Syllabus (2023)

Logistics

When: The course sessions will be held on Mondays 1:00 – 3:50 PM. See the course calendar for specific dates of the classes.

See the course calendar for the information about the first class.

Location: see the course entry in the UBC course schedule. 

Announcements: All non-urgent announcements for the course are made in the class. Urgent announcements are sent to the e-mail addresses that the students provided to the UBC registration system.

Course Structure, Activities, and Assessment

In order to pass the course, each student must complete the following modules:

  1. Paper critiques, presentations, and discussions

    We will be reading, critiquing, presenting, and discussing influential and most relevant to the theme of the course research papers recently published in top venues. Every student will read and write a critique for each paper per the course calendar. Writing critiques and receiving feedback from the instructor will help with developing reading, analyzing, critiquing, and writing skills, as well as with learning cybersecurity in general and the specific area of the course focus in particular. Critiques are to be submitted according to the instructions and will be marked according to the assessment criteria.

    Each discussed paper will be presented by one of the students in the class before we start discussing it. The presenter will be playing the role of of the main co-author of the paper. Each presentation will be followed by a round of feedback from the students and the instructor. Presenting papers and feedback on the presentations will help developing (and improving) the skills of presenting and providing feedback on academic research.

    Paper presentations will be followed by round-table discussions, with the focus on the questions answered in the critiques. The discussions will help with deeper understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the research reported in the discussed paper as well as cybersecurity in general.

  2. Research Term Paper

    Each student will choose, propose, write, present, and submit a term paper on any topic of cybersecurity. You should work on your term paper individually.

    The nature and the topic of the paper is your choice, as long as it is related to cyber security or privacy. You are encouraged to align the topic of your term paper with your graduate research.

    You will need to present the term paper proposal and submit a written proposal (see the course calendar site for the submission deadline). It is highly advisable to get going early. The instructor will gladly discuss proposals during office hours before the deadline. Presentation and submission of term paper proposals gives the teaching staff a chance to review and approve your term paper, and to suggest references that you may have overlooked.

    One whole class (in the form of mini-conference) at the end of the term will be devoted to short presentations of each term paper. You will submit a final version of your term paper few days after the presentations.

  3. Examinations

    There will be no examinations in this course.

  4. Sessions

    Attendance of classes is mandatory. If a student has to miss a class, they must submit this academic concession form at their soonest convenience in order to avoid getting 0 for in-class participation for that day. It is the responsibility of each student to be aware of any announcements made during missed classes.

Grading

Grading will be done according to the following scheme:

Module
Grade %
Work throughout the course (45%)
Paper critiques
30
Contributions to paper discussions
5
Presenting papers in-class
10
Research Term Paper (40%)
Research term paper proposal
5
Final version of the research term paper
35
Mini-conference (15%)
Presentation of the term paper
15

Instructor

Dr. Konstantin Beznosov. Office hours: TBD.

Learning Objectives

On the completion of this course, students are expected to be able to:

  1. Orient themselves in the area of security & privacy of AI (S&P of AI),
  2. Analyze and critique research on S&P of AI,
  3. Reason about S&P aspects of AI systems design,
  4. Write research papers on the general subject of cyber security and privacy,
  5. Present their academic research work to other academic researchers.