Project

A semester-long research project in LLM and Agentic AI security.

Table of contents

  1. Overview
  2. Project Timeline
    1. Project Proposal Document Due — Jan 27
    2. Project Status Presentation — In class, March 10
    3. Final Project Presentation — In class, April 23 and 28
    4. Final Paper — Due on May 4

Overview

Your course project should address an important, interesting open problem related to AI security. I’m happy to discuss your project ideas individually and help you refine them.

Projects may be done individually or in pairs (larger groups need to do proportionately more). Your final grade will be based on milestone artifacts and the final report.

Project Timeline

Project Proposal Document Due — Jan 27

Submit a one-page document via email to the instructor. One member of each team should send the document by the deadline. The proposal must include the following four sections:

  1. Team Members: Names and contact information.
  2. Problem Statement: What specific security gap or research question are you addressing?
  3. Proposed Solution: Your technical approach or hypothesis.
  4. Proposed Evaluation Plan: How will you measure success (datasets, metrics, or benchmarks)?

Project Status Presentation — In class, March 10

Each group will give an in-class presentation about the status of their project. You’ll have 5 minutes to speak. This presentation should include:

  • Problem statement
  • Basic idea and technical insights
  • Motivating examples (at least two)
  • Prototypes
  • Preliminary evaluation results

Final Project Presentation — In class, April 23 and 28

Each group will give an in-class presentation about the status of their project, in the style of a brief conference talk. You’ll have 12 minutes to speak. This presentation should include:

  • Problem statement
  • Design
  • Implementation
  • Results

Final Paper — Due on May 4

Your group’s final project report should be written in the style of a workshop or conference submission, similar to the papers we have read this semester. Please include at least:

  1. An abstract that summarizes your work.
  2. An introduction that motivates the problem you are trying to solve.
  3. A related work section that differentiates your contributions.
  4. Section(s) describing your architecture or methodology.
  5. Results and/or evaluation section(s), with data/figures to support your claims.
  6. A brief future work section explaining what is left to do.
  7. Appropriate citations and references from the literature.

See also: advice on writing technical articles.

The length of your report should not exceed 6 typeset pages, excluding bibliography and well-marked appendices. You may include appendices, but graders are not required to read them. Format your text in two columns, using 10 point Times Roman type on 12 point leading, in a text block of 6.5” by 9”. I strongly encourage you to use Latex. You can use this Overleaf latex template.