1.)  Data Compression

I am interested in how data is represented as MPEG, JPEG, and other file formats, and how this data can be used to display an image or video.  In particular, I am interested in the compression algorithms used to store this data in a smaller space, with little or no loss in the quality of the information.  I would explore various lossless and lossy compression algorithms in the paper, and explain their strengths and weaknesses.  I could then create some code to illustrate some compression algorithms and how they work.

2.)  3-D Passwords

While passwords are crucial to how we protect our information, they are also tedious to remember.  One interesting alternative is 3-D passwords.  The idea is the user is placed in some sort of 3-D environment with various objects that can be interacted with.  The user could enter a passwords by interacting with various objects in the environment in a specific sequence.  For example, a user might move a chair, head to a thermostat, and then change it to a specific temperature as a way of entering a password.  This would be an appealing idea to explore in a project as well.

3.)  Soft Computing

I was reading about soft computing and the idea seemed interesting and different from other ideas I have encountered so far in computer science.  I would be interested in exploring it further, but don’t have a specific idea yet.