CS&SE 4th Year Studies: Project Information

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Project Information

The Project's Purpose

The purpose of each project is to provide you with the opportunity to study a topic of interest in some depth and to develop scholarly skills towards research techniques. It will be expected that, by the end of the year, you will have read widely in your area, extended or developed some theoretical work, have implemented some existing work, or possibly have even extended some implementation. Most importantly, you must demonstrate that you have developed the appropriate skills to communicate your work and ideas, in each of a written dissertation, a seminar, a software demonstration (where appropriate), and a poster.

Types of Projects

Naturally, projects vary enormously, but fit broadly into one of the following categories:

A constructive project will be judged according to its usefulness, specification simplicity, computational complexity, and its degree of innovation. A construction in Computer Science includes useful computational notions, abstract construction, semantic representation, innovative data structures, algorithms, and system design. You must demonstrate by formal or informal argument, and by executable code, the salient features of the new construction as well as justifications for your design.

An experimental project will be judged as such. For example, if you write some code that supposedly understands English language sentences, then you should conduct a wide range of experiments, showing where your software both succeeds and fails. Moreover, it is important that you define clearly the scope of the data it is meant to handle (in this case, what type of sentences, which dictionary of words, etc.).

A theoretical project will typically include theorems which must be rigorously proved, axioms stated clearly, and definitions clearly set out.

A review project will be expected to display a thorough degree of scholarship. The literature must be fully researched and the dissertation should show that you have been capable of criticising and synthesizing ideas to give a global view of the area. The bibliography must be extensive.

Choosing a project

On our School's web pages, you will find an list of short biographies of many of the School's academic staff and the 4th year projects that they are hoping to supervise in the coming year. Study this list thoroughly, remembering as you do that the list of projects is far from exhaustive, and that most staff are willing to hear and discuss your suggestions for other possible projects. You may do a project on almost any topic not on the project list, as long as there is an academic staff member willing to supervise you. If you have any ideas, do not hesitate to approach relevant staff members about them. Projects involving specialised equipment, such as computer-vision cameras or external computing equipment, may require special approval.

You may not be able to work on your preferred project. Supervisors usually restrict the number of 4th year projects they are willing to supervise. Based on this year's enrolment numbers, three or four projects per supervisor is a reasonable limit. This is for your benefit as supervisors have a fixed amount of time that they can devote to each student.

In the first few weeks of Semester 1, you must write a Project Proposal. This is a brief summary of the aims of the project and the methods to be employed. A soft and hard copy of this document should be given to the 4th Year Coordinator and your supervisor by the due date. You are also required to include a copy in your dissertation.

Meeting with your supervisor

You are expected to meet with your supervisor regularly (at least once a fortnight is typical). The length of these meetings will vary according to your needs, but it is important that you attend even if it is to say there are no current problems. If two or more of you are working in closely related areas, even if not with the same supervisors, it may be helpful for you all to meet at once to discuss your ideas and problems with a bigger audience.

For further enquiries, please contact the 4th Year Coordinator, Luigi Barone.