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Research Lines (open subjects)
Cooperative Action and Perception
Projects: Machine Learning Applications (to Pubilc Administration Problems)
Areas: Machine Learning, Data Mining, Data Science, Complex Systems (Learning agents in)
Tips and references for MSc and PhD students
Some tips for starting an MSc / PhD:
A presentation to see if you are planing to write a thesis in the near future.
Lookup "systematic literature review" and "Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA)" and read about it.
Tipical timeline for MSc: Oct - Dec: State of The Art (including finding and testing technical options); Jan - Feb: Build prototype; Mar - Jun: Experiments (repeat, repeat, repeat, ... ); Nov - Jul: Writing paper and thesis (yes ... writing starts in November! not in June, and yes, there should be a paper);
Starting a thesis: Write your motivation (why is it a problem), objectives (what is the problem you plan to solve), question (what don't you know now, that you plan to know after the thesis), approach (how do you solve the problem), expected results (how do you convince yourself and a jury that you solved the problem). Write what you know about the matter. Start researching more about it. Keep writing about what you find.
Thesis structure
Introduction: Problem presentation, motivation, objectives, outilne of the proposed solution
State-of-the-art / Related Work: Who did what related to this problem? Starting from general to specific, ending with a few paragraphs on whay this work is different from all previous work
Background: Contextualize (withing the scope of a larger project, or the research are evolution). What tool will be used? Why those? How will the problem be tackled (methodology)?
Description: Describe the work done: Be clear, precise, concise, show very clearly what you have done and explain whay that was necessary important (even the wrong-turns), show results, discusss results
Conclusions: Summary of all previous, mainly focused on showing the problem solved, the results and the original contribution of this work
Dissertation rules @Iscte: https://www.iscte-iul.pt/conteudos/estudantes/informacao-academica/percurso-academico/area-mestrado/926/entrega-de-dissertacao-ou-trabalho-de-projeto
Some of the best MSc/PhD thesis I have seen:
Ivo Timóteo, Integration of Heterogeneous Hypotheses in Multiagent Learning, MSc. thesis, supervised by Eugénio Oliveira, University of Porto Michael Rovatsos, University of Edinburgh
Miguel Duarte, Hierarchical Evolution of Robotic Controllers for Complex Tasks, MSc. thesis, supervised by Anders Christensen and Sancho Oliveira, ISCTE-IUL
Miguel Duarte, Engineering Evolutionary Control for Real-world Robotic Systems, PhD. thesis, supervised by Anders Christensen and Sancho Oliveira, ISCTE-IUL
Diogo Franco, A Recommender System for Automation Rules in the Internet of Things, PhD. thesis, supervised by Fernando Henrique Côrte-Real Mira da Silva and Luís Nunes, IST-UL
If you are planning to write in LaTeX, try OverLeaf (https://www.overleaf.com/).
Install Mendeley, Zotero or (more adequate for LaTeX users) JabRef for reference handling. Keep an eye out for news, I'll drop some files in your mailbox from time to time.
From the moment you are accepted for supervision you are expected to deliver a report (or schedule a meeting) roughly every two weeks where we go through: actions done in the previous two weeks (actions foreseen vs actions taken) / actions foreseen for the next two weeks (to be used as foreseen actions in the following report and compared to the actions actually taken) / blocking issues.
Lastly, but of the utmost importance: take time to rest! Plan your work with slack so that you can occasionally take a day off, a long weekend, a short vacation, especially if you are a working-student. Burnout is a serious problem that happens frequently in MSc or PhD students, don't let it happen to you!
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