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    COURSE SYLLABUS

    CIS 5935 Introductory Seminar on Research
    Fall 2008

Prerequisites:

You should be a graduate student.

Class Schedule:

Activity Day Time Location
Lecture TR 9:30 am - 10:45 am LOV 101

Contact Information:

Instructor: Ashok Srinivasan
Office hours: M 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm, W 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm. I am also usually available in my office, and you can feel free to meet me in the afternoons, except before class. Alternatively, you may schedule an appointment, either by email or by phone.
Office: 169, Love Building
Phone: 644-0559
Email: asriniva AT cs.fsu.edu

Course Material:

Required Text

Course Rationale:

This course introduces you to the research done by the Computer Science faculty, which will help you in choosing an adviser and a topic for your PhD dissertation, MS thesis, or MS project.

Course Description:

You will primarily listen to faculty talk about their research. You will submit written summaries of these talks, and also write more detailed reports on the research of two faculty members.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this course, you should be able to accomplish the objectives given below.

Your Responsibilities:

Deadlines and Instructions

Following the same professional guidelines that you will encounter at work, there are strict deadlines, and instructions that must be followed. Please read instructions carefully, and schedule your activities so that you submit assignments on time. You should check your garnet email account and the class web page regularly, and note other announcements, on-line and in class.

Class Participation

You should be in class on time, and leave only after it is over. Otherwise, you will be marked absent. You should also pay attention to the talks presented by faculty, and instructions given by me. You should not disturb the class in any manner, such as by talking to others while the class is going on.

Assignments

You will have two types of assignments in this course. Formatting instructions are available at www.cs.fsu.edu/~asriniva/courses/intres08/format.html.

  1. Summaries: You should write a one-page summary of the talk given by each faculty member. You may supplement the material presented at the talk with on-line material from that faculty member's web page, if you wish to. Your written report will be judged both on content and on presentation. In particular, you should have no typographical errors. If I mark two of your reports as good, then you need not write any more summaries, for this category of assignments. Hardcopies of the summaries are due at the beginning of the next lecture. If no talk is scheduled for the next lecture, then please place your homework under my office door.

  2. Detailed reports: You should look at the web pages of all faculty and choose two on whose research you want to write a more detailed five-page report. This report should also include information on one or two recent or current research grants obtained by the faculty, its source, and amount. You should also give two of the most cited journal articles of the faculty member (using the ISI Science Citation Index data) and two of the most cited conference articles (using data from Scholar Google). A hardcopy of each report is due on the date mentioned in the course calendar. You should hand it over to me at the begining of class on the due date. This report too will be judged both on content and on presentation. If a report is not satisfactory, then you will need to write reports on additional faculty members, until you produce a good one.

Course Calendar:

Week Lecture Speaker Assignment
1 26 Aug Ashok Srinivasan -- Introduction to the course
28 Aug Gary Tyson
2 2 Sep Ashok Srinivasan Summary due Sep 2
Summary due Sep 4
4 Sep Zhenhai Duan
3 9 Sep Feifei Li Summary due Sep 9
Summary due Sep 11
11 Sep Zhenghao Zhang
4 16 Sep Robert van Engelen Summary due Sep 16
Summary due Sep 18
18 Sep TBA
5 23 Sep Kim Hughes (from Biology) Summary due Sep 25
25 Sep Nancy Kellet Class meets in Dirac Science Library Instruction Room
6 30 Sep Ken Taylor (from Biology) Summary due Oct 2
2 Oct Piyush Kumar
7 7 Oct TBA Summary and first detailed report due Oct 7
Summary due Oct 9
9 Oct Michael Mascagni
8 14 Oct Xiuwen Liu Summary due Oct 16
16 Oct Nancy Kellet Class meets in Dirac Science Library Instruction Room
9 21 Oct Mark Stanovich (Graduate Student)
23 Oct Jinfeng Zhang (Department of Statistics)
10 28 Oct Sudhir Aggarwal Summary due Oct 30
30 Oct David Whalley
11 4 Nov Ted Baker Summary and second detailed report due Nov 4
Summary due Nov 6
6 Nov TBA
12 11 Nov Veteran's day -- no class
13 Nov Andy Wang
13 18 Nov Xin Yuan Summary due Nov 18
Summary due Nov 20
20 Nov Dan Schwartz
14 25 Nov Mike Burmester Summary due Nov 25
27 Nov Thanksgiving -- no class
15 2 Dec TBA Summary due Dec 2
4 Dec TBA

Grading Criteria:

The grade will be S/U only. You will need to perform satisfactorily in each of the following criteria in order to pass the course.

Course Policies:

Attendance Policy

The university requires attendance in all classes, and it is also important to your learning. Your attendance record may be provided to deans who request it. You may have at most three unexcused absences, if you wish to get a passing grade. In rare cases, such as medical needs or jury duty, absences may be excused with appropriate documentation. You should let me know in advance, when possible, and submit the documentation I seek.

Late Assignment Policy

We have the following policy regarding submission of late assignments, in order to encourage you to submit them on time. Note that if you submit an assignment multiple times, the last submission alone will be considered for grading. Therefore, if the last submission is late, then a late submission penalty will apply, even if your earlier submissions had been on time.

Professional Ethics

You may not copy material from any source. Furthermore, you should take steps to ensure that others cannot copy work. For example, you should have all permissions on assignment files and directories set off for others. Honor Code: Students are expected to uphold the academic honor code published in "The Florida State University Bulletin" and the "Student Handbook". Please read the provisions of the Academic Honor Code: http://dof.fsu.edu/honorpolicy.htm.

Plagiarism:

Plagiarism is "representing another's work or any part thereof, be it published or unpublished, as ones own. For example, plagiarism includes failure to use quotation marks or other conventional markings around material quoted from any source" (Florida State University General Bulletin 1998-1999, p. 69). Failure to document material properly, that is, to indicate that the material came from another source, is also considered a form of plagiarism. Copying someone else's program, and turning it in as if it were your own work, is also considered plagiarism.

SYLLABUS CHANGE POLICY:

This syllabus is a guide for the course and is subject to change with advanced notice.

Last modified: 2 Oct 2008