CS513 students are expected to participate in a group project that has non-trivial security content. There is some flexibility in what you do and how you do it. This note outlines what is expected.
Profit from our past experience: one-person groups almost always produce weaker projects (and get the lowest grades), because all the work falls to a single person and because discussing ideas with others, a powerful tool, is not available to a single-person group. Moreover, after graduation you will likely work in a group. So working in a group now will help you hone skills needed to be effective in the workplace. Single-person groups are thus strongly discouraged.
MEng students can use their CS513 project as the basis for the required MEng project. If this is your intention, then your group must all be MEng students who are all electing to use the project in this manner. Your group will then not only be expected to satisfy the project requirements outlined below but is also be expected to:
All submissions should be made through CMS. CMS provides a way for you to define your group. Be advised that each group member must take an action in creating a group, and your group cannot submit anything through CMS until the group has been created.
Grading. The project accounts for 50% of the CS513 final course grade, allocated as follows among the three phases: Phase I (10%), Phase II (15%), Phase III (25%).
Preparing for the Presentation/Demo Meeting. The Presentation/Demo meeting encompasses an hour, and will be structured as follows.
Slides should contain short telegraphic phrases, figures, algorithms (in an easily understood pseudocode), and performance numbers. Use the Powerpoint "speakers notes" feature to amplify what appears on a slide. The "speakers notes" should be prose (i.e., sentences and paragraphs) that is complete enough so that anyone can read them and understand the crux of the slide they accompany. What is said when presenting a slide and what is written in the "speakers notes" is unlikely to be the same---spoken language is less efficient and therefore requires repetition that written notes don't.
Your presentation should: (i) remind us what your system does, (ii) discuss the "security content" of this effort, (iii) describe what (if any) design or implementation innovations were required to complete the project, (iv) explain why your design is a good one, and (v) explain why we should believe that your system is secure.
What to Submit. You need not submit anything until the start of your Presentation/Demo meeting. At that time, you should provide us with:
Grading for Phase III. Your grade for Phase III will be computed as follows: