External students

Bachelor's studies: You need to get admitted to Saarland University's Bachelor's program of computer science. Please refer to this page for application instructions. After your successfull enrollment in the Bachelor's program, you can take courses at our chair and get in contact with us.

Master's studies: You need to get admitted to Saarland University's Master's program of computer science. Please refer to this page for application instructions. After your successfull enrollment in the Master's program, you can take courses at our chair and get in contact with us.

Doctoral (PhD) studies: In order to do your PhD at our group, you first have to get admitted to the Saarbrücken Graduate School of Computer Science. You can find detailed information on the program which can be entered either after achieving a bachelor's or a master's degree here. Please keep in mind that students are not admitted to one particular research group or individual faculty member, therefore, please mention in your formal application that you would like to work in our research area or in particular with Prof. Backes. The admission is highly competetive and many students get financial support. For detailed information on funding options, please refer to the information provided by the Saarbrücken Graduate School of Computer Science and the prestigious International Max Planck Research School for Computer Science.

Saarland University students - Bachelor's and Master's theses

Bachelor's and Master's theses: If your are interested in writing a thesis at our group, please have a look here for currently available topics (the page with theses topics is only accessible from within the campus network). If you are interested in one of the topics or you have an idea by yourself, please write an e-mail to thesis(at)mail-infsec(dot)cs(dot)uni-saarland(dot)de. Please note:

• We do not guarantee that all topics presented on our page are still available.
• Students that already attended courses at our group will receive preferred consideration. In particular, we highly recommend that you attend Cryptography and/or Information Security, maybe complemented with suitable advanced courses in security and cryptography, if you are interested in writing a thesis at our group. 
• We intend to keep the number of Bachelor's/Master's students at a reasonable size, such that we can still work closely with them. We expect that an intense supervision will help at least Master's students to come up with their first scholarly publication provided that he/she works hard on it. In fact, coming up with a publication constitutes the best way to demonstrate potential for a PhD. Note that intensely working with our students also requires to decline several requests for Bachelor's and Master's theses. In general, the better you perform in our courses, the more enthusiasm you show in class, the more interest you show in advanced aspects of security and cryptography, etc., the more likely it is that your request for a Bachelor's/Master's thesis, and for later pursuing a PhD our group, will be successful.

Doctoral (PhD) studies: In order to start a Phd you have to show high potential and have a strong academic record, in particular in lectures offered by our group. It's the time of your Master's studies or your Preparatory Phase at the Saarbrücken Graduate School of Computer Science that you should use for proving capable of PhD research in order to lift you to a PhD position. From the student's side, this requires you to actively look for an advisor and talk to people. From our side, it requires us to actively look for people that have the potential to become good PhD students. Similar to what we stated for Bachelor's/Master's students, we intend to keep the number of PhD students at a reasonable size in order to ensure that all PhD students are as closely supervised as they deserve it.

Prof. Backes: I am willing to do everything in my power to guide my PhD students into a promising career. In return, I expect an outstanding commitment from all my PhD students to the work they are doing.