CS 6453

Deadlines

There are per-lecture deadlines for paper reviews, and specific deadlines for paper presentations and research project.

Before every lecture (via email to Ayush and Rachit): You will need to submit a constructive review for each paper in the reading list of the corresponding lecture before the lecture starts.

Slides for paper presentation (via email to Ayush and Rachit): Slides for paper presentations on Tuesdays and Thursday are due by Saturday night and Monday night, respectively.

Weekly project meetings: Please set up a weekly meeting with Rachit to discuss progress on the research project.

[02/14] Research project survey (via email to Rachit): A survey of related work on your chosen research project is due by 02/14.

[03/15] Research project mid-term report (via email to Rachit): A mid-term report on your chosen research project is due by 03/15. This report should outline the research problem, related work, and progress made so far (technique/system/algorithms) on the project.

[05/10] Research project final report: A final report on your chosen research project is due by 05/10 (via email to Rachit). This should be a conference quality report (perhaps not ready to be submitted, but close).

Resources

Paper Reviews: Please write constructive reviews. Here is a rough outline.

  • Summary of problem being solved (1-2 lines)
  • Why is the problem interesting? Perhaps, its a new problem? Perhaps, its an old problem but with a new twist (e.g., new workloads, new environment, new hardware)? Perhaps, its just an old classical problem? (1-2 lines)
  • What are the main insights in the proposed solution? What is the main technical contribution? How does the solution advance the state-of-the-art? (4-5 lines)
  • Can you think of cases where the proposed solution may not work well? (4-5 lines)
  • What are the next few problems that you would solve in this space? What do you think is the holy grail in this direction? (5-10 lines)

Paper Presentations: Please plan for 30 minutes. Here is a rough outline.

  • What is the problem being solved? (2-3 slides)
  • Why is the problem interesting? Perhaps, its a new problem? Perhaps, its an old problem but with a new twist (e.g., new workloads, new environment, new hardware)? Perhaps, its just an old classical problem? (1-2 slides)
  • What is the most related work and how is this paper different? (3-4 slides)
  • What is the main technical contribution? What are the main insights used to build the proposed solution? How does the solution advance the state-of-the-art? (2-3 slides)
  • Techniques used in the paper to solve the problem (4-5 slides)
  • Can you think of cases where the proposed solution may not work well? (2-3 slides)
  • What are the next few problems that you would solve in this space? What do you think is the holy grail in this direction? (4-5 slides)

Course Grade

As with all graduate courses, grade should not be your primary concern during the course. In the end, your class grade will be based on the following three components:

Paper Reviews (20%): You are expected to read the papers before the lecture and write a short summary of the paper (see Resources section above).

Class Participation (10%): You are expected to actively participate in these discussions.

Research project (70%): Students will work on research projects (either alone, or in a team of two). For project expectations, talk to Rachit.

Academic Integrity

As with all other classes at Cornell, you are expected to maintain a high level of ethical standards and integrity in this course. This means that all work you submit must be the result of your own individual effort. You may discuss the papers with other students in the class, but you may not collaborate on the actual writing of the reviews. No part of the review may be copied from or be based on text on the web. Even higher standards apply for research projects, where plagiarism is a more well defined academic integrity violation.

Any violations of the academic integrity code will be penalized according to the Cornell Academic Integrity Policy, and may result in failure in the course, suspension, or expulsion from the university.

Here is a simple tip to avoid any problems: do NOT cheat. You know it when you are cheating! It so happens that when you are cheating, we know it too!