Please note that the organization of this post and all subsequent ones will follow the same format. Each post will consist of a series of entries separated by date – one for each that week – followed by a summary of the main progress for the week as a whole.

Monday, May 27, 2024

Today is Memorial Day; I officially start the program tomorrow.

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Today I began the program in earnest. My progress is as follows:

• Begin the CITI training course on conducting social/behavioral research on human subjects (roughly just over half done with 17 modules)
• Initialize this website
• Begin a more thorough brainstorm of project ideas beyond those previously discussed with my program mentor, Sameer Patil
• Plan tentative literature search based on brainstorm results

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Second day of the program – had our first lab meeting!

We…

• Introduced our cohort to Sameer’s lab
• Discussed potential project ideas for my DREU cohort members and myself
• Reviewed lab member progress for indvidual member projects

Afterwards, I spent the rest of the day working on my ethics training. I’ve successfully completed the course on Ethical Social & Behavioral Research on Human Subjects and began working on Responsible Conduct of Research.

Thursday, May 30, 2024

Today was quite straightforward. I simply completed the CITI training and fleshed out existing ideas for the summer project, as reflected in this website. Please note that the idea and milestones are subject to change.

Progress:

• Finished CITI RCR training
• Scheduled meeting to discuss project idea (tentatively phishing email analysis)
• Worked on website (fulfilling minimum requirements)
• Began literature search to solidify project idea

Friday, May 31, 2024

Didn’t get a lot done today due to unexpected circumstances. However, I do have some progress for the day.

I simply continued reviewing the paper on digital fingerprinting that Prof. Patil has been working on. I took detailed notes, accumulated a plethora of questions, and reflected critically upon the study design. I finished reading the paper, but still had to organize my notes in a format suitable for an email.

Week 1 Summary

Overall, the week was fairly productive. Given that I lost some time on Friday and missed Memorial Day, it was not ideal in terms of output. That said, I got certified in two forms of research and began my first usable security literature search. I’m excited for what is to come for the next week.