Comp 527: Final Project

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Project proposals dueWednesday, March 17, 1pm
Status reports dueWednesday, April 7, 1pm
In-class presentations beginMonday, April 19, 1pm
Final writeups dueFriday, April 30, 1pm

Project ideas

Project groups

Introduction

Over this semester, we have covered a large range of material. We have discussed operating systems, networking, languages, and cryptography. Before we conclude, we will also discuss crypto protocols, formal verification, and tamper-resistant hardware. Now 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, if you prefer.

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. You will have roughly seven weeks to do all your work. 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 comp527. 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. However, when you are roughly half way through, 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. If you built a system that can be demonstrated, we can arrange for a video projector in class. In most cases, screet-shots are probably just fine.
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: Wed Mar 17 22:53:20 CST 1999