CSE-501 Intro to Grad Study in CSE (Fall 2022)

The course provides guidance about graduate studies in CSE for incoming Ph.D. students. Registration and attendance are required for all new Ph.D. students. Topics include: academic integrity, the nature of research, good teaching and TA skills, writing skills, presentation skills, and resources available for graduate study in computer science. The course will include appropriate written assignments and oral presentations.

Course Details

• Class T 4:00-5:20 PM in Davis 113A
• Seminar T 3:30-5:00 PM (usually Davis 113A)
Instructors:
• Oliver Kennedy. Office Hours: Weds 11:00-1:00 in Capen 212 or by appointment
• No Required Textbook
• Optional Textbooks:
  • William Strunk JR. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th Edition, Pearson, 2020.
  • Nicholas J. Higham, Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences, 3rd Edition, SIAM, 2019
• Background Requirements: This course is open only to PhD Students
• Grading Policy: This is a one (1) credit course with S/U grading. To get a satisfactory (S) grade, you will need to meet 3 criteria:
  • Attendance
  • Report
  • Class Presentation

Course Schedule

Date	Speaker
08/30/22	Oliver Kennedy "Introduction" [slides]
09/06/22	Ziming Zhao "How to Succeed or Fail as a Ph.D Student"
09/13/22	Carl Nuessle "Research Grows Strangely" Joseph Pusztay "Numerical Plasma Simulation in PETSc" [info] Poonam Kumari "Data Integration: transformation based discovery" Xie Tan "Embedded System Security"
09/20/22	Oliver Kennedy "How to Write Review a Paper" [talk] Oliver Kennedy "Microkernel Notebooks" [talk] Erdem Sariyuce "Practical algorithms for real-world networks"
09/27/22	Zhuoyue Zhao
10/04/22	Jinjun Xiong Thomas Hayes
10/11/22	Matt Knepley Andrew Hirsch
10/18/22	Charuvahan Adhivarahan Darshana Balakrishnan Lu Dong Lipisha Nitin Chaudhary
10/25/22	No Class
11/01/22	Karthik Dantu Hongxin Hu
11/15/22	Kaiyi Ji "Lightning Talk" Mingchen Gao Haonan Lu
11/17/22	Panel Discussion: Recent Graduates Note: Thursday!
11/22/22	Fall Recess
11/29/22	Student Presentations
12/06/22	Student Presentations

Course Structure

Attendance

Regular attendance is required. You must come to class, and you must come on time. Please be courteous: The class starts at 4:00 PM, not at 4:10 PM. I will take attendance at the beginning of each class. To get a satisfactory (S) grade, you need to attend at least twelve (12) classes.

Reports

You will submit three reports during the semester to me by email. The report MUST be in PDF -- any other format is not acceptable. Here some more logistics:

• Each report must contain a one (1) page summary of any talk you attended as part of CSE-501 in the last month or a departmental seminar / distinguished speaker talk. Your report must have three sections:
  • Overview of the talk. This includes the title of the talk, the name of the speaker, time and date of the talk, and a summary of the content of the talk.
  • What you liked about the talk. Give a summary of what you liked about the talk. This could technical content and/or presentation of the talk.
  • How could the talk have been improved? Is there anything you did not like about the talk or way in which it could be improved?
• The reports must be submitted to my email address 23:59 PM on the following dates:
  • October 1: Talks in September
  • November 1: Talks in October
  • December 1: Talks in November
• Each report will be graded as follows:
  • 0 points: no submission or a submission that clearly had no effort go into it.
  • 0.5 point: Needs more effort.
  • 1 point: A reasonable attempt.
  • 1.5 points: Only minor issues.
  • 2 points: A well written report.
• To get a satisfactory (S) grade, you need 3 points in total.

Class Presentation

You will give a 10-minute presentation (7-8 min talk plus 2-3 min Q&A) in class on a technical topic (related to CSE) of your choice. The presentations will be on the last two lectures, i.e. Tuesday, November 29 and Tuesday, December 6.

• The presentation will be graded as follows:
  • 0 points: no presentation or a presentation that clearly had no effort go into it.
  • 0.5 point: Needs more effort.
  • 1 point: A reasonable attempt.
  • 1.5 points: Only minor issues.
  • 2 points: A well done presentation.
• To get a satisfactory (S) grade, you need 1 point.

Course Policies

Late Policy

All assignments are due on the day and time posted. Late submissions will not be graded.

Extra Credit

No extra work in the next semester will be given to improve your grade.

Incompletes

An incomplete (I) grade will only be assigned under extreme circumstances. Please discuss with the instructor.

Academic Integrity

Students are encouraged to actively discuss each others presentations and/or offer preliminary critiques and presentation advice prior to the final presentation dates. Students are also encouraged to discuss the speakers with each other. However, all submitted work must be original. Students should not directly assist in the creation of presentations, all talk reports must be written individually, and you are only allowed to sign-in for yourself at the start of each class.

All references to prior work (your own or others) must be cited. The only exception to this policy is work that is immediately relevant from context (e.g., talk you are writing a report on need not be cited).

If in doubt about what constitutes appropriate behavior, ask the instructor. It is the CSE department's policy not to provide financial support to any student convicted of an academic integrity violation:

CSE Departmental Policy on Academic Integrity

UB's Office of Academic Integrity

Medical Emergencies

Accommodations for medical emergencies will be made on a case-by-case basis.  Requests for extensions based on medical emergencies must be accompanied by documentation of the emergency from student health services:

Student Health Services

Accessibility Resources

If you have a diagnosed disability (physical, learning, or psychological) that will make it difficult for you to carry out the course work as outlined, or that requires accommodations such as recruiting note-takers, readers, or extended time on exams or assignments, please advise the instructor during the first two weeks of the course so that we may review possible arrangements for reasonable accommodations. In addition, if you have not yet done so, contact:

The Office of Accessibility Resources.