Proseminar Public-Key Cryptography
News
- You may be interested in our Seminar FAQ
Dates and Times
Deadlines are always 23:59 CEST (UTC+2).
When |
| What |
|---|---|---|
21.04. |
| Submission of topic preferences Deadline to submit your topic preferences. We will assign topics according to your preferences. |
ca. 26.04. |
| Start of weekly "Writers' Hangouts" We offer optional weekly online hangouts as a place for you write and discuss your writing and any arising issues with supervisors or other students. |
08.06. | Submission of the first essay version for feedback This submission is not graded, but a chance for you to get in-depth feedback. | |
01.07. |
| Submission of your final presentation Submit your presentation as a video file. This will be graded. |
| 09.07. | Submission of peer presentation feedback Watch others' presentations and write (short) feedback for your peers. The quality of your feedback can influence your final grade. | |
16.07. |
| Suggested time for submission of final essay version You can choose to submit your final essay here if you'd like to avoid working on it during the semester break. This is what we would consider a reasonable deadline for your essay. |
| 15.09. | Final, hard essay submission deadline This is the latest date you can submit your final essay version if you didn't choose to do it earlier. We will grade versions submitted here with the same expectations as versions submitted earlier. |
Overview
For the seminar, you will have to write an essay, record a presentation on your topic, and give feedback on other students' presentations. The final grade is composed of the quality of the essay and, to a lesser degree, the quality of your presentation. We will also take the quality of the feedback you give for other presentations into consideration for your final grade.
The main goal for the Proseminar is for you to gain experience in scientific writing and presenting. This will come in handy for the Bachelor thesis at the latest.
Seminar Topics
We offer a variety of cryptography-related topics. The focus of this seminar is not on teaching cryptography, but rather on your writing and presentation skills. This is why the topics themselves are not incredibly expansive or difficult, though we recommend having attended Introduction to Cryptography prior to this seminar.
We will send the concrete list of topics to choose from to participants via email. Contact Jan Bobolz if you didn't get an email.
Formalities
Attendance
This is a purely online seminar without mandatory attendance for anything.
Writers' Hangout
We will host weekly online "writers' hangouts". At least one scientist from Prof. Blömer's staff will be present. The hangout is a place to (1) get writing done while (2) being able to ask questions and discuss arising issues directly.
You don't have to (always) attend, but in our opinion, the best way to become a great writer is through immediate feedback and good discussions with experienced writers. So come hang out with us. Ask questions on your topic. Share your screen and ask for feedback on a paragraph you've written or a text structure you've outlined. Ask how to best manage writer's block. Ask what tools to use or how to fix this LaTeX error. Ask other students whether they can understand what you're writing. Or maybe just use this session to silently write your essay and sometimes listen in on discussions.
Language
You can choose the language for your essay and presentation to be either German or English. Any material we provide to you (including source material for your topic) will be in English.
Essay
Your essay should be 8 to 16 pages. It should be in the style of a scientific paper. If you like, you can use our LaTeX templates as a starting point.
We prefer you submit 8 pages of gold rather than 16 pages of mediocre writing (we also prefer 8 pages of gold to an essay with 8 pages of gold and another 8 pages of garbage).
Presentation Video
In addition to your essay, you have to submit a video of your presentation. You do not need to capture images of yourself speaking - an audio track over slides is sufficient. Your presentation should be roughly 30-40 minutes long and should targeted at an audience of your fellow students.
Presentation peer feedback
We will assign you three presentations to give feedback on.