CSE-501 Intro to Grad Study in CSE (Fall 2024)

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 Tu 11:00-12:20 PM in Knox 04 or Remote (remote discouraged)
• Seminar Th 11:00-12:20 PM (usually Davis 113A or 338A)
Instructors:
• Oliver Kennedy. Office Hours: by appointment
• Piazza
• Autolab
• CSE Matrix: #cse501_2024
• 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 and Research-Track MS 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
08/27/24	Oliver Kennedy "Introduction" [slides]
09/03/24	Dr. Chunming Qiao "Autonomous Vehicles" [slides] Dr. Chunming Qiao "Quantum Internet" [slides] Dr. Ken Regan "Can Universal Quantum Computing Scale Up?" [slides] Dr. Ryan St. Pierre "Robot Form and Function Lab" [slides]
09/10/24	Oliver Kennedy "How to do Research" [notes]
09/17/24	Dr. Asif Imran "Towards Sustainable AI Software Systems through Energy-Aware Code Smell Refactoring" [slides] Dr. Haonan Lu "Distributed Storage Systems" [slides]
09/24/24	Dr. Michael Buckley "AI-based augmentative communications device for the speech and hearing impaired"
10/01/24	Dr. Qianchuan Ye "Policy Agnostic Oblivious Computation" [slides]
10/10/24	Note: Thursday Class Dr. Andrew Hirsch "How to Read a Paper"
10/15/24	Fall Break
10/17/24	Note: Thursday Class (and one week earlier) Dr. Andrew Hirsch "How to Write a Paper"
10/29/24	Faculty Panel
11/07/24	Note: Thursday Class Dr. Sai Roshan Ayyalasomayajula "Optimizing energy efficiency of AI by smell refactoring" Dr. Marina Blanton "Topic TBD (Security)"
11/12/24	Student Presentations
11/19/24	Student Presentations
11/26/24	Fall Recess
12/03/24	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 11:00 AM, not at 11:10 PM. I will take attendance at the beginning of each class. To get a satisfactory (S) grade, you may miss up to 2 classes (for a total of 10 classes total)

Reports

You will submit three reports during the semester to me via autolab. 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.
  • 1 point: A reasonable attempt.
  • 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.
  • 1 point: A reasonable attempt.
  • 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.