Grading
Students will be assessed and graded according to the following components:
Research project (includes final presentation and project report): 50%
Paper presentation and slide submission: 20%
Paper summaries: 20%
Participation in discussions: 10%
Research Project
Please see research project page to find more details on this category. Following is the breakdown of research project 50% grading:
Project proposal: 10%
Midterm project evaluation: 10%
Final project evaluation (includes final codebase): 20%
Project report: 10%
Paper Presentation and Slide Submission
Every class period will include presentations of 1-2 research papers. Each paper presentation will have a slot of 50 minutes (including discussion). The presentation should consist of the following components: problem motivation, objective, threat model, related work, key innovations, methodology, experiment setup, and results. Please note that this structure may not be feasible for all research papers and the presenter can add new components and/or remove the existing ones. Approximately, the presentation itself should not be more than 30 minutes to leave room for at least 15-20 minutes of discussion. Students are required to submit their slides used for presentation via Canvas. This is due at noon (12 pm) on the day of the presentation. The students are encouraged to check the original conference presentation of the papers by their authors (videos/slides, if available) and collect ideas on how to make a strong presentation.
Note: If a student finds the research paper they originally opted to present less relevant, they can choose another related paper to present. More specifically, the topic and presentation date should not change but the paper being presented can change if necessary. However, this change request should be communicated to the instructor at least one week before the day of the presentation. For example, if your presentation is scheduled for January 28, please inform the instructor about the change along with the changed paper title by the end of the day on January 21.
Paper Summaries
Detailed guideline for paper summary:
The summaries should consist of the following components: problem motivation, threat model, short summary of methodology, key results, and the student's final thoughts and/or questions summarized in at least 1 or more points. The last component will be added to the discussion after the paper presentation. Along with these components, please add the following points:
(1) Discuss 3 or more strengths of the paper.
(2) Discuss 3 or more weaknesses/limitations of the paper.
(3) Discuss 1 or more potential ways to address the limitations or to extend the work.
(4) Discuss something you would have done differently if you had written the paper.
The summary of one paper should not exceed 2 pages.
You have to submit only 8 paper summaries throughout the term. Important: you still must read all the assigned research papers before the class. These 8 papers must be a subset of the papers presented and discussed in class. Also, this ‘8 papers’ list of your own must not include papers that you are assigned to present.
You have to submit at least 1 paper summary from each topic. The goal here is to ensure sufficient breadth.
The summaries are due at noon (12 pm) on the day of the presentation. For example, if you want to summarize a paper scheduled to be presented on January 28, the deadline for you is January 28 at noon (12 pm). I will name the assignments according to dates (in this example the assignment name would be ‘Paper summary January 28' to which you will submit your summary).
Participation in Discussions
Engage in interactive discussions during the class as part of the leading team or the opposition team. Ask questions and share thoughts based on your knowledge and from your readings. This is important since participation will also be assessed for grading (10%).