Bachelor@IAIK
Introduction to Scientific Working,
Bachelor Project, and Bachelor’s Thesis

We want to include you in our research activities. We designed our Bachelor@IAIK program to prepare and accompany you from start to end during an interesting research project. It consists of the 3 courses ISW, the optional Bachelor Project, and the Bachelor’s Thesis.
You can also take these courses independently, but we’d be happy to welcome you in our full 3-course Bachelor@IAIK program:

In Introduction to Scientific Working (see ISW), aka Verfassen wissenschaftlicher Arbeiten (VWA), we show you how to conduct and communicate scientific research, focusing on your writing and communication skills. You’ll work on a literature research topic that prepares you for your bachelor’s thesis, guided by your prospective supervisor. At the end, you give a short presentation and writeup of your topic.
In the optional Bachelor Project, you work on your individual practical project, which is closely connected with your bachelor’s thesis. At the end, you submit your project together with relevant documentation – this is often included in the bachelor’s thesis document.
In the Bachelor’s Thesis, you work on your individual scientific question. This includes literature research, practical project work, and writing. At the end, you submit your project and your written thesis, and give a presentation of your results.

Bachelor@IAIK Event

Every year, we present our new open bachelor’s thesis topics and award prizes to excellent students who contributed to scientific publications this past year. This event is also part of ISW. If you’re interested in joining us for your bachelor’s thesis in security, this is the best way to get an impression of our topics as well as how a bachelor’s thesis at IAIK works: You’ll hear about our research areas and current hot topics, our Bachelor@IAIK program where you can work on your thesis together with your fellow students in one of our offices if you like – we’re looking forward to seeing you here!

Bachelor Presentation Dates

Bachelor presentation dates are scheduled on the 3rd Thursday of every month (exceptions on holidays), 12:00-13:30, in the IAIK seminar room.
Upcoming timeslots are listed in the TUGRAZonline courses for the group "IAIK (Information Security – Standardgruppe)" (WS 2024/25: CS, SEM, ICE).
If you're interested in seeing some presentations before your own one, feel free to join!

Open Topics

System Security


Introduction to Scientific Writing	Secure Systems area
Floating-Point meets Fixed-Point: Exploring non-integer Multiplication Methods for Homomorphic Encryption	Florian Krieger
Metrics for analyzing Homomorphic Encryption acceleration works.	Aikata
Designing approximated Machine Learning models in Python for Homomorphic evaluation.	Aikata
The joy of hardware implementation using ChatGPT	Aikata
The CHERI Capability Architecture	Moritz Waser
Collide+Power to be Continued	Mathias Oberhuber
Effects of Electromagnetic Radiation on Rowhammer	Martin Heckel and Fabian Rauscher
Timing experiments on isogeny-based signature schemes	Anisha Mukherjee and David Jacquemin
Kernel Taint Tracking	Lukas Maar
Let's Secure the Party: homomorphic encryption for multiple clients	Anisha Mukherjee
Optimized implementation of Homomorphic Encryption modules	Anisha Mukherjee
Evaluation of modular multiplication methods used in lattice-based cryptography on FPGA/ASIC	Aikata
Analysis of polynomial multipliers for Post-quantum schemes in Software	Aikata
Analysis of Side-channel protections for polynomial multiplication.	Aikata
Implementing and Evaluating Optimized Integrity Trees	Lukas Lamster
~~SnailLoad Python Implementation~~	Stefan Gast
Software-Induced Side Channels in the Linux Kernel	Lukas Maar
~~SSD Side Channel from JavaScript~~	Jonas Juffinger

Formal Methods


Introduction to Scientific Writing	Formal Methods Area
Simplifying Reactive Programs using E-Graphs	Benedikt Maderbacher
TEMPEST - Shielding Against the Storm	Stefan Pranger
VS-Code Plugin for a Temporal Specification Language	Benedikt Maderbacher

Cryptology & Privacy


Introduction to Scientific Writing	Cryptology and Privacy area
Upgrade Federated Learning with MPC-based Secure Aggregation	Karl W. Koch
The Best of Two Privacy Worlds -- By Combining MPC and DP	Fredrik Meisingseth, Fabian Schmid
Is $P \neq NP$ enough for one-way functions to exist?	Fredrik Meisingseth
~~Implementation of AO Hash Functions~~	Katharina Koschatko
~~Analyzing Block Ciphers for Key Dependencies~~	Marcel Nageler
MitM Cryptanalysis of QARMAv2	Simon Gerhalter
~~Exploring Gröbner Basis Attack Software: A Framework for Efficient Tool Integration with SageMath~~	Katharina Koschatko
Exploring wider usage scenarios of differential privacy	Fredrik Meisingseth
~~Computing the (minimal) multihomogeneous Bézout bound~~	Katharina Koschatko
Efficient Zero-Knowledge Proof Systems	Shibam Mukherjee

Secure Applications


~~Topics for Bachelor Students~~	Secure Applications area
Code Coverage Measurement for Black-box Testing of Unmodified Android Apps	Florian Draschbacher
~~Bluetooth Trust Models of Electric Scooters and Bikes~~	Jakob Heher and Stefan More
Tile-based Transparency Logs	Edona Fasllija
Wallet Binary Transparency	Edona Fasllija

Introduction to Scientific Working 700.200 (winter term): ICE, BE, CS, SEM 2 ECTS
Bachelor Project 700.104 (winter term), 700.404 (summer term): CS, SEM 7 ECTS
Bachelor’s Thesis 700.{101 (CS),102 (SEM),103 (ICE)} (winter term), 700.{401,402,403} (summer term): CS 7 ECTS, SEM 7 ECTS, ICE 8 ECTS

How & When to Register

ISW has a fixed schedule and is only offered in winter term. You can register in TUGRAZonline for the group “Information Security (IAIK)” in early October (more administrative information on ISW at IAIK). You only need to choose IAIK as your preferred institute at this point, not a lecturer (this may be different for other institutes). To get an idea about our topics, check the list above; these usually build on one or more of IAIK’s bachelor courses, so we expect you’re enthusiastic about one of those courses. You will select a specific topic and supervisor in late October and complete ISW by January/February.
Bachelor’s Thesis and Bachelor Project can generally be started any time. If you do ISW with us, the easiest is to follow the Bachelor@IAIK schedule outlined below, but this is not strictly required. To start your thesis, you need to find a supervisor whose topics you find interesting and contact them directly. Email them and ask for a meeting to discuss potential topics (usually based on the above list or related topics). If you enjoyed a lecturer’s courses, but find no topics of them listed above, feel free to contact them (or other people in their research groups) and ask if they’re offering any unlisted topics – or maybe you have your own proposal for a topic.
After starting your thesis (and only then), it is useful to also register in TUGRAZonline: Choose the right course for your curriculum and register for the group corresponding to your supervisor’s team leader – if unsure, just ask. If there are any dummy dates in the course’s calendar (e.g., early morning at “Baustelle”), you can generally ignore those.

Bachelor@IAIK Timeline

We plan the following schedule (see ISW for specific dates in winter term):

Early October: Register for ISW in TUGRAZonline
Mid-October: “Bachelor@IAIK” event with infos, topics, and student awards, co-located with the first session of ISW (Introduction to Scientific Working)
Late October: Pick an ISW/bachelor topic together with an advisor. Of course, you can also pick a project together with your advisor later, without doing ISW.
In November, join the ISW Writing Lab to sharpen your scientific writing skills.
In December (if Corona permits), join the ISW Presentation Lab to get comfortable with presenting.
In January, submit and present your ISW deliverables.
Between November and February: If you want to, start your Bachelor Project to gain hands-on research experience working on real-world scientific questions together with us. It can be a great foundation for a Bachelor’s Thesis and go well hand-in-hand with ISW.
In February your research project should be fully defined when you start your Bachelor’s Thesis. The Bachelor’s Thesis consists of both: doing actual scientific research, but also presenting it in the form of a written thesis document, and a presentation of your work.
We offer 2 “intensive blocks” of work at IAIK in February and around Easter (if Corona permits). These blocks are put into time slots which do not interfere with the usual lecture times. These blocks have a duration of 9-10 work days.
June: Final presentation of your Bachelor’s Thesis (if you are ready to present – we also have individual presentation slots later throughout the year).

In our labs and also in the two working blocks we would like

to help you to research a topic,
to help you to structure your project,
to help you to become better in scientific writing,
to show you how we work and offer you to get to know us better,
to offer you to discuss your ideas with us,
to encourage you to master with us times which need tedious work,
to show you what it means to work in science and engineering,

and much more.

Thesis and Presentation Format

We recommend that you write your thesis in LaTeX using our LaTeX template for bachelor’s theses or a similar suitable thesis template.

We expect that your thesis is at least 2 x ECTS pages long (Introduction to Conclusion, excluding front matter, bibliography, etc.). Discuss with your supervisor what should be included. If your thesis document includes your previous work from ISW (e.g., in the background section) or your bachelor’s project, or if it includes many simple but large items (e.g., screenshots), the expected total length increases accordingly.
For example, theses of students who do ISW + Bachelor Project + Bachelor’s Thesis are typically 30+ pages.

For your presentations, you can use the official TU Graz presentation template for LaTeX or Powerpoint, or any other suitable style.

Thesis and Presentation Format

We recommend that you write your thesis in LaTeX using our LaTeX template for bachelor’s theses or a similar suitable thesis template.

We expect that your thesis is at least 2 x ECTS pages long (Introduction to Conclusion, excluding front matter, bibliography, etc.). Discuss with your supervisor what should be included. If your thesis document includes your previous work from ISW (e.g., in the background section) or your bachelor’s project, or if it includes many simple but large items (e.g., screenshots), the expected total length increases accordingly.
For example, theses of students who do ISW + Bachelor Project + Bachelor’s Thesis are typically 30+ pages.

For your presentations, you can use the official TU Graz presentation template for LaTeX or Powerpoint, or any other suitable style.