Stay tuned to this space for information about future iterations of the Midwest Security Workshop.
The Midwest Security Workshop (MSW) began as a series of five workshops held from 2006–2008 with the goal of bringing together researchers in computer security and privacy from throughout the Midwestern United States. After a decade-long hiatus, MSW returned in 2018 at UIUC and 2019 at the University of Chicago. A subsequent iteration was scheduled for Purdue University in 2020, but was sadly canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Most recently, Mini MSW 8.5 was held on Saturday, October 28th, 2023 at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) in Chicago, IL.
All MSW events are open to researchers (including faculty and students) who work on topics related to security and privacy and are based in the midwestern United States, broadly defined. Our goal for MSW is to help connect the midwestern community of security and privacy researchers. As a result, MSW events de-emphasize presenting past work. Instead, we try to seed new collaborations for future work and build community around shared research interests. We typically schedule MSW events to begin in the late morning so that most participating universities can attend the event as a day trip to minimize expenses.
Please join our mailing list if you want to make sure to hear announcements for MSW in future years.
To encourage broad participation, registration for the workshop is typically free. We typically provide coffee and light snacks during breaks, but participants are on their own for covering the costs of all other food, transportation, accommodations (if applicable), and other logistics.
Mini MSW 8.5 was held on October 28th, 2023 at the University of Illinois Chicago (2023 agenda), co-chaired by Chris Kanich and Jason Polakis. We had 153 registered participants, including 21 faculty members, 126 students, and 6 postdocs and researchers. Attendees hailed from 14 different institutions.
MSW 7 was held April 13, 2019 at the University of Chicago (2019 agenda), chaired by Blase Ur. We had 230 registered participants, including 40 faculty members, 170 students, and 20 postdocs and researchers. Attendees hailed from 14 different institutions, including delegations of over ten participants from Purdue, UIUC, IU-Bloomington, UChicago, UIC, the University of Iowa, and the University of Michigan.
MSW 6 was held April 14, 2018 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2018 agenda), chaired by Adam Bates. Far exceeding our expectations based on the first five workshops, we had 214 registered participants, including over 40 faculty members and over 160 students. Attendees hailed from 15 different institutions.
Some photos from MSW 6 (2018):
For a look back in time, the previous iterations of MSW were as follows: