work

This week felt a bit paradoxical. There wasn't a whole lot that I needed to do. But on the other hand, I had realization that there's actually a lot that I need to do over in the next coming weeks. The main highlights this week were my meetings and the small holiday party that was held for CS faculty and staff. The Cybersecurity faculty got a lot done for the CyS curriculum, the faculty had a productive meeting with the provost, and some of my research projects moved along nicely! The main downside of the week was that our paper was rejected at Eurocrypt :(. Seems like the reviewers needed to be more convinced that our proposal was practical, but we'll see what we end up doing with it in the future.

I also gave a talk to the CS 101 class at Stevens, where I told them about the history of cryptography and some of my own research. Funnily enough, after my talk, most of the students were just asking questions about quantum computing (even though I didn't mention it in my talk). It seems like there's a lot of demand for curious students to understand what quantum can/can't do and how it affects cryptography. So, I think I'll look into the courses at Stevens and maybe try to fill the gap if that's what the students want.

After my talk, the itch to prepare my class hit me. I am a little anxious to be in charge of my first class but also excited to get to teach my version of the Foundations of Cryptography course. I spent some time setting up the course website, setting the schedule, and front-loading some lecture note/problem set/project writing (huge thanks to my old advisor David for letting me use his materials!). It calmed me a bit to have that stuff more under control, but I don't think I'll be fully settled until I'm in the flow of the class, or it's over.

(I also have deadlines in January that I have to meet (!), so I can't focus exclusively on the course.)

non-work

Life outside of work was pretty typical, which is good. I finally got around to beating Silksong last weekend! I stopped right at the final boss because it was pretty tough, but I sat down and pushed through. Everything else mostly plugged along a normal pace. I'm still working through the endgame of Hades 2, reading Katabasis, and fighting people in Baldur's Gate. I'm looking forward to next week, though! After I get back from the aspiring PI workshop, my partner will fly in, and we have a lot of fun plans even before we go home to see my family for Christmas.

questions

• What is a good quantum computing course for undergrads? Are there resources out there to draw on?
  • I think I might try to revamp or offer a new quantum computing class that focuses on the CS theory part of quantum computing
  • Maybe I could teach it in combination or as part of a computational complexity course?

Thanks for reading to the end! Here's a picture of my cat loafing on our balcony, watching me work on my computer.