2020 Midwest Security Workshop

March 10th, 2020 update: Unfortunately, the Midwest Security Workshop (MSW) originally scheduled to be held Saturday, April 4, 2020 at Purdue University will no longer be held in person. As of today, Purdue University and many of the home institutions of registered attendees have suspended large gatherings and domestic travel for the next few months, making it impossible to hold the event as originally planned.

After an emergency meeting of our steering committee, we wish to communicate the following two points:

We intend to host an MSW event in person at Purdue University once it is safe and advisable to do so. Given the evolving situation, our current target is fall 2020, but we will be closely monitoring the situation to ensure the health of all attendees.
We are considering, but have not yet decided, holding a smaller replacement event entirely online on April 4th.

Please complete our survey that gauges interest in a virtual event on April 4th. Note that we do not intend for a virtual event to replace the benefits of an in-person MSW event, but rather to further strengthen the bonds of the midwestern security community in a chaotic time.

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. The workshop is 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.

MSW 8 (the 2020 edition) will be held on Saturday, April 4th, 2020 at Purdue University, chaired by Christina Garman. Registration is now open with a registration deadline of March 11th! 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 free. We will provide a light breakfast (coffee, pastries, and bagels) and a boxed lunch for each participant on the day of the workshop. However, participants are on their own for covering the costs of all other food, transportation, accommodations (if applicable), and other logistics.

If you are coming to MSW, we wanted to mention that Purdue's 21st Annual CERIAS Security Symposium (not formally affiliated with MSW, but with some overlap in organizers) will be held the following week (April 7 - 8, 2020), also at Purdue.

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 first seven iterations of MSW were as follows:

MSW 7 (program) was held April 13, 2019 at the University of Chicago in Chicago, IL
MSW 6 (program) was held April 14, 2018 at UIUC in Urbana, IL
MSW 5 (program) was held April 26, 2008 at IUPUI in Indianapolis, IN
MSW 4 (program) was held October 6, 2007 at UIC in in Chicago, IL
MSW 3 (program) was held April 7, 2007 at Purdue in West Lafayette, IN
MSW 2 (program) was held September 30, 2006 at UIUC in Urbana, IL
MSW 1 was held May 6, 2006 at DePaul University in Chicago, IL