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| Project proposals due |
Wed, Oct 22 |
| Status report due |
Wed, Nov 5 |
| In-class presentations begin |
Mon, Nov 24 |
| Final writeups due |
Fri, Dec 5 |
Project ideas
Groups and presentation times
Advice
on presenting a paper
Introduction
Over this semester, we will cover a large range of material. We will discuss operating
systems, networking, languages, and cryptography, crypto protocols, formal verification,
and tamper-resistant hardware. You have an opportunity to choose one of the topics
that you found most interesting and learn more about it yourself.
In most cases, you should find one partner who shares your interests. While
some people may choose to form groups with three people, your project should
be dramatically more ambitious to need such extra work. You can also work alone,
but it's discouraged.
Some of you will be building systems and writing a lot of source code. Others
will be examining existing systems, looking for bugs. Some of you may even choose
to model a system and prove theorems about it.
Above, you will find a schedule of dates. Get started early.
Milestones
The final project has a number of different milestones (due dates). Please try
not to be late. After each milestone, I will try to give you useful feedback to
help you along. The final project counts for a substantial fraction of your course
grade. Because projects will range widely in their topics, it is impossible to
describe a set grading algorithm. The feedback you get at each stage may include
suggestions on how you can improve your work. These suggestions are also hints
about how you can improve your grade.
- Proposals
- Your project proposals will probably be one to two pages long. Please make
a Web page for your project and e-mail the URL to yours truly. Everything you do
should appear on your Web page. If you're unsure what you want to do, there
are several ideas you might choose from, but
you can certainly pursue your own ideas.
- Status Reports
- As you continue your work, you should keep your Web page up to date. I
expect to see weekly updates to your page, describing your progress.
At the November status-report deadline, you should write a page or two of
text that describes how far you've gotten. If you have interesting preliminary
results, this is a good place to discuss them.
- Presentations
- Each project group will have between 15 and 25 minutes to make an in-class
presentation summarizing their work (the exact time will depend on how many
groups we have). You should produce nice PowerPoint (or equivalent) slides
and present a talk in the same fashion as you might do at a conference. You
will also answer questions from the class.
- Final writeup
- This depends on the nature of your project. Generally speaking, you should
write something in the fashion of a short conference paper. This would include
an introduction, a brief discussion of related work, and your main contributions.
You should also include a bibliography. While a real conference paper could
be anywhere from 10-20 pages, your paper might be as short as 5 pages.
Dan Wallach, CS
Department, Rice University
Last modified:
Sat 25-Oct-2003 15:01