Doctoral Seminar
Overview
This course is required for all PhD students in computer science, and will have students attend presentations on various Computer Science topics. These presentations will be given by their student peers and by invited speakers from industry, government labs, and academia. Coursework will involve written summaries of presentations and short oral presentations by the students.
Students must complete this form for each seminar, within 1 day of the seminar. Late submissions will be penalized 25% for every 24 hour period they are late. Submissions will not be accepted from 4 days after a seminar since the penalties will make the submission be worth 0 points.
Seminars will be posted on the course mailing list ahead of time, and students will be expected to attend. These will not necessarily occur weekly.
Students will also be expected to periodically meet with speakers (together with other students). Meeting times and sign-up sheets will also be distributed on the course mailing list.
Students’ presentations will be on a research topic of their choosing—ideally on their own research! Students will give their short presentations during a meeting later in the semester (the date will be circulated among students registered for the course). If students have a conflict and must reschedule their presentation then please inform the instructor well ahead of time.
Schedule
| Day | Time | Location | Speaker | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA |
| TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA |
Prerequisites
You must be a PhD student in the CS department.
Books
There are no required textbooks for this course. However, you may find the following list of books useful throughout your tenure as a PhD student here at IIT:
- Feibelman, Peter J. A PhD Is Not Enough!: A Guide to Survival in Science, Revised Ed., 2011.
- Zobel, Justin. Writing for Computer Science, 3rd Ed., 2014.
- Turabian, Kate L. et al. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 8th Ed., 2013.
Grading
The following components will constitute your grade in this course:
- Attendance at seminars: 40%
- Summary write-ups for presentations: 20%
- Participation - (questions during presentations): 20%
- Participation - (meeting with speakers): 10%
- Presentation: 10%
Note that you can miss up to 10% of the external seminars (and the corresponding write-ups) without impacting your grade. If you will have to miss a day of student presentations, please check with the instructor ahead of time.
Communication
We will be using a mailing list for discussion and announcements.
Other Useful Links and Resources
- How to Have a Bad Research Career in Academia
- Richard Hamming’s talk on doing research. You should watch/read this yearly.
- Matt Might’s recommended reading for grad students.
- How To Speak by Patrick Winston
Acknowledgement
This page and course guidance is based on information from earlier runs of this course overseen by Profs. Yue Duan, Kai Shu, Nik Sultana, Stefan Muller, and Mark Miller.