The one-semester capstone program is an exceptional educational experience designed to empower students and mirror their passions and interests via real world project-based learning and hands-on training. Student individuals/teams tackle projects in a very broad array of application domains from information systems to AI applications and much more.

Implementation Plan

NO Lectures


Grading: Pass/Fail/Distinction

  • Pass/Fail: Project advisor suggests Pass or Fail
  • Distinction: Project advisor recommends distinction, but needs approval from course coordinator and panel. If a student expects a distinction, they need to participate in the poster session to demonstrate their project.

Final Report: A final report is needed to pass the course.

Poster Session:If a student expects a distinction, they need to participate in the final poster session to demonstrate their projects. We will invite industry experts to join the poster session, and they will provide internship opportunities.

  • Awards: Awards will be given to best report and best poster.
  • Internship opportunities: We will invite industry companies to participate the poster session. They are expected to provide internship opportunities.

Quota: The course quota is set to 20 students. Other students need to find a faculty member to submit an ADD request during the AD week. An endorsement is required when a student submits an ADD request.

Project team: Students and project advisor discuss project groups, encouraging group project, but individual project is ok

Computing Resources: School will support some computing resources, please reach out to course coordinator

Challenge/Competitation: It is encouraged to form student groups to participate challenges or competitions.

Participating companies and professors

Guidelines to final report, project proposal and milestone report

You need to write a project proposal (max 2 pages) and a project report (max 6 pages) for the final project. Here is the report template. You are also expected to report project milestones.

  • Project proposal (10%): Use this template to write a 2-page proposal. The proposal should include the problem you are trying to solve, why the problem is important, interesting or difficult. Please also include the papers you plan to read and the high-level idea of your solution to the problem.
  • Project milestone (20%): Use the provided templates [Milestone] to write project milestone reports (maximum 2 pages). Each project milestone report contains what you have done in reading and coding.
  • Final report (70%): The final report is expected to summarize what you have done during the semester. There is no standard format. Please discuss with your project advisor what to write. If you need some ideas, here are some ideas for you to refer.
    • Originality and creativity: Original and creative ideas are encouraged.
    • Reference to prior work: Cite existing related work, and discuss the motivation on why you work this project and your algorithm or approach. Even you are reproducing a published paper, you should have your own motivation.
    • Technical correctness: Present your algorithms or systems for your project. Provide key information for reviewers to judge whether it is technically correct.
    • Experimental validation: Present your experimental setups, and experiments conducted. Discuss the motivation of the designed experimental setups. Describe the project evaluation metrics and present details to understand your evaluation.
    • Analysis quality: Report quantitative results and include qualitative evaluation. Analyze and understand your system by inspecting key outputs and intermediate results. Discuss how it works, when it succeeds and when it fails, and try to interpret why it works and why not.
    • Clarity in writing: The report is written in a precise and concise manner so the report can be easily understood.
    • Overall quality of report: This is an overall evaluation of the final project report, including all dimensions: writing, creativity, convincing experiments and analysis.

Important dates (all dues are EOD 11:59pm)

  • Feb 26: Due date for project proposal
  • Mar 30: Due date for milestone report
  • May 10: Due date for final report
  • May 19: Project presentations to professors and industry experts (for students who aim for distinction)

Frequent Asked Questions

  • Should I find reach out to a professor first or enroll the course first?

      • Either way is ok. It is recommended to enroll the course first, since the quota is set to 20. After all quota is used, a student needs an endorsement from a professor to enroll the course.

  • I am not a targeted student, may I enroll this course?

      • This course is targetted for SDS students of CS program. We are experimenting the course, and DSBST. Stay tuned.

Course Coordinator

Coordinator
Zhizheng Wu