Presentation/discussion of a paper
The presentation should last about 20 minutes. After that (and a little bit during) the students and myself
will ask questions, and we will have a short discussion about the
paper. You should read and understand the paper very well to be able to explain it to your colleagues and to answer questions correctly. The other students are not
expected to have read the paper.
In the presentation, you should:
- Discuss the high level approach, idea or
insight in the paper, the threat model, security guarantees, show an architecture diagram, overview of the protocol, and any evaluation highlights you deem useful.
Please don't go into uninteresting details
because the other students cannot remember details
of all the different papers we are reading (but be able to
answer questions that might require some detail). The point is for
the class to understand the main contribution and ideas of
this paper. At the same time make sure you have a clear presentation that fits in the time limit.
- Explain the difference between this paper and the main reading
for the lecture. For example, some papers might use different
tools to achieve the same goal: some
use programing language techniques for security, others use cryptography,
etc. This of course implies that you need to understand well the main reading for the class.
- You can use the whiteboard to draw a system
diagram or jot down a few points, as you consider worth. Feel free to use other presentation techniques if you wish, such as presentation slides.
In some rare cases, some papers will be presented by two students - this is the case for papers that deserve a deeper look. In this case, these students should divide equally the paper presentation. We'll allocate 25 minutes in this case for the presentation. We'll ask questions after each part to make sure everyone understands up to that point. In this case, you will be able to go in more detail about the paper.
People who scribe during these lectures should summarize each paper presented and explain how it compares to the main reading.