CSCI 400 Senior Seminar @ VSU
by Hui Chen, Ph.D.

Overview

Discussions based on current researches that are facilitated by students, faculty members, or industry representatives. Students are expected to provide a written summary of each discussed research paper and to participate in-class discussion. Each student facilitates the discussion at least once during the semester. The impact of the research in a global and societal context will be discussed.

Prerequisites: Senior level standing in Computer Science or consent of Instructor

CSCI 400 are typically taught in conjunction with CSCI 610 Graduate Seminar I and CSCI 611 Graduate Seminar II where the enrolled graduate students may be subject to different requirements and expectations.

Class Schedule

  1. 01/20 Introduction

    Syllabus:

    Download the CSCI400 Syllabus in a PDF file. CSCI 610/611 students use this syllabus as a reference.

    Grading Rubrics:

    Grading rubrics are in Blackboard.

    Textbook:

    Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. 2008. The Craft of Research, Third Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-226-06566-3

    Select papers from the following sources, post your selection in the discussion board, and have your selections approved by the instructor by 01/27/2017. Access these resources off-campus via the University library.

    ACM Conference Proceedings
    ACM Journals

  2. 01/27 On Reading and Writing

    Note:

    1. For graduate students in CSCI 600 Graduate Seminar II, read, How to (seriously) read a scientific paper
    2. Answer the questions in Blackboard under "Assignment" for January 27.

    On Reading: Reading Assignment:

    1. On "Nature of Paper" , an excerpt from the University of Cambridge's Reading Skills course material.
    2. "A way to read" papers , an excerpt from the University of Cambridge's Reading Skills course material.
    3. S. Keshav. 2007. How to read a paper. SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 37, 3 (July 2007), 83-84. DOI=10.1145/1273445.1273458 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1273445.1273458
    4. How to Do a Technical Reading Program , Frederick Brooks , 4 February 2008, with minor amendments by Neil Dodgson , 4 October 2011.

    On Writing: Reading Assignment:

    1. Gopen, George D., and Judith A. Swan. The science of scientific writing. American Scientist (1990): 550-558.

    Submission of Individual Assignment:

    1. Submit individual assignment by 2:00PM, Friday, February 3, in Blackboard under 'Assignment'

  3. 02/03 On Technical Presentation

    Study the following:

    1. How to Give an Awesome (PowerPoint) Presentation (a Youtube Video), , by Marc Strong and Wienotfilms.com
    2. How NOT to give a presentation, by Neil Dodgson
    3. Laying out presentation slides, by Neil Dodgson
    4. "The Gettysburg Address", by Neil Dodgson

    Watch Selected Presentation Videos:

    1. Technical Programs at the 13th USENIX Symposium on Networked System Design and Implementation

    Individual Assignment Reminder:

    1. Presenters who will present on 02/10 must submit a draft presentation by 11:59PM, Wednesday, 02/08, and a final presentation by 2:00PM, Friday, 02/10, in Blackboard.

    Group Assignment:

    1. Complete the assignment '(02/03) Watching Selected Presentations' in Blackboard. Submit the group assignment by 2:00PM, Friday, February 10, in Blackboard under 'Assignment'.

  4. 02/10 Student Presentations

    Note:

    1. Dr. Ahmed Mohammed will serve as the guest lecturer and substitute the instructor (H. Chen) for this day. The presentations will be video recorded for the instructor to review. In addition, Dr. Mohammed will fill the rubrics for presention slides and oral presention. The rubrics will be considered for your grade.

    Presenters and Topics:

    1. Naif A. presents 'An Application Restriction System for Bring-Your-Own-Device Scenarios'.
    2. Abdulaziz F. presents 'Connected Car: Technologies, Issues, Future Trends'
    3. Rawad H. presents 'Bringing the augmented reality benefits to biomechanics study'

    Individual Assignment Reminder:

    1. Presenters who will present on 02/17 must submit a draft presentation by 11:59PM, Wednesday, 02/15, and a final presentation by 2:00PM, Friday, 02/17, in Blackboard.

    Group Assignment:

    1. Each group summarizes the paper 'An Application Restriction System for Bring-Your-Own-Device Scenarios'. You must use the provided template in Blackboard. The summary must be at least 2-page long. Submit the work in Blackboard under 'Assignment' by 2PM, February 17.
    2. Group meeting log due in Blackboard under 'Assignment' by 2PM, February 17. You must use one of the meeting log template in Blackboard.

  5. 02/17 Student Presentations

    Note:

    1. Dr. Ahmed Mohammed will serve as the guest lecturer and substitute the instructor (H. Chen) for this day. The presentations will be video recorded for the instructor to review. In addition, Dr. Mohammed will fill the rubrics for presention slides and oral presention. The rubrics will be considered for your grade.

    Presenters and Topics:

    1. Naif A. presents 'Mind the tracker you wear: a security analysis of wearable health trackers'
    2. Abdulaziz F. presents 'Bringing the Cloud to Rural and Remote Areas via Cloudlets'

    Individual Assignment Reminder:

    1. Presenters who will present on 02/24 must submit a draft presentation by 11:59PM, Wednesday, 02/22, and a final presentation by 2:00PM, Friday, 02/24, in Blackboard.

  6. 02/24 Student Presentations

    Presenters and Topics:

    1. Joel G. presents 'The uncertain case of credit card fraud detection'
    2. Rawad H. presents 'On the impact of social network information diversity on end-user programming productivity: a foraging-theoretic study'
    3. Sagar P. presents 'ns-3-based real-time emulation of LTE testbed using LabVIEW platform for software defined networking (SDN) in CROWD project'
    4. Carl S. presents 'Modeling human-like non-rationality for social agents'

    Individual Assignment Reminder:

    1. Presenters who will present on 03/03 must submit a draft presentation by 11:59PM, Wednesday, 03/01, and a final presentation by 2:00PM, Friday, 03/03, in Blackboard.

    Group Assignment:

    1. Each group summarizes the paper 'On the impact of social network information diversity on end-user programming productivity: a foraging-theoretic study'. You must use the provided template in Blackboard. The summary must be at least 2-page long. Submit the work in Blackboard under 'Assignment' by 2PM, March 3.
    2. Group meeting log due in Blackboard under 'Assignment' by 2PM, March 3. You must use one of the meeting log template in Blackboard.

  7. 03/03 Student Presentations

    Presenters and Topics:

    1. Jaquan B. presents 'A Framework of Mining Trajectories from Untrustworthy Data in Cyber-Physical System'
    2. Joel G. presents ' Enhancing Android permission through usage control: a BYOD use-case '
    3. Jason D. presents ' Parallel Networks: Synthetic Biology and Artificial Intelligence '

    Individual Assignment Reminder:

    1. Presenters who will present on 03/31 must submit a draft presentation by 11:59PM, Wednesday, 03/29, and a final presentation by 2:00PM, Friday, 03/31, in Blackboard.

  8. 03/10 On Hypothesis and Evidence

    Assignment:

    1. Online exercise in Blackboard (03/10, due 4PM, 03/10/2017)

    Individual Assignment Reminder:

    1. Presenters who will present on 03/31 must submit a draft presentation by 11:59PM, Wednesday, 03/29, and a final presentation by 2:00PM, Friday, 03/31, in Blackboard.

  9. 03/12 - 03/19 Spring Break (No Class)

  10. 03/24 On Graphing and Presentation of Evidence

    Group Assignment:

    1. Group Assignment in Blackboard; due 2PM, March 31.

    Individual Assignment Reminder:

    1. Presenters who will present on 03/31 must submit a draft presentation by 11:59PM, Wednesday, 03/29, and a final presentation by 2:00PM, Friday, 03/31, in Blackboard.

  11. 03/31 Student Presentations

    Presenters and Topics:

    1. Sagar P. presents 'Wearable System for Obstacle Detection and Human Assistance Using Ultrasonic Sensor Array'
    2. Naseer C. presents ' Redundancy reduction for indoor device-free localization '
    3. Nicole B. presents ' Hi, magic closet, tell me what to wear! '
    4. Jason D. presents ' Intelligent systems and technology for integrative and predictive medicine: An ACP approach '

    Individual Assignment Reminder:

    1. Presenters who will present on 04/07 must submit a draft presentation by 11:59PM, Wednesday, 04/05, and a final presentation by 2:00PM, Friday, 04/07, in Blackboard.

  12. 04/07 Student Presentations

    Presenters and Topics:

    1. Fitzgerald C. presents 'Influence of social and technical factors for evaluating contribution in GitHub'
    2. Lusene D. presents 'Post-traumatic stress disorder: opportunities & challenges for computing technology'
    3. Demonte T. presents ' Data-driven inverse dynamics for human motion '

    Individual Assignment Reminder:

    1. Presenters who will present on 04/14 must submit a draft presentation by 11:59PM, Wednesday, 04/12, and a final presentation by 2:00PM, Friday, 04/14, in Blackboard.

    Group Assignment:

    1. Each group summarizes the paper 'Influence of social and technical factors for evaluating contribution in GitHub'. You must use the provided template in Blackboard. The summary must be at least 2-page long. Submit the work in Blackboard under 'Assignment' by 2PM, April 14.
    2. Group meeting log due in Blackboard under 'Assignment' by 2PM, April 14. You must use one of the meeting log template in Blackboard.

  13. 04/14 Student Presentations

    Presenters and Topics:

    1. Fitzgerald C. presents 'The Matter of Heartbleed'
    2. Carl S. presents 'Prototypes based discriminative appearance model for object tracking'
    3. Naseer C. presents ' Multilinear Factorization Machines for Multi-Task Multi-View Learning '

    Individual Assignment Reminder:

    1. Presenters who will present on 04/21 must submit a draft presentation by 11:59PM, Wednesday, 04/19, and a final presentation by 2:00PM, Friday, 04/21, in Blackboard.

  14. 04/21 Student Presentations

    Presenters and Topics:

    1. Lusene D. presents ' AVEC 2014: 3D Dimensional Affect and Depression Recognition Challenge '
    2. Demonte T. presents ' Decomposing Images into Layers via RGB-Space Geometry '
    3. Nicole B. presents ' Rethinking the smart closet as an opportunity to enhance the social currency of clothing '

    Group Assignment:

    1. Each group summarizes the paper 'Decomposing Images into Layers via RGB-Space Geometry'. You must use the provided template in Blackboard. The summary must be at least 2-page long. Submit the work in Blackboard under 'Assignment' by 2PM, April 28.
    2. Group meeting log due in Blackboard under 'Assignment' by 2PM, April 28. You must use one of the meeting log template in Blackboard.

  15. 04/28 On Local, Global, and Societal issues on Computing (Last class of this Seminar)

    Watching:

    1. Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil
    2. Computer Science can change the world

    Individual Assignment:

    1. Assignment in Blackboard (Computer Science: A Different Perspective)

  16. 05/02 Reading Day (No Class)

  17. 05/03 Student Presentations (3:30PM - 5:30PM, Wednesday, May 3, 2017)

    Note:

    1. Final exam time for CSCI 400. Used it as the time for students' presentations.
    2. For other classes, see the University's final exam schedule.

    Presenters and Topics:

    1. Jaquan B. presents 'An Automated High-Level Saliency Predictor for Smart Game Balancing'
    2. Carl S. presents 'Prototypes based discriminative appearance model for object tracking'
    3. Christopher H. presents ' Can Censorship Measurements Be Safe(r)? '