to request and do the project. Each project from the list can be taken by only a specific number of groups (usually one or two). Each project has a supervisor, from the teaching staff, who will supervise and evaluate the work of the students in the group.

The project can be of theoretical or practical nature. In both cases, the final product of the project will be a written report and an oral presentation. Note that the final project should be the result of the work of both students in the group. It is not acceptable that students split the project into two independent sub-projects and work separately. Groups not following this rule will fail the project.

The project has a number of intermediary milestones and deadlines that will have to be rigorously followed. Any deviations from the scheduled deadlines should be agreed by the project supervisor.

Groups that do not meet these deadlines will fail the project.

Project examination

The requirements for passing the project are:

  • Follow the intermediate milestones and deadlines,
  • Complete the work in the given time frame,
  • Have the report approved by your supervisor,
  • Present your project and attend the project presentation sessions,
  • Meet the expected quality for the report and for the presentation.

Note that there are no re-examinations for projects! The only possibility for students failing the project part to receive course credits is to redo this part next year, starting from the very beginning with the project selection. Also, note that for receiving the grades for the course both parts of the course (first - theoretical - and the second - project) have to be passed.


Report requirements

Do not plagiarize! Any case of plagiarism will be reported to the disciplinary board and the project will be failed. For guidelines about correct quoting and referencing see the writing guidelines by John Wilander. If you are not sure check with your project supervisor. Note that John's guidelines also provide you help with how to write a report in general.

We require students to deliver well-structured reports with adequate language and layout. The project supervisors will comment on the scientific and technical aspects of the report given that the report is well-written.

The reports should have a high quality. There are no specific requirements on the minimum number of pages for the report, as it depends on the scope and the type of project work (survey or technical report). Your project supervisor approves the content of the report.

Format and templates: The required format for the final reports is pdf following the IEEE formatting guidelines (double column, font size 10). MS Word and Latex templates are available at the aforementioned link. (Use the A4 version if you choose the Word template.)

Language: Reports should be written in English only.


Milestones and deadlines

This section contains important information about milestones and deadlines for the course.

Period 1

  • January 31: The list of projects will be available at 18:00.
  • February 2 (23:59): Deadline for project requests.
  • February 7: Projects are assigned to the project groups.
  • February 8–17: Students will meet their supervisor (students must email to corresponding supervisor and ask about the date and place of the meeting). The e-mail address for your supervisor is given in the list of assigned projects. Note that supervisors may not be available during the whole period. You should contact your supervisor as soon as you receive your project assignment to book a meeting! For this meeting students must have read the references provided for the project and have prepared an initial project plan. During this meeting students will receive feedback and comments from supervisor about the initial project plan. The initial plan must describe:
    • An initial set of problem(s)/question(s) they want to address in their project;
    • Type of expected results;
    • A method of work;
    • Preliminary headlines of the report.
  • February 22: Initial project plan handed to supervisor.
  • February 24: Approval for project plan. Note: At this point, there is about 10 weeks until the first complete report draft should be finished (see below). As this includes the exam period, the Easter holiday, etc., it is very important to start working actively on the project right away, in order to be able to finish on time.

Period 2

Below is the list of of the project miltesones during the second study period. Hard deadlines are marked in red

Important: Note that all parts of the project are mandatory. There are two oral presentations in period 2 (see below). Both students in each group must participate in the presentations.

  • April 3, 13–17, in E324: Each group presents its progress (6 min presentation and 3 min questions) and receives feedback from the supervisor.
  • April 4: The initial draft handed to supervisors. The initial draft must contain core components of the report:
    • The introduction section, describing the problem to be addressed
    • All other sections/subsections in the report, each with a short description of what they will cover
  • April 6: Students will receive comments on the initial draft from the supervisor.
  • April 13–21: Students will meet their supervisors and will report their progress (30 min. for each group. Each group must email their corresponding supervisor well ahead of time to learn about the time and place of the meeting for that group.)
  • May 3: Project report handed to the supervisor.
  • May 8: Students will receive comments on the report from the supervisor.
    Note: This is a check point to inform students about their status. Students will receive one of the marks from the supervisor: 1- Fine, continue, 2- Revision is required, 3- Reject.
  • May 12: Final report (after including the supervisor's comments) handed to the supervisor.
  • May 17: Approval for the final report. This is the second check point to inform students about their status (1- Fine, 2- Reject).
  • May 22: Final report handed to Ulf Kargén via e-mail. The report must be in pdf-format.
  • May 22, 13–17, in T15 and T19: Final presentations in two parallel sessions.
  • May 26: Final report handed in to Ulf Kargén via e-mail as pdf (for those who received comments during the presentation).



Procedure for project assignment

  • Create your group of two. You may not work alone.
  • Choose the project you (as a group) would like to do. There can be at most two groups per project.
  • When choosing the project please take into consideration the possible prerequisites that the projects supervisor has indicated in the project description (e.g. "familiarity with the UNIX environment and basic C programming").
  • If you select a project for which prerequisites are listed, you must explain how you meet the prerequisite (merely stating that you do is not sufficient). Should you select a project for which you do not meet the prerequisites, then your supervisor may cancel your project. Should you be allowed to continue, then be advised that there is a significant risk that you will fail the project.
  • Select 5 projects in a priority order 1 to 5 (1: highest)
  • Send an email to Ulf Kargén requesting to be assigned a project. The email must have the following format:
  • Title:
    TDDD17 - request for project

    Body:
    Group:
    Student 1 (Name and LiU ID)
    Student 2 (Name and LiU ID)

    Requested project(s):
    1. ProjectXXX (your first choice for project)
    2. ProjectXXX (your second choice)
    3. ProjectXXX (your third choice)
    4. ProjectXXX (your fourth choice)
    5. ProjectXXX (your fifth choice)

    Where the ProjectXXX is the project id from the list of projects on the web.

    A clear motivation why you fulfil the prerequisites (if any) for each project in your list.

  • Don't forget to motivate why you fulfil project prerequisites! You may be disqualified from a project with prerequisites if you omit the motivation.
  • Be prepared to make new selections in case all your 5 projects from the wish list become unavailable. You will be contacted by us if this will be the case.
  • Your emails requesting projects will be handled in the following way:

    All requests received within the first 2 hours after the projects have been published will be treated completely fairly. That is, if more than one group requests the same project as their first choice, we will randomly assign the project to one of the groups.

    Requests received later than the first hour will be assigned in a first-come first-serve order, after all the early requests have already been assigned.

    The reason for this procedure is to encourage students to thoroughly read and discuss the project descriptions prior to making their requests.

  • Requests from single students will be ignored.

Final presentations

Each group has 13 min for the presentation and 3 min for questions and discussions.

The presentation should start with a brief recap of the problem statement and research questions (including some background/motivation), followed by an overview of the methodology and the most important results, and finally summarize the conclusions of the work.

The presentation should address a broad audience and should be in English.

 


Page responsible: Ulf Kargén
Last updated: 2023-05-22