CSE 260 Research Projects

One of the goals of CSE 260 is to teach you how to conduct research. A research project is a formal requirement of the course and counts for 30% of your grade. A project may be done individually or in teams of two, and you should allow 4 to 5 weeks to complete it. Your project grade will be based on your successful completion of the following 3 parts:

  1. Project proposal: due Tuesday, October 18, 2005 (electronic, 1/10 of the project grade)
  2. Progress report: due Thursday November 17, 2005 (electronic, 1/10 of the project grade)
  3. In class presentation: Weds-Thurs, Nov 30th-Dec 1st, 2005. Presentation Schedule
    Bring hard copies of your slides to class. (2/10 of your project grade)
  4. Final Report: due Friday, December 2, 2005, 5PM, in EBU3B 3244 (Hard copy and electronic)

A list of projects is attached.   If you'd like to design your own project discuss it with me first.

Your project proposal should identify the investigator(s) and the title of the project. You should present a preliminary list of milestones—with completion dates—and possible options depending on your progress. Your milestones are not binding, so be realistic. You may need to fine-tune your goals as the project is underway. This is fine so long as you document your decisions. If you are working in a team, describe the division of labor in your proposal. If you are proposing your own project, include a description of the project that is roughly one double spaced page long. I will give you feedback once I've read over you proposal.

All of your proposals should address the following issues:

  1. The goals of your project. Be sure to address why you think that the goals are realistic. (This is why I've asked you to provide milestones.)
  2. The result(s) you want to demonstrate.
  3. The significance of the results.

The progress report will help keep you on a steady pace and enable you to make mid-course corrections. The report should

  1. discuss your progress to date. If you are working in a team, include a self-evaluation discussing the division of labor and other aspects of how you worked together as a team team (A copy of the form is available in html)
  2. revise any milestones and completion dates that you established previously, including an explanation.

In evaluating your proposal and progress report I will check to see if your goals are realistic. A realistic project that is completed successfully will likely receive a higher grade than one that is too ambitious and doesn't get finished. Results alone are not adequate. You need to interpret them. If you have any questions about this, be sure and see me. If you do have an ambitious design, we can work together to set realistic goals. The project should be a polished piece of work.

Submit your Final report in hard copy form and electronically (e.g. html with ASCII and other attachments). I will give you instructions on how to submit an electronic copy later in the quarter. The report should be a polished piece of work.

Sample Projects from previous years

  • Fast Adaptive Storage and Retrieval (Jeremy Lau and Eric Hall, Fall 2002)
  • A Parallel Simulation of Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (Ted Hromadka and Johann Ammerlahn, Fall 2002)
  • A Parallel Simulation of Traffic (Cynthia Bailey Lee, Fall 2002)
  • Message passing performance (Bob Boyer and Patrick Chase, Spring 2001)
  • Performance Comparison of MPI vs. Titanium(Roger Bharath and Stephen Lau, Spring 2001)

    •  21-Nov-2005 21:17