Two students from the FIT CTU were on the podium in the SHE STEM Award 2023 bachelor’s thesis competition. Bc. Markéta Petrtýlová won second place with her thesis, E-learning Application for Cyber Security Development, and Bc. Eliška Helikarová won third place with her thesis, Analysis of the CTU Teaching Survey’s Anonymity. A total of 40 students entered the competition, and only 8 of them made it to the finals, which took place on 30 November 2023 at the CTU.
Markéta Petrtýlová is a bachelor’s degree programme graduate in Business Informatics and currently continues her master’s studies at FIT CTU. Her bachelor’s thesis deals with the design, realization, implementation, deployment and testing of an application for improving knowledge in the field of social engineering. The thesis includes a requirement analysis of the company requesting the educational E-learning application and a description of the support provided to the company’s employees during the deployment and first use of the application.
“I entered the competition to gain new experience and meet successful students from other Czech universities. I appreciate the fact that I could meet interesting people from several different companies who became my mentors during the preparation for the competition and helped me push my presentation skills one step further.”
Markéta currently leads the Microsoft Student Trainee Center, a student organization from which she graduated some time ago. During her bachelor’s degree, she completed a six-month internship at Microsoft and worked part-time at companies such as IBM and MSD.
Eliška Helikarová is a bachelor’s degree programme graduate in Information Security and currently continues her master’s studies at FIT CTU. Her final thesis deals with anonymity analysis of the “Anketa CTU” application, an online survey system used by CTU for an anonymous course and instructor evaluation. This application falls into the category of anonymous survey systems, meaning the data contained in the survey questionnaires submitted by students should not be linked to the student’s identity. In this thesis, anonymity analysis involves a threat analysis using the LINDDUN privacy threat modelling framework.
“I hesitated to enter the competition because I knew it would be challenging. But I do not regret it. I had a mentor who helped me prepare. It gave me valuable experience in presenting my own work in front of an audience, access to the SWE (Society of Women Engineers) community and the opportunity to make new contacts with people from practice. During my work, I found some shortcomings in the application, which I reported to the application administrator. Among them was a serious vulnerability that was patched almost immediately. So I am glad that my work had a real impact.”
However, studies at FIT were not Eliška’s first university study. She first studied at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and finished her studies in Iceland, where she spent the last 2 years of her studies. It was here that she started programming in her free time. She was so interested in it that she applied to FIT CTU after her return and became a successful graduate.
