CS 6805

Project

The project involves researching a topic outside the scope of the lectures, preparing a written report and giving a 15 minute oral presentation. The project may also focusing of implementation of algorithms or data structures related to logic synthesis.

Dates

Evaluation

Detailed Proposal, Choice of Topic, Literature Search

It is important to start planning your project as soon as possible and fully incorporate this planning process within the scope of the project. You must hand in a full proposal by Feb. 12. The proposal must include topic, literature search (i.e. a reasonable bibliography), template for report (sections, subtopics, organization), methodology, motivation, scope, and focus.

About 50% of the mark in here covers your capacity for initiative, organization, interest, depth, and, most of all, a good literature search. You receive a better evaluation if you are able to find appropriate material on your own, decide how large or how small the project should be. Choose an aspect of the overall subject which has relevance and it is outside the direct scope of the lectures. In some cases, I'll give the initial proposal back with suggestions for improvements, and ask you to resubmit it. The proposal should not be of any great length - two or three pages.

Work Accomplished

Since this is the part most difficult to evaluate, you must do the best you can to help convince me that, by developing this project, a considerable amount of expertise in a new topic has been gained by you. As an example, you may introduce some theorems and proofs from articles, but you are not expected to necessarily develop new ones. However, when presenting a set of examples to clarify such theorems or concepts, make sure you construct new ones on your own, demonstrating without doubt that (i) you have understood the main idea, (ii) you have understood the examples in the publication itself, (iii) you are able to expand on them on your own.

Report

This should take the form of a technical report, as you can find them published around departments. Its length should not exceed 20 single spaced pages, with a minimum of 10. It must include a complete bibliography; this includes articles you read in depth and articles you only scanned, plus articles referenced by others and considered seminal to the topic. Moreover, you should include a section which gives a short summary (less than two paragraphs) of the few which are more significant to your topic.

The evaluation takes into consideration the organization of the report, the clear statements of the objectives, examples, explanations, arguments, and conclusions. Do not be afraid to introduce your point of view, if you can defend it logically. Any new insights, new research, new results, earth shattering new theorems are obviously welcome. Try to push forward and at least raise some questions.

As an overall guideline, assume that your report will be used in the future to extrapolate a couple of lectures or a seminar on the subject. This should be achieved by reading the report and working on the examples provided, with a minimal amount of looking up material in the references. Pretend you are preparing such seminars and you only have 3 hours or so at your disposal. If you are developing software as part of your project, make sure that you provide a user's manual, a software maintenance manual, and full system specifications. This is not to the scale of a software engineering project as the interest lies more in the object of the software than in its development however a shoddy software presentation is not acceptable. In particular, the emphasis should be placed on the future use and direct applicability of the modules by other students or researchers.

Notes

Topics