Teaching

• Course: Operating Systems (CO20-320202)
• Semester: Fall 2019
• Instructor: Jürgen Schönwälder
• TA: Shala, Ardit
• TA: Mana, Irsida
• Class: Monday, 08:15-09:30 (R.1-53 Lecture Hall)
• Class: Thursday, 09:45-11:00 (R.4-52 Conference Room)
• Class: Friday, 13:00-14:00 (R.1-53 Lecture Hall)
• Final Exam: Monday, 2019-12-09 09:00-11:00 (SCC Hall 3)
• Makeup Exam: Friday, 2020-01-31 17:00-19:00 (East Hall 4)
• Office: Monday, 11:15-12:30 (Research I, Room 87)

This course provides an introduction to the concepts underlying operating systems. Students will develop an understanding how operating systems realize a virtual machine that can be used to execute multiple concurrent application programs. The course discusses resource allocation algorithms and how concurrency problems can be solved.

Topics: Operating system architectures, system calls and interrupts, concurrent processes and threads, scheduling, synchronization, deadlocks, virtual memory, file systems, inter-process communication, socket programming interface.

Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) such as ARM's Trustzone or Intel's Enclave are secure areas inside a main processor. The idea is that data and applications contained in TEEs is protected with respect to confidentiality and integrity. Systems execute a trusted operating system inside the TEE and they may load trusted applications into the TEE. The goal of this project is investigate the state of the art in TEEs and their open source software systems and to prototype novel trusted applications that may help to secure networked embedded devices.

This work requires strong interest in working with low-level C code in embedded systems. It also requires a certain portion of creativity and the willingness to work with fast developing new technology.

• Demystifying Arm TrustZone: A Comprehensive Survey

• Course: Computer Networks (CO20-320301)
• Semester: Spring 2019
• Instructor: Jürgen Schönwälder
• TA: Granderath, Malte
• TA: Shrestha, Aavash
• Class: Monday, 09:45-11:00, Lecture Hall Research I
• Class: Friday, 09:45-11:00, Lecture Hall Research I
• Office: Monday, 11:15-12:30 (Research I, Room 87)

The course discusses network protocols in some depth in order to enable students to understand the core issues involved in network protocol design. Fundamental algorithms and principles are explained in the context of existing IEEE / Internet protocols in order to demonstrate how they are applied in real-world scenarios. This course is recommended for all students with a strong interest in communication networks and distributed systems.

The course covers topics such as local area networks (IEEE 802), Internet protocols, routing algorithms and protocols, flow and congestion control mechanisms, data representation, application layer protocols, remote procedure calls, network security.

• Course: Project Computer Science (CA10-320305)
• Course: Thesis Computer Science (CA10-320306)
• Semester: Fall 2018
• Semester: Spring 2019
• Instructor: Peter Baumann
• Instructor: Andreas Birk
• Instructor: Horst Karl Hahn
• Instructor: Herbert Jaeger
• Instructor: Szymon Krupinski
• Instructor: Kinga Lipskoch
• Instructor: Francesco Maurelli
• Instructor: Jürgen Schönwälder
• Prerequisites: Two CS core modules passed

Doing research in computer science usually starts with a lot of reading and learning. In order to do research that is significant, it is crucial to pick a tractable topic and it is essential to understand the state of the art as well as any algorithms and tools that are relevant. While the details differ depending on the area of computer science, reading about the state of the art is essential for all of them. To find relevant literature, it is good to be aware of systems such as:

• IEEE Xplore (digital library provided by the IEEE)
• ACM Digital Library (digital library provided by the ACM)
• IFIP Digital Library (digital library provided by the IFIP)
• Scopus (commercial research publication indexing system)
• dblp (open computer science publication indexing system)

The project phase is essentially a way into your specific bachelor thesis topic. During the project phase, you should pick up and deepen the necessary knowledge, you should develop a good understanding of the state of the art, and you should get familiar with any programs or tools or datasets that are essential for carrying out a little research project during the bachelor thesis course.

LaTeX is widely used as the typesetting system for research papers in computer science. Hence, we expect that project and thesis reports are written in LaTeX. Below are some LaTeX templates that you are expected to use for typesetting the project report and later the thesis. Please do not change or improve the format, it is usually far better to spend your brain cycles on the content instead of the format (and we really appreciate a common format).

• BSc Template (LaTeX)
• BSc Template (BibTeX)
• BSc Logo (pdf)
• BSc Template (pdf)

• Course: Secure and Dependable Systems (CO21-320203)
• Semester: Spring 2019
• Instructor: Jürgen Schönwälder
• TA: Vitanov, Milen
• TA: Dandekar, Aditya
• Class: Tuesday, 14:15-15:30, Lecture Hall Research I
• Class: Thursday, 14:15-15:30, East Hall 4
• Office: Monday, 11:15-12:30 (Research I, Room 87)

This course introduces formal methods for analyzing and assuring safety and security of software systems. The course starts off with a clarification of concepts such as dependability, quality, safety, and security of software systems, and how to achieve them in the software development process. We introduce the foundations of cryptography as a basis for security mechanisms. The main part of the course introduces different paradigms of safety/security analysis such as formal testing (code coverage), static program analysis (control/data flow analysis and abstract interpretation), model checking (computational tree logic), and program verification (Hoare calculus, dynamic logic). The formal techniques will be used for analyzing both safety and security properties of programs. Where possible, students will be given hands-on micro-projects in state-of-the-art tools (e.g., Isabelle for program verification).

• Course: Introduction to Computer Science (CH08-320101)
• Semester: Fall 2018
• Instructor: Jürgen Schönwälder
• TA (Group D): Bayer, Jonas
• TA (Group E): David, Marco
• TA (Group B): Huynh, Dung Tri
• TA (Group C): Mana, Irsida
• TA (Group A): Pal, Abhik
• Class: Tuesday, 08:15-09:30 (Lecture Hall Research II)
• Class: Tuesday, 09:45-11:00 (Lecture Hall Research II)
• Class: Thursday, 11:15-12:30 (Lecture Hall Research II)
• Midterm: Tuesday, 2018-10-30, 08:15-09:30 (Campus Center, east wing and west wing)
• Final: Thursday, 2018-12-20, 16:00-18:00 (SCC Hall 3+4)
• Office: Monday, 11:15-12:30 (Research I, Room 87)

The course covers the fundamental concepts and techniques of computer science in a bottom-up manner. Based on clear mathematical foundations (which are developed as needed) the course discusses abstract and concrete notions of computing machines, information, and algorithms, focusing on the question of representation versus meaning in Computer Science.

To develop a theoretical notion of computation, we introduce basic concepts of discrete mathematics with a focus on inductively defined structures. The functional programming language Haskell will be introduced and used as the primary programming language for the course. We cover a basic subset of Haskell that includes types, recursion, tuples, lists, strings, and higher-order functions. Back on the theoretical side, we cover the syntax and semantics of Boolean expressions and we explain how Boolean algebra relates to logic gates and digital circuits. On the technical side, we introduce the representation of basic data types such as numbers, characters, strings and dates as well as the basics of computer architecture and assembly programming. On the algorithmic side, the course introduces the notion of correctness and elementary complexity theory (big-O notation) and we introduce abstract data types.

• Course: Operating Systems (CO20-320202)
• Semester: Fall 2018
• Instructor: Jürgen Schönwälder
• TA (Group B): Vitanov, Milen Asenov
• TA (Group A): Wang, Fanlin
• Class: Thursday, 15:45-17:00 (Lecture Hall Research II)
• Class: Friday, 14:15-15:30 (West Hall 5, Lecture Hall Research III)
• Final: Friday, 2018-12-14, 12:30-14:30 (CNLH)
• Office: Monday, 11:15-12:30 (Research I, Room 87)

This course provides an introduction to the concepts underlying operating systems. Students will develop an understanding how operating systems realize a virtual machine that can be used to execute multiple concurrent application programs. The course discusses resource allocation algorithms and how concurrency problems can be solved.

Topics: Operating system architectures, system calls and interrupts, concurrent processes and threads, scheduling, synchronization, deadlocks, virtual memory, file systems, inter-process communication, socket programming interface.

This is a topic for someone interested in computer generated sounds. I am interested in algorithms that convert status information obtained by monitoring systems (say a monitor of computer network) into audible sounds that (i) are not intrusive but (ii) can signal significant changes in the conditions. There is work in this space. Some people recently wrote special programming languages that allow to describe sound generations as programs.

This topic is somewhat experimental and producing a 'good' or even just a 'reasonable' solution will be difficult since most naive approaches tend to be annoying soon. This is a topic for students with a strong interested in music, sound generation, etc.

• BSc Template (LaTeX)
• BSc Template (BibTeX)
• BSc Logo (pdf)
• BSc Template (pdf)

The preparation of the Guided Research Proposal is the first half of your thesis work. Don't underestimate it! Without a successful preparation phase, by experience, thesis finalization will be less thorough and, hence, less successful. For example, large parts of the Guided Research Proposal will go into the main thesis, related work being a good example.

The preparation phase includes, among others (and obviously somewhat also depending on the particular topic): familiarization with the topic; elaborating background through literature work; related work, and core concepts of the thesis.

Hence, the proposal needs to contain at least these elements (again, to be confirmed with your supervisor): motivation; research issues; relevance of this work ("how will the world be better once your results are available?"); related work, explained and put in relation with your work; a clear description of the second phase's outcome; a discussion about limits and further work (issues spotted, but not addressed in the framework of this thesis); a realistic time plan for the second phase.

Students must select the guided research topic and the supervisor beginning of October (see the timeline above). The choosen topic and supervisor must be communicated by email to Jürgen Schönwälder <j.schoenwaelder@jacobs-university.de>.

Students must submit the guided research proposal at a deadline when classes end (see timeline above). Late submissions of the research proposal or late selection of the topic will be penalized by a grade reduction of 10 percentage points per day late.

• Guided Research Computer Science (Introduction)
• Large-Scale Information Services (Peter Baumann)
• Machine Learning (Herbert Jaeger)
• Logic (Florian Rabe)
• Computer Networks and Distributed Systems (Jürgen Schönwälder)

Below are some LaTeX templates that you are expected to use for typesetting the proposal and later the thesis. Please do not change or improve the format, it is usually far better to spend your brain cycles on the content instead of the format (and we really appreciate a common format).

• BSc Template (LaTeX)
• BSc Template (BibTeX)
• BSc Logo (pdf)
• BSc Template (pdf)