Final Project Logistics

  • A team of 3-4 students will propose and produce a final project in the fields of mobile security and trustworthy machine learning. As a team, you have considerable freedom to choose a project of interest to you. The chosen topics must be aligned with the key subjects explored in the course, encompassing perspectives from both offensive and defensive perspectives. You are strongly encouraged to propose your own ideas!
  • 569 students/teams are expected to “produce more” than 469 students/teams! 469 students are allowed to pair up with 569 students to work on the project.

Team Formation (Due 09/06/23, Wednesday)

Final Project Proposal (Due 10/06/23, Friday)

As a team you are responsible for submitting a project proposal of no more than two pages (a PDF document with <= 1inch margins, <=11pt font) that contains the following information:

  1. Project Title
  2. Team ID and Students’ Names
  3. Problem Description: Your final project should have a a well-defined target goal that your team is eager to delve into. Regardless of whether your focus is on constructing a novel attack or defense strategy, you need to clearly state the necessary background (e.g., target systems, vulnerabilities, and existing studies) and your project scope.
  4. Motivation: Why do you want to explore this area?
  5. Timeline: As a team, you need to identify a list of tasks in order to accomplish the final project (e.g., data collection, data processing, algorithm implementation, evaluation, and production of final deliverables) and propose a timeline for the completion of these tasks.
  6. List of Hardware/Software Needs (Optional): Let us know if your team requires any particular equipment or software that is currently unavailable for the project. We will make an effort to provide assistance and determine the feasibility of fulfilling your needs.

Please note that your project may get flagged for plagiarism if you use open-source projects on the Internet as your final project. Project can align with your doctoral, MS, honor’s thesis, or other projects, but this must be disclosed in the proposal and approved by the instructor.

Mid-Project Checkin (Due 11/06/23, Monday)

  • Every team (team leader) is required to submit a one-page PDF report (with <= 1inch margins, <=11pt font) to summarize the project progress and discuss about any issues or concerns you have encountered as a team. The goal here is to ensure consistent forward momentum and to promptly tackle any obstacles hindering progress, while there’s ample opportunity for rectification and improvement. Hence, it is essential to be transparent and forthright in discussing your current state of progress.

Final Project Deliverables (Due 12/08/23, Friday) - Teaser Video is Due 12/05/23

There are three main deliverables for the final project. As a team, each student should be responsible for some part of each of the following:

  1. Functional Source Codes. Each team (team leader) needs to upload the entire code-base of your final project along with a README file to Canvas. The README file should provide full instructions on how to build and run your program.
  2. A Teaser Video. Each team (team leader) is required to submit a teaser video no longer than 90 seconds (1.5 minutes) by 12/05/23, three days prior to the final presentation date. Submitted teaser videos will be posted on the course’s YouTube channel. Many top-tier conferences include teaser videos into their venues to increase the visibility of the work to the broader research community. You may refer to their videos, such as MobiCom’21 Teasers and MobiSys’22 Teasers, to create yours.
  3. In-class Final Presentation.
    • Each team will be given 15 mins for the final project presentation: 12 mins presentation + 3 mins Q&A.
    • Slides need to be uploaded to Canvas after presentation.
    • You need to state clearly in the project presentation about who did what – each student’s contribution to the project
    • Each student needs to present a part of the project presentation

Grading

The grading of the final project will be mainly based on peer assessments encompassing both intra-team and inter-team perspectives. The weighted average of the below assessments will be used for grading.

  • Intra-team Peer Assessment (30%): Each student is required to submit individual assessments for the other members of the team. The assessments will primarily focus on assessing their contributions to the project.
  • Inter-team Peer Assessment (70%): Each student is required to submit individual assessments for other teams’ final projects. The assessments will concentrate on aspects such as project presentation, teaser video, innovation, topicality, overall design, and completeness of the project. Note that the instructor and TA will also submit their assessments to this category.