Project Overview

Project Details

• Motivation: In my opinion, the best way for either new MS or PhD students to get started in research is to do a literature search in an area (see homework assignments), learn the background and basic research questions (attend lecture), formulate an idea for a new protocol/service, prototype that protocol/service, and refine the architecture based on experience building the prototype. These last three tasks are the reason for having a project.

• Project Group: The project groups will be selected by me and will consist of roughly 25 groups of two students each. The groups will be announced on October 3rd. Group assignments will be made only from those students who successfully complete Homework #0 on time.
  • Motivation: The reason that groups will be chosen according to this mechanism is that I am interested in the opportunity to create something better than what two individuals could produce. Allowing students to create their own groups introduces a whole host of problems, the most significant of which is too much homogeneity.
  • Shared Reponsibility: As with any group project, it sometimes happens that one person does not do his/her fair share. If this happens, it is the responsibility of the offended group member to inform me by email. This email will be kept confidential. However, every effort should be made to make the team effective.

• Project Areas: The area for your research project can be anything you would like. It can be in an area of personal interest or it can even overlap with a project in another class. However, the emphasis is on overlap. The two class projects cannot be identical--a project used for two classes must have a substantial, unique component for each class. We will discuss during the first class some project possibilities. Furthermore, October 8th is set aside for in-class discussion/questions about project plans/ideas.

• Project Oversight: The research projects will be administered almost entirely by the two TAs (Uday Mohan and Rishi Matthew). Each project group will be assigned to one of the two TAs. Given that there are about 50 students, this means each TA will be responsible for about 12 groups. Having the TAs responsible for the projects means 95% of all questions, discussion, meetings, etc. should go to them. However, I will be involved to a small extent in evaluating project plans, monitoring progress, and final grading.

• Procrastination: Ten weeks goes by fast. It goes by even faster when the beginning of the quarter is filled with administrative fumbling and the end of the quarter is filled with demos and finals. In other words: if you procrastinate on this project and do not get started immediately, you will do poorly. Even worse, it is easy for the TAs and me to see when a project is poorly done. My advice: get started early and make progress quickly. You have been warned!

• Deliverables: Your project grade will be based on the following components:
  • Project Proposal: Due October 10th without exception. Format: anything your group decides, but you must make your plan clear.

  • Project Report: Due no later than December 5th. Must describe the motivation for doing the project, related work, an architecture, description of the prototype, and a discussion of what you have learned. (HINT: Based on the grading system, you want to use research papers that you read as a guideline for writing your report.)

  • Prototype Demo: Completed no later than December 6th. Should be scheduled with the TA in charge of your project.

• The Future: In the best of all situations, your project should be unique and open-ended. Adding to this, if you can produce a well-written project report, you will have accomplished one of the most difficult tasks given to a researcher: a workshop/conference paper.

• Grading System: We will use the following scale to grade your projects:
  • A+: Project report ready to submit to a workshop/conference.
  • A/A-: Well done project and reasonably well-done report. The report could serve as a first rough draft for submission to a workshop/conference.
  • B+/B: Basically uninteresting project idea but well-executed and a well-written report.
  • B-: Basically uninteresting project with a mediocre report but basically well-executed overall.
  • C+/C: Basically uninteresting project with a mediocre report and significant weaknesses/incompleteness in the prototype.