CS 7001: Mini-projects

Fall 2005

The goal of the mini-projects is to jump-start your research career by working with different faculty on short projects. Mini-projects allow you to "sample" potential advisors (and for them to "sample" you) to see if your work styles mesh. These projects also allow you to do some work on a real research problem. Often mini-projects evolve into longer term projects or relationships with the advisor.

Each student will be required to complete two mini-projects during the fall semester. Each project will cover five weeks:

• Mini-project 1
  • Sept. 7: Select MP 1
  • Sept. 16: MP 1 proposal due
  • Oct 12: MP 1 report due
• Mini-project 2
  • Oct. 17: Select MP 2
  • Oct. 26: MP 2 proposal due
  • Nov. 21: MP 2 report due

Selecting a project

Many faculty have posted project descriptions, and will continue to do so as the semester begins.

Mini-projects by professor

The most important thing is to do a project in an area and with a faculty member that interests you. Thus, the posted project descriptions represent possible projects, but most faculty will be willing to tailor these projects (or invent projects) to match your interests.

Once you have selected a project, post the project and faculty advisor here:

Mini-projects selected by students

Project proposals

After you have selected a project, you should meet with the advisor and define the project clearly (including any changes to the original project posted by the advisor.) About a week after the deadline for selecting a project, you will be required to submit a short (2-3 page) proposal describing what you will do in the project. This proposal should clarify and define how you will spend the rest of your time in the project. In particular, it should contain the following components:

• Motivation: what problem are you solving and why is it interesting
• Approach: what approach will you take to solve the problem
• Related work: what literature will you read to understand the related work for this project
• Results: what deliverable results do you expect to have after the mini-project
• Evaluation: how will you evaluate your results
• Future work: if this project extended beyond the five week mini-project, what else would you do?

Project reports

At the conclusion of the project, you will be required to submit a project report describing the project. This report should be similar to a workshop or conference paper. In other words, this report is not an informal summary of your project but rather a technical paper describing the problem you attacked, the results you obtained and a comparison to related work. The length will depend on the project and results, but I expect that you will need at least six pages to describe your project. This report should have you as the first author; that is, it should be your writing and present results for which you were the primary contributor.

This report, feedback from the project advisor, and your initial proposal will form the basis for grading you on the project.