CSCI 4830-800 (Research On-ramp) Course Materials for Spring 2026:
Office hours:
Tuesdays 1:30-2:30pm in person (ECOT 747),
Fridays 2:30-3:30pm by
zoom and at
other times by appointment; please email me if you'd like to arrange a
meeting time outside the set hours. It's a good idea to check my
homepage before joining
office hours in case I've had to reschedule them because of some other
meeting (or move them to zoom).
Class Materials:
- 14 January: Logistics, introductions, course philosophy &
goals
Stuff for today's class:
Homework for next time:
- Free-wheeling brainstorming
- Device-free thinking time
- 21 January: I'm going to have to start this class with a
second round of logistics/intro/etc. because we have ten new people
who didn't get to the first class period; after that, I'll start
talking about how to get your arms around what's already been done in
a research area.
Stuff for today's class:
Homework for next time:
- Read this short essay by Martin Schwartz entitled "The
Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research."
- For those who added the course after the first period:
- Free-wheeling brainstorming
- Device-free thinking time
- Note: you're going to have to do those exercises ASAP
in order to catch up, since the next part of your homework
depends on their results!
- For everyone: stop by my office to discuss the ideas that
came up for you during the brainstorming exercise. I will pass
around a signup sheet for time slots at class on the 21st.
If you missed that signup sheet, email me ASAP, and no later than
COB on the 22nd.
- 28 January: Some postprocessing of the brainstorming
results and a deeper dive into how to do background research.
Stuff for today's class:
Homework for next time:
- Pick one of your ideas (doesn't matter which one) and find three
papers in the scientific literature -- that is, in journals,
conference proceedings, and/or the arxiv -- that talk about some of
the research that has been done on that idea. Turn in two sentences
about each one on Canvas, explaining what that paper is about and/or
why you chose it for your list. This is due before the beginning of
the next class.
- 4 February: Putting it all together: zeroing in on the
problem that you want to work on (including some postprocessing of
the "stupidity" essay)
Homework for next time:
- Go back to your three papers and do some forward/backward
chaining to come up with a short (10-12 papers) bibliography about
previous research on your idea. In this assignment, I'd like you
to pay some attention to both the quality of the papers
(good venue? highly cited? author reputation?) and the
closeness of the match to your idea or your interest area.
Turn in a formal version of that bibliography that follows
standard scientific norms. You're welcome to use any set of
guidelines that you wish, such as
this one. (If you use other guidelines, please include a link
to them.)
- Go back to your full list from the brainstorming exercise and
do some thinking about how your thinking has evolved, now that
you've dug into the research literature a bit. (Have you homed in
on something? Changed course completely? If so, why?
What is your new problem choice?) Making some of that
thinking time "device free," as in the previous exercise, will
probably be a useful way to kick this off.
- 11 February: Finding an advisor, part I
Homework for next time:
Before 5pm on 17 February, send me an email message
outlining a project on the idea that has floated to the top during
the past few weeks and asking to meet with me to discuss it. We'll
schedule those meetings between 18-23 February. Hint: the sooner
you email me, the more choice of meeting times you'll have. (Note:
this is an exercise for the kind of cold-call email that you'll need
to execute to contact potential advisors. Please don't use LLMs for
this email composition task; we are very much aware of the kind of
tripe that comes out of ChatGPT if you ask it to do this and you
will not make a good impression if you do that.)
- 18 February: Finding an advisor, part II -- and working
with one once you've established contact.
Homework for next time:
- Send a professional follow-up email to me about our meeting to
close the loop. Make sure it says something specific and salient
about the conversation at that meeting, your thinking since then,
etc. (Ditto on the use of GenAI here. Don't do it.)
- Dig through the homepages of faculty in the CS department to
see who does research that's related to your interests. Choose a
few (2-5) and turn in their names, together with a few sentences
about why you chose each person.
- 25 February: Writing about research, part I: Proposals.
Also a brief overview of programs at CU that support undergrad
research.
Homework for next time:
- Read through the "Project Proposal" guidelines in the "Individual
Project Grants" section of
the UROP page, which you
can find under the "Applying" dropdown. (Here's
the
direct link if you have trouble navigating through this thicket of
webpages and dropdowns on that page.)
- Start thinking about what you might put in each section of the
proposal.
- Write down your thoughts and questions about this process and
bring them to class.
- 4 March: Writing about research, part II: Organizing and
presenting your ideas.
Homework for next time:
- Go back to the UROP guidelines and put together a short
research proposal following those guidelines.
The
"Proposal on One Page" page is a good one stop shop for this
activity. (Note: you'll have to make up some content here because
you haven't {\bf done} the research yet. Have fun but try to be
at least a bit contentful.)
- 11 March: Writing about research, part III: The anatomy of
a technical paper
Homework for next time:
- Turn in an outline of a technical paper on your chosen research
problem, with one sentence in each section. Again, this exercise will
require some creative but at least somewhat meaningful content
creation.
- 25 March: Creating research presentations, part I: slides.
Homework for next time:
- Create a short (2-5 slide) powerpoint or keynote deck about your
idea.
- 1 April: Creating research presentations, part II: posters.
Homework for next time:
- Create a poster about your idea.
- 8 April: Poster session (with Voodoo Doughnuts)
Homework for next time:
- 15 April: Creating research presentations, part III:
resumes and webpages. (Note: the physical design of my webpage is
pitiful. Don't model yours after it. You can do much better!)
Homework for next time:
- Build a webpage about you and your research and send me the link.
Make sure to put your resume on it.
- 22 April: Next steps -- internships, thesis, grad school,
careers, etc.
Homework for next time: