Student Projects

  1. Steven Burkett - Quantum Computing Concepts
    Though a practical quantum computer is still many years in the future, the theory of quantum computation has been studied for over three decades. Perhaps the best known quantum algorithm is Shor's algorithm, which essentially solves the prime factorization problem in polynomial time. Quantum computing thus has the potential to render public key cryptosystems such as RSA obsolete. This project will review some basics of quantum computation, describe Shor's algorithm in detail, and briefly examine its implications, the current state of the art and some related open problems.

  2. Keven Stumpf - Context Free Grammars Smallest Grammar Problem and Recursive Descent Parsing
    This project will provide a brief introduction to the 'Smallest Grammar Problem' as it relates to Context Free Grammars. It will describe the complexity of the 'Smallest Grammar Problem' and areas of Information Theory to which it can relate. The second part of the project will be a description of how a Recursive Descent Top-Down Parser uses a Context Free Grammar to parse a program and produce a parse tree. From this parse tree, machine code is generated. A very simple grammar will be used and some assumptions such as the existence of a lexical analyzer will be made. Students in the Computer Science curriculum who have not yet taken CS4280 will find this interesting.


  3. Prasanna Krishna-Data Encryption Standard
    Data Encryption Standard is one of major algorithms which is previously predominant algorithm used for encryption of electronic data for nearly 20 years to provide security to the electronic data over the internet.In this project we will see DES algorithm in detail and we use this DES algorithm to show how electronic data is encrypted and decrypted with formulas ,and briefly explain its drawbacks and how it became insecure for present day applications , and the improvements in the DES algorithm


  4. Jason Moeller -Dictionary-Based Compression
    An evaluation of the history, types, and algorithms of dictionary-based compression. Included will be some theory, pseudo-code, and examples of some of the more popular algorithms. The evaluation will be capped off by an example of some working dictionary-base compression code.


  5. Justin Dowdy - Exploring The Berry Paradox "Toolkit: Godel's Incompleteness Theorems"
    Is self-reference to blame for the paradox? Ambiguity? Godel's incompleteness theorems delineate what is possible, in terms of expression, with axiomatic formal theories. Although the Berry paradox is presented in natural language Godel does have something to say about it.


  6. Miguel Aguilar - Chaitin's constant,Chaitin's algorithm, Chaitin's incompleteness theorem.     The PowerPoint Presentation
    The main objective will be to state each theorem and how it works both in Mathematics and Computer Science. The secondary objects will be to show the importance of Chaitin's work in advances in technology and our modern culture, and what other fields have been affected by Chaitin's work. These secondary objectives will depend on time.


  7. Nezic, Admir - Robust Communication
    The known/unknown interference to adversaries
    Secret Key Paradigm
    Adversarial tampering
    Point-to-point links


  8. Sudhir Kumar Balusu - SSL and TLS
    The purpose of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols is to provide a mechanism for secure communications between two parties over a network. This project reviews Data Integrity and its related concepts which are Blocking, Message Authentication Code, Endpoint Verification. It also explains about Messages and types of Messages in SSL and TLS.


  9. Ashley Neal - Elliptic Curves
    Elliptic curves are with a very rich mathematical structure. This project explores how the points on an elliptic curve form an abelian group and how a complex torus is isomorphic to an elliptic curve defined over the complex numbers. We also discuss the discrete log problem which is the basis for elliptic curve cryptography


  10. Debbie Rosser - Elliptic Curves Continued
    I will be talking about and describing two methods of elliptic curve cryptography: diffie-Hellman and Massey-Omura encryption. I will then give some explanation on why we haven't been using this method over the other methods of cryptography, such as RSA.