CS 2001: Research Topics in Computer Science

Fall 2013

General Information

Organizer:

    Professor Adam J. Lee
    Office: 6111 Sennott Square
    Email: adamlee -at- cs.pitt.edu
    Phone: 412-624-8416

Meeting Times:

TH 1:00 - 2:15 PM, 6516 SENSQ
F 3:00 - 4:15 PM (alternate, rarely used)

Office Hours:

Any time my door is open

Announcements

[8/19] Welcome to CS 2001! Please check this web page for important announcements.
[9/10] Our alternate meeting time will be Fridays from 3-4:15. This will rarely be used.

Course Description

This course introduces first year graduate students to research being conducted in the Computer Science Department. The course will also introduce students to the research process in general. All first year Ph.D. students are required to take this course. Masters Students are welcome, since the course is open to all Computer Science graduate students, but it does not count towards the MS degree.

Grading:

Attendence: 50%
Paper reviews: 25%
Presentation: 10%
Mini-project: 15%

Lecture/Talk Schedule

Class #

Date

Topics

Resources

8/27 (Tue)

No Class

8/29 (Thu)

No Class

9/3 (Tue)

Administrivia and Introduction [Notes]

9/5 (Thu)

Paper Reading [Notes]

S. Keshav, How to Read a Paper, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 37(3) : 83-84, July 2007.

A newer version of this paper can be found here
Michael J. Hanson and Dylan J. McNamee, Efficient Reading of Papers in Science and Technology
Philip W. L. Fong, How to Read a CS Research Paper, July 2004.
William G. Griswold, How to Read an Engineering Research Paper
Griswold's paper comprehension template

9/10 (Tue)

Paper Reviewing [Notes]

William Strunk, Jr. The Elements of Style, 1918
Mark Hill and Kathryn S. McKinley, Notes on Constructive and Positive Reviewing, May 2005.
Alan Jay Smith, The Task of the Referee, IEEE Computer 23(4), April 1990.
Timothy Roscoe, Writing reviews for systems conferences, March 2007.

9/12 (Thu)

Giving a research talk [Notes]

Michael Ernst, Giving a technical presentation
Jonathan Shewchuk, Giving an Academic Talk
Charles Van Loan, The Short Talk

9/17 (Tue)

Scripting, plotting, LaTeX

Scripts from class [TAR.GZ]
LaTeX distributions
- Linux: TeX Live
- Mac OSX: MacTeX
- Windows: MiKTeX
Helpful cheat sheets
- LaTeX
- XEmacs
- GNUPlot

9/19 (Thu)

Department computing resources, SVN, Condor, etc. [Notes]

SVN Quick Reference Card
Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian W. Fitzpatrick, and C. Michael Pilato, Version Control with Subversion

9/24 (Tue)

Student Presentations I

Paper 1: Adraino and Ahn
Paper 2: Daniel and Nick
Paper 3: Chungsheng and Anatoli

Leslie Lamport, Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system, CACM 21(7), July 1978.
Sruthi Bandhakavi, Prithvi Bisht, P. Madhusudan, V.N. Venkatakrishnan, CANDID: preventing SQL injection attacks using dynamic candidate evaluations, CCS 2007.
Prince Mahajan, Srinath Setty, Sangmin Lee, Allen Clement, Lorenzo Alvisi, Mike Dahlin, and Michael Walfish, Depot: Cloud Storage with Minimal Trust, OSDI 2010.
Review Form

9/26 (Thu)

Student Presentations II

Paper 1: Qihang, Zhipeng, and Qiao
Paper 2: Chris and Yuyu
Paper 3: Sam and Wenchen

10/1 (Tue)

Research Integrity

The following must be read before lecture:

10/3 (Thu)

Discussion of presentations (in 6111 SENSQ)

1:00 - Adriano and Ahn
1:15 - Sam and Wenchen
1:30 - Chungscheng and Anatoli
1:45 - Qihang, Zhipeng, and Qiao
2:00 - Chris and Yuyu
2:15 - Daniel and Nick

10/8 (Tue)

Fall Break

From this point on, you must read and review one of the two papers posted for each week. A paper review template can be found here. For general guidance on preparing a paper review, consult your notes from classes 2 and 3. Paper reviews are due by noon on each Friday.

10/10 (Thu)

Professor Taieb Znati

[PDF]

10/15 (Tue)

No class

10/17 (Thu)

Professor Youtao Zhang

10/24 (Thu)

Professor Jingtao Wang

[PDF]

10/25 (Fri)

Professor Janyce Wiebe