I have my project now what?
Imperial College London
ACSE-9 Briefing May 13th, 2020
Course coordinator: Dr Adriana Paluszny
Confirmed Internship/Projects
Have you confirmed your project? Have you contacted your supervisors? Do this by
June 1st. Will your internship/project be done remotely? (Have you confirmed this
with your supervisor?)
First and Second Supervisor
Have you identified them? One of them should be based at Imperial.
Backup projects
Do you have an internship? If yes, do you also have a backup research project?
Everyone should have a backup research project.
Confidential projects
Will only release the project deliverables to supervisor and designated evaluators.
Evaluation / Who will evaluate/mark my work?
Survey of Final Project Information
I will send a survey shortly before the project starts to gather final information.
Dates
February 10th -- Students submit project preferences (Selection Process starts)
March 4th -- Preliminary Project allocation announced
June 1st – Project/Internship Start
June 26th (17:00 UK time) -- Project Plan submission
August 28th -- Internship End
August 28th (17:00 UK time) -- Final Report submission deadline
September 9-11th -- Project presentations
Writing course
The writing course will take place on June 15th. You should receive an email about
this. Please attend!
Objectives of course
- On successfully completing this module, students should have:
o Contributed to an active research area
o Defended research output under critical questioning
o Effective communication, writing and presentation skills
o Experience of managing their time effectively
o Critical analysis techniques and the ability to creatively solve
challenging problems
o Developed a significant software project
Description
This module involves each student in the independent analysis of a technical
problem for which they will devise, implement, test, modify, validate and
document a practical computational solution. A range of such problems will be
provided to students who may opt to solve one of these, to solve a problem of their
own devising, or to undertake a computational project as part of an external industry
placement. Self-devised and external projects will require the agreement of the
project leader.
Professional computational projects are seldom performed in isolation.
Consequently, students may use whatever resources they can discover to assist in
their project but must declare their use of such resources in full within a declaration
accompanying their final report. Students will submit a technical report in the form of
a users’ and a developers’ guide to their software, and that contains the necessary
technical background required to understand the initial problem, and the methods
used to solve that problem, together with appropriate test and validation results.
First actions
- Meet your supervisor / contact them over email
- Understand the objectives of your project
- Understand the data requirements of your project
- Download and setup your technical framework
- Schedule regular meetings with supervisors, aim for weekly meetings
- Read and prepare yourself (you should aim to have read around 15-20 papers
during the project), Take notes, Prepare for your meetings, Log your meetings
Deliverables
- Project Plan + Final Report + Code 80% (Split to be confirmed)
- Project Plan
o Progress to Date and Meeting Log (10%)
o Written Report (Introduction, Literature Review, Description of Problem and
Objectives, Progress to Date and Future Plan, References) 70%
o Independence and initiative (20%)
- Final Report + Code
o Abstract / Introduction / Problem Statement / Literature Review (20%)
o Software Development Life Cycle / Code metadata / Methodology (30%)
o Code / Implementation / Results (30%)
o Discussion / Conclusions / Bibliography (20%)
- Individual oral presentation and practical demonstration of the software in
action 20%
Project Plan Report
- It is a short document.
- Should be written in Word or Latex, Single Spaced, with equiv. 11pt Arial font.
- Should include: Introduction, Literature Review, Description of Problem and
Objectives, Progress to Date and Future Plan, References
- The submission should also include your Meeting/Contact Log where you will
summarise your interaction with your supervisor. On a single page, add a
table with the following entries: Date, Attendees, Type (Email, Voice Call,
Video Call, Face-to-Face), Subject.
Final Report
- It is a document.
- Should be structured as a paper.
- The project should have a brief literature review, a description of the problem
and objectives, methodology, results, and conclusions. You should also
explain your implementation, validation, testing, performance.
- Two types of focus Research and/or Software.
- Should be written in Word or Latex, Single Spaced, with equiv. 11pt Arial font.
- The project report should contain maximum 8,000 words long and should
have a maximum of 8 images. The reports can be shorter.
- The project can have an Appendix with further text and images.
- Will be marked by your supervisors and/or an additional marker.
- Some of you will have been assigned the same project. Remember that this is
an independent project.
- These guidelines may be refined and will be posted in the Github page.
Presentation
- Presentation Guidelines will be sent closer to the date. You should prepare to
give a 10-15 min presentation of your work.
- You should prepare approximately 10 slides.
- You will be able to present remotely and may be recorded.
- Your presentation will be evaluated.
- You will be asked questions about your work and your findings.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is not permitted and is severely penalised by the college. Please refrain of
plagiarising/copying text or code.
Examples of great reports / Examples of failed projects/successful projects
- Too much time spent classifying data
- Not code written
- Not enough code written
- Findings are not clear
- Code was not validated
Additional Notes
- Holidays and Absent periods must be notified to your supervisor. If longer
than 3 days, you must also notify the coordinator (A Paluszny)
- Any Covid related delays or impedances should be reported to the supervisor
and coordinator.
Note: This document is subject to changes.