The CPI Graduate Student Conference (CPI GradConf 2025)

three students at a desk looking at a laptop

                                                                                      The CPI Graduate Student Conference (CPI GradConf 2025)

                                                                                                        March 27, 2025 – University of Waterloo

The Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at the University of Waterloo is delighted to announce the 1st CPI Grad Student Conference (CPI GradConf), a platform dedicated to showcasing innovative research and ideas from graduate students conducting interdisciplinary research that intersect cybersecurity and privacy topics. This conference aims to foster a vibrant academic environment where students can share their findings, gain valuable feedback, and connect with peers, faculty, and industry professionals. 

CPI GradConf 2025 will be an in-person event. Since remote presentations will not be accepted, authors submitting a paper must ensure that one of the authors can present the paper at the conference.

The timeline for conference deadlines is shown below. All deadlines are 11.59pm AoE.

Submission deadline: January 28, 2025

Author notification: March 7, 2025

Camera-ready deadline: March 21, 2025

Conference: March 27, 2025

                                                                                                                                  Call for Papers

                                                                                                                                 What to Submit

We invite submissions for three categories of papers:

  • Abstracts of published papers: Submissions aimed at showcasing papers that have been previously published, leading to talks that delve deep into established research.
  • Work in progress papers: Submissions aimed at showcasing work in progress and presenting preliminary results, leading to talks focused on collecting feedback.
  • New ideas papers: Submissions aimed at presenting new ideas for promoting dialogue and fostering novel collaborations amongst participants.

Papers submitted to the conference will be available online at our submission platform. Authors retain the copyright of their work and may distribute and reuse the contents as they wish.

Submission Instructions

Submissions must follow an extended abstract format, being no longer than two pages for the main body of the paper (i.e., references and appendices may extend beyond two pages). Extended abstracts should convince the reader that the author would give an engaging presentation at the conference.

Manuscript format: Authors should use the double-column ACM format, using the following LaTeX header: \documentclass[sigconf]{acmart}.


Review process: The review process will be single-blind; submissions should not be anonymized, thus revealing the authors names and affiliations.

Submission: Papers must be submitted in PDF format via the submission form in the conference’s HotCRP instance (To be released here soon). Please do not email submissions.

Topics of Interest

We welcome submissions related to cybersecurity and privacy topics, with a particular emphasis on interdisciplinary research that bridges these fields with other domains. Below, you may find a set of topics (and sub-topics) which we consider relevant to the conference. However, this list is not exhaustive, and we encourage authors to interpret the list broadly and we welcome submissions on related topics not explicitly mentioned here.

1. Security and Privacy in Data Science

  • Differential privacy and privacy-preserving data analysis
  • Reliability of Machine Learning Models
  • Fairness, privacy, robustness, and transparency in AI
  • Data and Model Provenance
  • Synthetic data and its role on privacy

2. Human & Societal Aspects of Security and Privacy

  • Design and deployment of usable privacy-enhancing technologies
  • Behavioural choices and user awareness
  • Cultural and societal perceptions of security and privacy
  • Ethical implications of security and privacy technologies
  • Impacts of public policy on security and privacy

3. Cryptography and Quantum-Safe Communication

  • Multi-party Computation
  • Private Information Retrieval
  • Privacy-preserving Machine Learning
  • Post-quantum Cryptography/ Quantum Key Distribution 

4. Network Security

  • Internet Security
  • Secure protocols for distributed systems
  • Mobile and IoT security
  • Blockchain-based security solutions

5. Software, Hardware, and Systems Security

  • Hardware-based threats and security mechanisms
  • Hardware and software vulnerabilities
  • Secure software development lifecycle
  • Threat and risk analysis