Seminars

The central registration for all computer science seminars will open on September 11th.

This system is used to distribute students among the available seminars offered by the CS department. To register for any of the seminars, you have to register here until October 16th, 23:59 CET. You can select which seminar you would like to take, and will then be automatically assigned to one of them on October 18th.

Please note the following:

We aim to provide a fair mapping that respects your wishes, but at the same time also respects the preferences of your fellow students.
Experience has shown that particular seminars are more popular than others, yet these seminars cannot fit all students.
Please only select seminars if you are certain that you actually do want to complete a seminar this semester. If you have already obtained sufficient seminar credits, or plan to take other courses this semester, feel free not to choose any seminars. Students who drop out of seminars take away places from those, who might urgently need a space or are strongly interested in the topic.
We encourage those students who wish to take a seminar this semester, to select their preferences for all available seminars, which eases the process to assign students that do not fit the overly popular seminars to another, less crowded one. So if you are serious about taking a seminar this semester, please select at least three seminars (with priority from "High" to "Low").
If you urgently need to be assigned to a seminar in the upcoming semester, choose at least five seminars (with priority from "High" to "Low"). We will then guarantee that you will be assigned to a seminar (yet not necessarily one of your choice).
If you are really dedicated to one particular seminar, and you do not want any other seminar, please select the "No seminar" as second and third positive option. However, this may ultimately lead to the situation that you are not assigned to any seminar. Also, choosing "No seminar" as second/third option does not increase your chances of getting your first choice.

The assignment will be performed by a constraint solver on October 18th, 2024. You will be added to the respective seminars automatically and be notified about this shortly thereafter. Please note that the assignment cannot be optimal for all students if you drop the assigned seminar, i.e., make only serious choices to avoid penalty to others.

Computer-Assisted Proofs in LEAN by Laurent Bartholdi, Leon Pernak

As mathematical research advances, researchers become more and more specialized, and the mathematics they produce becomes more and more complicated to verify.
The possibility to formalize and check proofs thanks to computer programs is thus more relevant than ever. What’s more, tremendous progress in recent years make it so that formalizing actual research level mathematics is possible, and formalizing student level mathematics is accessible to students.
In this seminar, students will practice with the LEAN proof assistant (https://leanprover-community.github.io/).
We meet weekly on Zoom, and discuss informally: each student gets a chance to speak, to explain the work they have done in previous weeks, and to plan ahead.
See the course's page to obtain the zoom link.
https://www.math.uni-sb.de/ag/bartholdi/cap/

Requirements: Students may obtain up to 8 credit points, by formalizing a theorem or new definitions, thus contributing to mathlib, the library which gathers all mathematics that has already been formalized in LEAN.
Topics suitable to both MSc and BSc students will be offered, no prior knowledge is required.

Places: 10

Hardware Security: Testing and Verification by Jan Reineke

Spectre, Meltdown, and other microarchitectural attacks have been in the limelight in recent years. These attacks exploit subtle timing and behavioral differences of processors that are caused by microarchitectural optimizations such as caches and speculative execution to gain access to secret information.

The vulnerabilities exploited by microarchitectural attacks are not captured by today's hardware-software contracts, i.e. instruction-set architectures (ISAs). Traditionally, ISAs only capture the "functional" behavior of a system and thus have a blind spot when it comes to side channels. Recently, there has been a push to augment conventional ISAs with a formal specification of information leakage, resulting in more general hardware-software contracts. Such contracts enable writing secure code, e.g. implementing cryptographic algorithms, in a rigorous manner.

In this course we will study recent advances to prove the security of hardware designs or find vulnerabilities in them. We will focus on two main techniques: formal verification to and fuzzing.

For more details get in touch with Jan Reineke (reineke@cs.uni-saarland.de) or consult the seminar page: https://cms.sic.saarland/securehardware24

Requirements: Basic knowledge of computer architecture (e.g. due to System Architecture) is required.
Knowledge of security and formal methods is a plus, but not required.

Places: 3

Logical Reasoning for Program Verification and Synthesis by Rayna Dimitrova

Automated logical reasoning is the backbone of many state-of-the-art methods and tools for software and hardware verification, program synthesis, automatic bug finding, and compiler optimization. In this proseminar we will study automated reasoning techniques for different logical theories that are commonly used in the context of program verification and synthesis, and how they are applied to the design, analysis, and construction of software.

Presentations: A key objective of the proseminar is for students to learn how to give a scientific presentation. Each student will give two presentations on the topic that they have been assigned (based on provided references that will be research papers or book chapters).
* The first presentation is for practice (and is not graded), and after it the fellow students and the instructor will provide feedback on the quality of the presentation and suggestions about what can be improved.
* The second presentation (which will be graded) will be on the same or a closely related topic but based on a different reference.

Feedback: All students are expected to participate actively in the discussions, and will be required to provide feedback for each of the practice presentations.

Summary: At the end of the semester each student will submit a short summary (3-4 pages) of the topic that they have presented.

Attendance: Participation in all meetings is mandatory (exceptions require an official document, such as a doctor's certificate).

Logistics: The proseminar will start with a kick-off meeting where we will give background information, describe the topics available for presentation, as well as information on how to prepare a scientific presentation and how to provide feedback to fellow students. The presentations, feedback and the discussions will be in English.

Requirements: Participants are expected to have interest in formal logic and formal verification, and to be able to understand mathematical notation.

Places: 12

Nature-Inspired Optimisation by Kristina Schaefer, Joachim Weickert

In millions of years, nature has developed a wide variety of survival strategies. Many of these strategies are simple, but still allow for tackling complex problems and tasks. In this proseminar, we will explore algorithms inspired by nature such as genetic algorithms and methods based on swarm behavior can be used in the context of optimization problems

More information: https://www.mia.uni-saarland.de/Teaching/nio24.shtml

Requirements: The proseminar is designed for students of computer science and math department with basic mathematical knowledge (e.g. Mathematics for Computer Scientists I-III).

Places: 12

Recent Topics in XR and XAI by Antonio Krüger, Margarita Chikobava, Gian-Luca Kiefer und André Zenner

Dieses Proseminar bietet einen Überblick über die neuesten Trends in Extended Reality (XR) und Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI). Die Studierenden lernen die Methoden und Anwendungen von XAI und im XR-Bereich anhand aktueller wissenschaftlicher Veröffentlichungen kennen.

Dieses Proseminar verfolgt zwei Ziele:

Erlernen und Erproben von wissenschaftlichen Präsentationstechniken
Tiefere Einblicke in ausgewählte Forschungsthemen im Bereich Extended Reality (XR) und Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)

Für mehr Details (z. B. Aufgaben während des Semesters, …) sollten Sie sich die folgende Webseite anschauen: https://umtl.cs.uni-saarland.de/teaching/winter-2024/2025/recent-topics-in-xr-and-xai.html

Requirements: Tabellarische Literaturrecherche über 3 Papiere
15-minütiger Kurzvortrag über die Papiere mit detailliertem Feedback
Zusammenfassung eines Kurzvortrages eines Mitstudierenden
20-minütige Präsentation eines ausgewählten Papiers mit anschließender Diskussion (inklusive obligatorischem Probevortrag)

Places: 12

Wireless and Mobile Security by Mridula Singh

We employ wireless systems today to share confidential data, pay parking tickets, report heart rates with the doctor, find lost luggage, and much more. Therefore, it is an essential requirement that wireless systems provide confidential communication, secure localization, location privacy, and secure access control. In this proseminar, we will discuss security vulnerabilities of different wireless systems like WiFi, Bluetooth, Cellular, UWB, etc.

We will begin the proseminar at the kick-off meeting by assigning papers to the students and providing some background about the proseminar. We will provide advice and resources to help you prepare and deliver a scientific presentation. There will be two rounds of presentations. In the first round, the students will present a paper and receive detailed feedback from all participants. The primary evaluation will be done in the second round of presentations. At the end of the semester, students would be required to submit a short 1-2 page summary of the paper they have presented.

Places: 12

Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten im Bereich digitaler und analoger Spiele und darüber hinaus by Pascal Lessel and Antonio Krüger

Das Ziel dieses Proseminars ist es, ihre Fähigkeiten in den Bereichen „Kreativität“, „Recherche“, „Präsentation“, und „Wissenschaftliches Schreiben“ zu trainieren.

Dabei werden wir uns in diesem Proseminar im Bereich der digitalen und analogen Spieleforschung bewegen und die Fähigkeiten in diesem Kontext trainieren. Dadurch werden Sie zusätzlich einen Einblick in konkrete Forschungsgegenstände und -methoden aus diesem Bereich erhalten.

Für mehr Details (z. B. Aufgaben während des Semesters, …) sollten Sie sich die folgende Webseite anschauen: https://umtl.cs.uni-saarland.de/teaching/winter-2024/2025/proseminar-wabda2024.html

Wenn Sie dieser Veranstaltung eine Priorität geben, beantworten Sie bitte unbedingt die folgende Frage im Feld „Motivation“: Wie charakterisieren Sie sich als Spieler*in und warum sind Sie an diesem Proseminar interessiert? Nennen Sie ihre 3 Lieblingsspiele (egal ob analog oder digital).

Hinweis: Die Veranstaltung findet in deutscher Sprache statt.

Requirements: Sie sollten selbst Erfahrung mit Spielen (als spielende Person haben); abgesehen davon hat das Proseminar keine fachlichen Voraussetzungen. Jedoch sollten Sie dieser Veranstaltung nur wählen, wenn Sie bereit sind im Semester wöchentlich dafür Aufwand zu investieren und Interesse an interaktiven wöchentlichen Terminen haben. Dazu bitten wir Sie darum bei jedem Termin ein Laptop o. Ä. mitzubringen, um die interaktiven Aufgaben auch ausführen zu können (ein Smartphone ist dafür unzureichend).
Außerdem müssen Sie dran, das Feld "Motivation" entsprechend auszufüllen (s. o.).

Places: 6