Dive | Intro to Usable Sec. and Priv. (Fall 2025)

Topic Deep Dive

Your task is to take a deep dive into a topic not covered in detail in this class. Working in groups of 2, you and your teammate will identify a topic, three related papers on that topic, and prepare a presentation to both explore current research and potential future directions. You will also additionally identify a fourth paper that will be added to the reading list for the class. If you are a PhD student, you should complete this assignment individually.

Presentations will be 15 minutes long, 10 minutes of presentation and 5 minutes of questions.

Note that this is a group assignment and you must join a group to complete it on blackboard. This group can be the same as your project group, but doesn’t necessarily have to be.

When submitting your assignment on blackboard, upload a single PDF file that is the slides from your presentation.

Topic Selection

As the purpose of the deep dive is to add breadth to the classroom presentation, it’s important that groups do not all present on the same topic. When forming your group, you should submit three topics with a short description of the theme you want to explore on that topic. You should also include one paper that is an exemplar of that theme that you will include in your presentation. The topics should be ranked in terms of preference so that if there is overlap between groups, we can determine the next preferred topic.

Note that many of these topics are general and there could be multiple deep dives without overlapping content. Be sure to be specific about the theme you want to cover within this topic.

There could also be many topics beyond what is included above. Feel free to check in about other ideas you may have.

Reference material

For each of your topics, you should identify three relevant articles published a top conference or journal in the field in the last few years (~5-7 years) as part of presentation, and one additional article to add to the class readings. When selecting the papers to include, you should consider using a a single article as a starting point and identifying two/three related articles that either cite this article or this article cites.

Here’s a list of those top venues include in your search for relevant articles:

You may find papers outside of these venues, and you should check with the instructor if they are appropriate to use.

Once you have identified the articles for presentation, you should confirm your selection with your instructor.

Note that Arxiv papers are not peer-reviewed and generally do not count. Although, some Arxiv paper are reprints of peer reviewed papers. You should verify that it is published in one of the venues above before including it if you find the articile On Arxiv

Hint: One way to find articles in these venues is google scholar search, but also going to the program pages for these venues dating back the last few years. They are organized by topic. You can also use ACM-DL search, which is also a great resource.

What to submit for your Topic Selection

When submitting your topic preferences, you should include the following in a single pdf submission:

  1. A list of three topic areas that interest you.
  2. For each topic, a short, few-sentence description of the specific are of that topic you’re interested in. For example, if your larger topic space is authentication, you could describe your sub aware of studying the impacts on password managers.
  3. For each topic, include an exemplar paper that you wish to include this way we can make sure you’re on the right track for a topic and again, de-conflict any groups.

Presentation Requirements

Your presentation should be 12 minutes with 3 minutes for questions. A total of 15 minutes. The organization of your presentation should be as follows

Note all members of the team should present for roughly equal amounts.

It’s difficult to present on all three papers in depth. Our recommendation is that you choose one paper to go deeper into and use the other two to show context.

What to submit for final submission

For your final submission, you should submit the following items :

  1. PDF of your presentation slides
  2. On the final page of you presentation, include the three paper references you presented on, and the one addtional paper for the reading.

Note your deep dive presentations need to be submitted on the day of your presentation. Yes, some groups will submit later than others, but that’s how it goes. Sorry.

Grading

Your grade for the presentation will be the average sum of the following items using the scale outlined above.

And we will use the following scores in each grading area.