Undergraduate projects

Final year projects

I am interested to supervise students on the following undergraduate final year projects; I’m also open to consider other titles in my areas of expertise, but please contact me well in advance to ensure adequate planning.

Drugs & fake ids: the follow up

During summer 2015 myself and Sin Wee Lee run a project to mine data from the Dark Web, which was followed up by an in depth analysis in 2015-16, that was featured on the first page of The Times and in a number of other news outlets.

We are now looking for students to work on follow-up works. Some of the topics are broadly speaking technology-neutral – can be developed in different programming languages, others are not and we would like them to be developed with a specific software stack.

  • Here is the data. The student taking this project will work on making a web interface and APIs to disseminate the data we have mined in the previous parts of the project (PHP).
  • Legal highs: surface web and dark web. The student taking this project will look into the legal highs market.
  • Dark web: the other 20%. The student taking this project will look at the most marginal categories in the dark web markets – everything that doesn’t include drugs and fake ids (Python, R, Excel or SAS recommended).
  • [this title is missing on purpose]. We have some ideas on how to [this phrase is not finished on purpose]. If you can program blindfolded and you want to develop your NLP skills, get in touch (Python or R only).
  • What’s new in the dark web? Over 100 new marketplaces exist. What are the critical differences? What are they security protections? Are they more resilient to the methods used in our past research?

Social Media insights

The student will analyse a topic on social media and/or specific on-line discussion fora, drawing insights of the on-line attitude towards that topic and on user networks.

The student will:

  • Write a spider that will download data from the chosen website(s) [to some extent optional]
  • Analyse the top keywords and top influencers in statistical terms
  • Analyse the data collected using NLP tecniques
  • Establish links between actors in the social media under examination
  • Efficiently visualise the data

This project requires strong programming skills from day 1. Python is mandatory, and JavaScript would be beneficial for the final data visualisation. A strong familiarity with databases (ideally both relational and not) and some understanding of devops are also needed.

Social Media data analysis

The student will analyse a topic on social media and/or specific on-line discussion fora, drawing insights of the on-line attitude towards that topic and on user networks.

The student will:

  • Analyse the top keywords and top influencers in statistical terms
  • Analyse the data collected using NLP techniques
  • Establish links between actors in the social media under examination
  • Efficiently visualise the data

This project requires programming skills in Python and JavaScript. Python is used for data analysis, and JavaScript would be used for the final data visualisation. A strong familiarity with databases (ideally both relational and not) is needed.

Instead of Python, R or SAS (to some extent) can also be used.

 

Web Application project (PHP)

The student will develop a web application which will demonstrate an advanced use of:

  • OO programming in PHP
  • Database technologies
  • A chosen PHP framework (Zend, Laravel, CakePHP or others)
  • PHP libraries

The final title of the project will depend on the application that the student intends to develop.

Pure integration work (WordPress, Drupal, Magento etc) with no coding is not acceptable.

Improving the Performance of PHP-based web sites: an analysis of the different approaches

The student taking this thesis will do an in-depth analysis of the different approaches that can be used to improve the performance of PHP-based web sites. The student will select a number of appropriate approaches and evaluate their advantages and disadvantages in a number of significative scenarios. Reverse proxies, Zend byte-code optimisation, PHP accelerator and Alternative PHP cache are some examples of the technologies that should be analysed.

Recent topics

A list of recent topics is available here.