Department of Computer Science
CPS 300 Fall 2004 "blog"
8/26 Chase
Introduction to the graduate program
9/2 Richard Lucic
For your next CPS 300 class (9/2) I will be speaking on research careers in academia and industry. Prior to the class, please review the PowerPoint presentation by Prof. David Patterson, UC Berkeley, "How to Have a Bad Career in Research". http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pattrsn/talks/BadCareer3.ppt
9/9 Chase: Publications
Conferences, workshops, journals.
9/16 Chase: Peer Review
Discussion of the standards for judging research and research papers. Please familiarize yourselves with the three notes in the "peer review" section of the resources page:
http://www.cs.duke.edu/~chase/cps300/resources.html
Focus on the criteria for judging papers in "The task of the referee" and "A guide for new referees". You do not need to read these exhaustively, but I'd like you to come to class with an understanding of the different kinds of papers and different "weights" of research contributions so that we can discuss their roles and their suitability for various forums.
9/22 Chase: Science in the Public Interest
Discussion of the 1945 document "Science: the Endless Frontier" by Dr. Vannevar Bush, one of the "grandparents" of computing (no relation to the current President Bush). This is the proposal that initiated the establishment of the US National Science Foundation (NSF), which is the source of most of the department's funding. See the pre-discussion notes.
10/7 Departmental Meeting
10/14 IBM Research Presentation
10/21 Carla Ellis: Strong Inference
She will be expecting you to really read this short and interesting paper: http://www.cs.duke.edu/education/courses/fall04/cps296.2/science_platt.html
10/28 Chase: Grand Challenges
(In conjunction with Ron Brachman visit.) CRA recently sponsored the first of a series of workshops on this topic, bringing together Movers and Shakers, Visionaries, Futurists, and Whackos to reach some consensus on the challenges and opportunities we face as a community.
Here is the workshop website.
Just below the title is a link to the Final Report, which is an easy read although it is 30 pages. Please read the intro and at least two of the challenges deeply enough to come to class with some opinions. How can/should such a list of challenges influence our research? Is a workshop like this a useful exercise, and if so, why? Any challenges left off the list?
Note that there is other interesting material on that website, including short position papers written by all of the attendees, including many leaders in field. Please pick one position paper and come prepared to tell the rest of us about it.
11/4 Chase: Getting started in research