First trimester at UQAC

First trimester, autumn... a season for a trimester? The four seasons don't fit together in three-thirds of a year, you might say. Not for Quebecois, because here, there are autumn, winter and summer trimesters. The snow melts around May, leaving just one month before summer. Spring is merely a transition between two seasons.

L'Escale, cafeteria in front of the UQAC bus station

University life at UQAC

UQAC is an institute with a diversity of programs, offering a wide range of courses for all three cycles, from the pure sciences to the arts, management sciences, education and engineering. The university also has a number of commitments to the First Nations community (study and research programs, aboriginal student services, cultural recognition, awareness and training).

Student life is active, and in the first trimester there were a number of integration parties, including a Quebec concert with free poutine, and a volleyball competition at the bar. There were also forums to discover the campus and the city (associations, student offers, discovery of local products and information about the city). These activities offered me opportunities to make connections and integrate into the university community.

Academically, the quality varies from course to course, but overall the experience is positive. Some teachers are very pedagogical. They've even taught us some Quebecois expressions. Remote courses are also a part of the program, allowing us to learn from international professionals.

Sunset - a street in downtown Chicoutimi

My course selections

For each trimester, I was able to choose four courses from a total of fifteen, ranging from artificial intelligence, video games and project management to cybersecurity. Each course lasts 2 hours 45 minutes. For every 3 hours of class, there is an average of 6 hours of personal work. Although the organization is different, I found that the workload was about the same as in France. Here are the courses I chose for this first term:

📊Distributed databases, presented by Professor Nakouri Haïfa

A course introducing distributed databases and big data. On the program, theory on rational models, normalization and linear algebra, then practice in SQL (fragmentation, query processing and optimization), then I finished the term by seeing several big data tools. This course is indispensable for big data students, unlike cybersecurity students.

‍💻Programming on parallel architectures, presented by Professor and DIM Director François Lemieux

A course that requires investment and rigor, the beginning of the trimester is complicated, but the difficulty diminishes with time. A pleasant course to follow with a responsive teacher. The program includes theory on parallel operating systems and parallel algorithms (a bit of math with algorithm complexity and theorems). Then some practical work with multithreaded programming (MPI and OpenCL). I've also made a little tutorial for installing OpenCL on VSCode, since I couldn't find one on the Internet.

🔐Computer security, presented by Professor Kamel Adi

A more research-oriented course, with a lot of remote courses as the teacher works from Ottaouais. The program included an overview of the fields of cybersecurity: cryptology, cryptographic protocols, network security, software security and malware, access control and risk analysis. This course gave me a refresher and enabled me to go into greater depth on topics I'd seen in my internship, but never studied at ISEN.

With the help of my classmates Charles and Théo, I had the opportunity to write my first scientific paper, "The advantages and disadvantages of using AI in cybersecurity", for which I mainly worked on the intrusion detection systems (IDS) part.

West entrance to the Principal pavilion + footbridge linking it to building H

☁️Design and architecture of cloud systems, presented by Ph.D. student Amine Barrak

Despite a course syllabus that seemed rather vague to me, I saw technologies for distributing and centralizing resources, as well as communication modes and technologies. We started the year with student presentations on distributed technologies. Then we had the opportunity to do three practical assignments, requiring our group to invest a great deal of time and effort in research. What I liked about this course was the discovery of many technologies and the final group project, but although interesting, I don't think it's an essential course for a cybersecurity student.

📖In addition to these four courses, each senior student is assigned the "Information Skills" course.

This course raises awareness of copyright and plagiarism while teaching how to :

- Use bibliographic tools,

- Construct and establish a plan for a research topic,

- Cite sources and write a bibliography in different styles,

- Evaluate the quality of a scientific article,

It enabled me to write scientific papers to support the projects I carried out, such as the one on cybersecurity mentioned above, or another one on the cloud computing course that I'll explain in the next section. It's an aspect that isn't studied at all in France, but one that I greatly appreciated and find indispensable for any student in higher education.

Project - A service for universities

With my classmates Charles and Théo, we set up a project to develop a cloud-based system. Our efforts resulted in a solution enabling universities to offer students a virtual working environment, particularly useful when students have neither the resources (computers, licenses or software), nor the secure system or sandbox necessary for the course to run smoothly. Our approach is based on distributed, fault-tolerant technologies.

The service works as follows: the teacher sets up one virtual machine according to their needs, then clones it for each of their students. The second step is to develop the teacher's ability to supervise the students. In this way, the teacher can also view and take control of the virtual machines in their class.

Different views of the project: 1. portal opened by a student; 2. application management by the teacher; 3. view of student desktops from the teacher portal.

Thanks to the complementary of this trimester's courses, we were able to explore and master tools such as Kubernetes, SQL and Docker, technologies frequently used in the professional world.

Effective collaboration and a well-coordinated project were key factors in the success of this project. Together, we overcame obstacles, merged our ideas and delivered an effective system. The project also enabled us to apply project management methods learned in courses at ISEN and UQAC, and to gain valuable experience.

This project was much more than an exercise, confronting us with concrete scenarios, real expectations and tangible solutions. Close to the professional world, it was an experience that sharpened our skills and prepared us for the future.

Discover the technical details and thoughts behind this project in our scientific paper or by exploring the KRDS (Kubernetes Remote Desktop for Students) project GitHub.

From left to right: project architecture & multi-node view