Tulane CMPS 7010 Research Seminar

Course Information

  • CMPS 7010 Research Seminar
  • Fall 2025 Term, Tulane University
  • Lectures Times: Tuesday and Thursday, 1100 - 1215
  • Room: Gibson Hall Room 308 (Building 1)
  • Online: All meetings will be recorded on Zoom, see Tulane Canvas for details.
  • Prerequisite Courses: None. Only Open to CMPS PhD Students at Tulane University

Website Information

Instructor Information

Teaching Assistants

  • N/A, no assistants this academic year.

Course Communication Policy

There are a variety of methods you can use to get in touch with us, and we expect to be able to get in touch with you. A few general policies.

  • Please when at all possible use EdStem to ask questions! You should have received the course invite at the start of the semester.
  • When emailing, please email all TAs and the professor of your section. We will respond within 24 hours. Turn around may be faster, but do not rely on it.
  • We expect the same from you: that you will check your email/Canvas every 24 hours. All major announcements will be distributed via the Announcements function of Canvas.
  • We are all available to have drop in office hours and are available by appointment. Please reach out to us directly to setup extra time if you need more support during the semester.
  • If you have a general question, please check or post on the discussion board on Canvas!. We check it regularly to answer common questions on projects and homeworks. The solution to your question might already be there!

Table of Contents

Catalog / Course Description

This seminar course introduces students to research methods in Computer Science and to the research conducted in the department. Students will read research papers, participate in active research projects, and practice preparing and presenting research presentations. Department faculty will present on their research in order to expose students to the research projects conducted in the department. Research methods such as literature search, experiment design, technical writing, etc. will also be covered. This course is required for all PhD students in Computer Science. The content of this course varies from semester to semester.

Prerequisite: None. Only Open to CMPS PhD Students at Tulane University

Course Goals, Objectives, and Overview

This is the Research Seminar course for first-year PhD students in Computer Science at Tulane. The purpose of the course is to provide early-stage PhD students some advice on how to conduct research in CS. The class will be largely discussion-based and presentation-oriented and all the students are expected to participate actively. Topics include integrity in research, how to read and present papers, problem formulation and searching for solutions, scientific/mathematical writing, where to obtain data and how to evaluate your solutions. We will discuss the advice from successful researchers in the field and expectations, as well as essential tools that can help you work more efficiently.

Course Learning Outcomes

At the conclusion of this course students will be able to:

  • Describe the types of research that is currently being undertaken at Tulane and across Computer Science broadly.
  • Create and articulate the importance of maintaining a professional presence on the internet.
  • Articulate the importance of learning styles and questioning styles as a TA. Develop short presentations on basic CS topics.
  • Read, interpret, and present research papers to other computer science graduate students.
  • Prepare a research document in LaTeX.
  • Use resources such as the library, databases, and other techniques to gather research papers.
  • Read, summarize, and reimplement a finding from the computer science literature.

Program-Level Outcomes

This course satisfies the first semester research requirement as part of the Tulane CMPS PhD Program

Required and Suggested Student Resources

There are no required resources that need to be purchased. There are a number of readings and extra information posted on the Schedule and Resources pages.

Evaluation Procedures and Grading Criteria

This course will consist of reading, actively discussing, and presenting research. There will be required readings before many meetings and several semester long projects that the students must undertake. All assignments and due dates are posted in Tulane Canvas.

Category Points Percentage
Attendance and Participation 100 33.33%
TA Mini Lecture 25 8.33%
Academic Website 25 8.33%
Paper Presentation 50 16.67%
Final Presentation 50 16.67%
Final Writeup 50 16.67%
Total 300 100.00%

Attendance and Participation

Many class days we will be reading texts before hand or listening to a presentation in class. You are required to attend, in person, every lecture and engage with the material. If you do not actively participate in the discussion for that day, you will not receive points.

TA Mini Lecture

As a part of the course you will select a topic from CMPS 1500 - Introduction to Computer Science and prepare a 5-8 minute presentation on the topic with the intended audience of a first year student. You must prepare a visual, either a diagram to be drawn on the whiteboard or a short presentation (2-3 slides) to explain your point. You will then watch yourself in the recorded course lecture and prepare a short (1 paragraph) response to watching yourself present.

You will be evaluated according to the following rubric.

  • Professionalism (5 Points): You showed up on time, prepared and ready to present. You welcomed the class, introduced yourself, and gave an overview of what you will be presenting. You kept to your time limit.
  • Visual (5 Points): The visual that you prepared was appropriate, clean, and aided in student understanding.
  • Presentation (5 Points): You spoke clearly to the class, enunciated, and maintained good eye contact. You had a plan as to what you were going to say and executed it. The content of the presentation was appropriate and you explained the required topic.
  • Engagement (5 Points): You paused while explaining, sought feedback from the class, and tailored your presentation to ensure the class was focused and engaged.
  • Reflection (5 Points): You watched the video and prepared a 1 paragraph response. The response highlighted both what you did well, and what you feel you could improve on for next time.

Additional Materials: Here are a few extra materials that can really help make you a better teacher!

  • Tools For Teaching Barbra Gross Davis. Amazon Link. A classic and really great book that covers all types of teaching.
  • Teaching Tech Together, Greg Wilson. Free Online. New to me but covers a lot about how to present technical material.

Academic Website

An important part of being an academic is having a properly setup academic website and profile. If someone can’t find you on the web, Google Scholar, or LinkedIn, they will not know who you are (and they have to know who you are to be successful). As such, during the semester you are responsible for developing and posting an academic website in EdStem. There are many resources for this on the Resources page. Please have a look at things like Current Tulane PhD Students for some ideas and consider using something like al-folio for GitHub to set this up.

You will be evaluated according to the following rubric.

  • Professionalism (12.5 Points): The page is neat and clean, your photo is clear and nice, you use complete sentences, and the site in general looks professional.
  • Required Elements (12.5 Points): You have the required elements including a headshot, a list of publications, name, address, contact information, links to socials, email, and other contact information. Also links to your GitHub, Google Scholar, and other academic reputation information. You have pages for about you and research, at minimum.

Paper Presentation

Each student will give one 30 minute presentation (+15 mins for discussion) for papers picked in conjunction with your PhD advisor. The presentation should cover up to three papers (on the same topic) and should give an overview of the problem area, provide details on the contents of the paper(s), and dive into the details of at least one main technical result. The presenter should comment on the problems studied, technical contributions and limitations, and presentation styles of the paper(s). Students who do not present should read the paper(s) carefully and prepare 3—5 questions before each presentation. You must prepare a Powerpoint or PDF slides to help guide the discussion and the rest of the class (Hint: You can always email the authors for a copy of their slides). Presentations should aim to answer the following questions:

  1. What is the problem that the authors tried to solve?
  2. What are previous related works?
  3. What is the proposed solution(s)?
  4. How did the authors evaluate their scheme(s)?
  5. What are the advantages of the proposed solution compared with prior works?
  6. In your view, are there any weakness of the proposed work?

You will be evaluated according to the following rubric.

  • Professionalism (10 Points): Your showed up prepared, you led the class in presentation and discussion, slides were neat, tidy, and readable, and you generally put together a professional presentation.
  • Content / Visuals (10 Points): The slides you used were well constructed and helped other students understand the topic and the results.
  • Presentation (10 Points): Your presentation was rehearsed, conformed to time limits, covered the questions above, and was clear/engaging.
  • Discussion (10 Points): You led the discussion, answered questions clearly and professionally (or clarified that you didn’t know) and you kept the conversation going for the 15 minute discussion period. You (as a non-presenter) showed up, had questions ready, and were engaged.
  • Reflection (10 Points): You watched the video and prepared a 1 paragraph response. The response highlighted both what you did well, and what you feel you could improve on for next time.

Final Writeup and Presentation

As practice of ``doing research’’ you are to take one result from the set of papers you presented in class and duplicate it! This can be (re-) implementing a baseline, running existing code on a new dataset, obtaining a similar proof in a different way, or any other verification or (small) modification of any result from your presented papers. If you choose the implementation path you must put all code and resources necessary to run your code in a public GitHub. If you choose to do a proof, your proof must be typeset properly, written formally, and be correct.

As part of this you will prepare a short (10 min) presentation of the result that you have duplicated as well as a minimum 2 page writeup in Latex (I very strongly suggest using Overleaf to do this, you advisor has a paid subscription), following the formatting I’ve prepared a helpful example article here, and which contains all relevant references, background and preliminaries, and a discussion of your research result.

Your presentation will be evaluated according to the following rubric.

  • Professionalism (10 Points): Your showed up prepared, you led the class in presentation and discussion, slides were neat, tidy, and readable, and you generally put together a professional presentation.
  • Content / Visuals (10 Points): The slides you used were well constructed and helped other students understand the topic and the results.
  • Presentation (10 Points): Your presentation was rehearsed, conformed to time limits, covered the main points of your implementation/reproduction, and was clear/engaging.
  • Questions (10 Points): You were ready for questions, you asked questions of your fellow students, and were clear and thoughtful throughout the questions.
  • Reflection (10 Points): You watched the video and prepared a 1 paragraph response. The response highlighted both what you did well, and what you feel you could improve on for next time.

Your paper will be evaluated according to the following rubric.

  • Professionalism (10 Points): The paper is well-organized, and well-written, contains the proper sections and proper formatting. The written English is in the active, present voice, the arguments are well organized, and the document is well presented as described.
  • Introduction / Problem Justification (5 Points): There is an Introduction that places the project goals within context and motivates the problem in a general way. You should clearly answer the questions: Why is this problem interesting or important? What is it about this problem that makes it non-trivial to solve? Once your project is complete, how might one use the information and insight your project provides?
  • Related Work (10 Points): There at least 5 papers in the references and the papers are both relevant to the investigation proposed and properly cited and contextualized in the document. References are used where necessary to back up statements and assertions.
  • Problem Setting/ Formal Model (5 Points): There is a clear statement of the problem as a model/algorithm/task that needs to be developed or completed. This should be formal in nature, e.g., if it is an algorithm clearly state the inputs and outputs. You should clearly state why this model is relevant to the problem and how it differs from existing results. For each decision you make in constructing your model, you must explain or justify that decision. For example, if preferences are drawn from a distribution how did you choose what distribution to use?
  • Methodology / Reproducibility (5 Points): Your algorithm / experiment / model etc. and the process you will use to evaluate it is clearly written, is technical in nature, and clearly describes the methods you will use to the point that someone else would be able to reproduce the methods you have used. You have clearly and exactly specified the question, method of evaluation, formal model of the problem, and the metrics of evaluation you will use.
  • Results (10 Points): You have provided evidence, via proof, graph, and/or example, that you have completed a comprehensive investigation of your proposed work. The presented results should be coherent and tell a story about what you did and what you found.
  • Conclusion / Discussion (5 Points): There is a coherent discussion of the results of the project, the practical implications of those results, and a clear line of next questions you or someone else could work on. Do not oversell but rather clearly articulate both the accomplishments and limitations of your work.
  • All work will be turned in on Canvas. All work will either be distributed via Canvas or the CMPS 7010 Webpage.
  • All work will be due at class time on the day assigned. This means turning things in during or after class is considered late. This will be consistent throughout the semester.

Late Work Policy

All work must be turned in on time unless explicit consent for outstanding circumstances is given beforehand (or in the case of illness, with a documented absence after). Any late work without prior authorization, or a late token in the case of projects, will not be accepted and count as a 0.

Final Grade Policy

The weighted average will determine your letter grade roughly as follows, +/- grades will be given for borderline cases.

  • A >= 90%
  • B >= 80%
  • C >= 70%
  • D >= 60%
  • F < 60%

All grades will be posted on Canvas throughout the semester.

Schedule and Workload

See the Schedule Page for the schedule and assignments.

This is an upper division / graduate computer science course, it is hard, there will be a lot of work. You will sometimes have multiple assignments at a time and be responsible for managing the deadlines. Expect to spend 6-9 hours per week outside of class on this course (Tulane policy is 2-3 hours outside of class per hour in class).

Please post on EdStem or (less preferred) Email the instructor with questions.

Students are reminded to make use of office hours. Please reach out to any of the course staff whenever you need and we can make appointments to meet if you require it.

Attendance

Students are required to attend all classes and labs (either in person or virtually) unless they are ill or prevented from attending by exceptional circumstances and with a valid excuse note. Students are responsible for notifying instructors about absences that result from serious illnesses, injuries, or critical personal problems. Students with frequent absences will be reported and/or removed from the course according to university policy.

If a student cannot attend class for any reason, the student is responsible for communicating with their instructors to make up any work they may miss. Faculty will provide online options for class participation, outlined in this document, and unless a student is seriously ill, they are expected to use this option. The University Health Center will provide documentation verifying a student is ill, as well as verification that a student may return to class. With the approval of the Newcomb - Tulane College dean, an instructor may have a student who has excessive absences involuntarily withdrawn from a course with a WF grade after written warning at any time during the semester.

Other Course and Tulane Policies

Use of Electronic Devices

Please silence your cellphones during class. If you want to use a laptop or other device with a large screen for note taking please sit in the back rows of the classroom – it’s distracting to other students https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/students-are-better-off-without-a-laptop-in-the-classroom/

Student Support Services

As we move to remote/hybrid teaching Tulane has moved a number of student success resources online. Please visit the Virtual Learning Student Support Pages for more information.

Please come talk to us if you feel you are behind or overwhelmed in this class. We can work with you and Tulane provides a suite of services to help you succeed in this course including the following. For more information please visit the student support services webpage.

  • Academic Advising - Advising maximizes student potential by sharing information, tools, and resources that empower them to make informed decisions about creating appropriate plans to achieve their academic goals.
  • Academic Learning & Tutoring - The ALTC supports students through supplemental instruction, peer tutoring, writing and presentation consultations, pop-up review sessions, study space, and online learning resources.
  • Case Management and Counseling - Students can leverage support services such as CAPS for Counseling Services, Case Management and Victim Support Services, and Goldman Center for Student Accessibility.
  • Success Coaching - Coaches help students create actionable steps to meet goals on topics such as college transition, time-management, motivation, testing anxiety, stress management, and decision-making.

ADA / Accessibility Statement

Tulane University strives to make all learning experiences as accessible as possible. If you anticipate or experience academic barriers based on your disability, please let me know immediately so that we can privately discuss options. I will never ask for medical documentation from you to support potential accommodation needs. Instead, to establish reasonable accommodations, I may request that you register with the Goldman Center for Student Accessibility. After registration, make arrangements with me as soon as possible to discuss your accommodations so that they may be implemented in a timely fashion. Goldman Center contact information: goldman@tulane.edu; (504) 862-8433; http://accessibility.tulane.edu.

Recording of Class Sessions

Recording class sessions: Classes will be recorded and the recordings will be posted to Canvas. Students may not post a class recording elsewhere, either wholly or in part. Instructors may use a class recording in another course or in a subsequent semester.

Code of Academic Conduct and Academic Integrity

This course will follow Tulane’s Code of Academic Conduct. Cheating will be reported to the Associate Dean of Newcomb-Tulane College. Discussion is encouraged. However, what you turn in must be your own. You may not read another classmate’s solutions or copy a solution from the web. I will be running checks on the code turned in for plagiarism. If plagiarism is detected the minimum penalty is a 0 on the assignment and being reported, however, you may automatically fail this course at the discretion of the instructor or Honor Board.

For more information about the honor board process and the code of academic conduct please see the NTC Academic Integrity Website.

To be more clear (text from Hal Daumé III): Any assignment or exam that is handed in must be your own work (unless otherwise stated). However, talking with one another to understand the material better is strongly encouraged. Recognizing the distinction between cheating and cooperation is very important. If you copy someone else’s solution, you are cheating. If you let someone else copy your solution, you are cheating (this includes posting solutions online in a public place). If someone dictates a solution to you, you are cheating.

Everything you hand in must be in your own words, and based on your own understanding of the solution. If someone helps you understand the problem during a high-level discussion, you are not cheating. We strongly encourage students to help one another understand the material presented in class, in the book, and general issues relevant to the assignments. We also encourage the use of online resources to understand and clarify things, but not taking results verbatium. When taking an exam, you must work independently. Any collaboration during an exam will be considered cheating. Any student who is caught cheating will be given an F in the course and referred to the University Office of Student Conduct. Please don’t take that chance – if you’re having trouble understanding the material, please let me know and I will be more than happy to help.

The Code of Academic Conduct applies to all undergraduate students, full-time and part-time, at Tulane University. Tulane University expects and requires behavior compatible with its high standards of scholarship. By accepting admission to the university, a student accepts its regulations (i.e., Code of Academic Conduct and the Code of Student Conduct) and acknowledges the right of the university to take disciplinary action, including suspension or expulsion, for conduct judged unsatisfactory or disruptive.

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Statement (EDI)

Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) are important Tulane values that are key drivers of academic excellence in our learning environments. In our drive for academic excellence, we seek to ensure that students, faculty, and staff across diverse social identities, cultural backgrounds, and lived experiences can thrive -especially those from from underrepresented and underserved communities (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, social class, international, veterans, religious minorities, age, and any other classification protected by applicable law -see Tulane’s Nondiscrimination Policy). In order to build a supportive culture and climate for every member of our community, we recognize that we each of have unique EDI strengths to share with others and that we also have areas for EDI growth, learning, and change. This EDI commitment and cultural humility helps us collectively build a university community and culture where everyone experiences belonging.

Religious Accommodation Policy

Per Tulane’s religious accommodation policy as stated at the bottom of Tulane’s academic calendar, we will make every reasonable effort to ensure that students are able to observe religious holidays without jeopardizing their ability to fulfill their academic obligations. Excused absences do not relieve the student from the responsibility for any course work required during the period of absence. Students should notify the instructor within the first two weeks of the semester about their intent to observe any holidays that fall on a class day or on the day of the final exam.

Title IX

Tulane University recognizes the inherent dignity of all individuals and promotes respect for all people. As such, Tulane is committed to providing an environment free of all forms of discrimination including sexual and gender-based discrimination, harassment, and violence like sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and stalking. If you (or someone you know) has experienced or is experiencing these types of behaviors, know that you are not alone. Resources and support are available: you can learn more at http://allin.tulane.edu. Any and all of your communications on these matters will be treated as either “Confidential” or “Private” as explained in the chart below. Please know that if you choose to confide in me I am mandated by the university to report to the Title IX Coordinator, as Tulane and I want to be sure you are connected with all the support the university can offer. You do not need to respond to outreach from the university if you do not want. You can also make a report yourself, including an anonymous report, through the form http://tulane.edu/concerns.

Confidential Private
Except in extreme circumstances, involving imminent danger to one’s self or others, nothing will be shared without your explicit permission. Conversations are kept as confidential as possible, but information is shared with key staff members so the University can offer resources and accommodations and take action if necessary for safety reasons.
Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS): (504) 314-2277 or The Line (24/7): (504) 264-6074 Case Management and Victim Support Services: (504) 314-2160 or srss@tulane.edu
Student Health Center: (504) 865-5255 Tulane University Police (TUPD): Uptown - (504) 865-5911. Downtown – (504) 988-5531
Sexual Aggression Peer Hotline and Education (SAPHE): (504) 654-9543 Title IX Coordinator: (504) 314-2160 or msmith76@tulane.edu