Instructor: Feng Qin Office: 699 Dreese Lab Office hours: by appointment Email: qin AT cse.ohio-state.edu Phone: (614) 247-4533

	Prerequisite CSE660, CSE675, and CSE459.21, or permission of the instructor.
	Announcements 1. (Jan. 03) Welcome to the class! <more>
	Course Format [important!] As rapid advances in computer hardware have led to dramatic improvement in computer performance, software dependability and security are becoming increasing important. In this course, we will mainly discuss RECENT innovations on improving software dependability and security with the support from various disciplines, including operating systems, software engineering, compiler, and data mining. The topics cover software bug detection in general and high-end systems, automated software testing, failure recovery, bug diagnosis, and security. To improve students' research skill and their abilities of critical thinking, the activities of this course include (1) writing paper critiques (2) presenting papers from top conferences (3) discussing papers and debating ideas (4) conducting a research-oriented project by group or individually. More details about each activity are listed as follows. (1) Paper critiques (15%): Each week, you need to read a few classic and recent papers related to one topic and write critiques for two papers among them. Here is the reading list by each week's topic. I need your critiques for two of the papers with the green mark (*) before the class on Tuesdays. Try to select two papers that will be presented in two different classes for the same topic. In each critique, you need to summarize the paper using 3-5 sentences, to point out 2-3 major contributions of the paper, to describe 2-3 key weaknesses of the paper, to discuss your suggestions on how to address those key issues, and to raise 2-3 questions about the paper. (2) Paper presentation (15%): The 3-4 paper presentations each week cover the same topic as that for the critiques in the same week. By Jan.08, you need to sign up for two paper presentations. To help you understand more about different topics, you are not allowed to sign up for two papers within one week. For each presentation, you have 20-25 minutes to talk about problems, background, ideas, high-level design&implementation issues, experiments, tools, results, and related work. Additionally, we have 10-15 minutes to discuss the paper, which can interleave with or after the paper presentation. You need to send me your slides by 12pm one day before the presentation. (3) Paper/Idea discussion/debating (20%): Each week, we will discuss in-depth about the papers presented and other papers related to the week's topic in class or via newsgroup. I value most the creative ideas in the topic and strongly encourage debating over them. Furthermore, we will discuss the on-going class projects. (4) Projects (50%): More importantly, you need to conduct a research-oriented project either by group (2 students per group) or individually. By Jan.10, you form the group with another student if needed. I will present a few potential projects for the class. You can select one of them, or you propose your own projects. You can find on-going projects here. In the middle of the quarter (Feb.07), you need to submit the written project proposals and present your on-going projects. By the end of the quarter (Mar.06), you need to do a final presentation about your project and submit a final report.
	Late Policy: The late submission will have 2% penalty for each hour after the due time.