Welcome to the seminar course Some FAQ about this course and researches. A brief introduction of the course. Seminar topics and outline. Questions and discussion.

What are the purposes of the course? Learn what are researches in computer science. Critical and creative thinking. Research qualitative and quantitative approach Research lifecycle.

Computer science covers a wide range of theoretical and practical areas related to computation and its application. A master’s student should understand what is research but not just learning knowledge or implementation. Although many students may not do research in the future. The training of research will still be useful.

What is the best way to do researches? Every researcher has his/her own way. It depends on experiences, personality, research fields, etc. However, the only way to do good researches is hard working.

Some researchers like to discuss with others Some researchers like to discuss with others. But some one does not like discussion. Some one think early in the morning is the best time to do research. Some one like to do research in the evening. ……

To do research on a topic means you want to comprehensively understand that topic first. It is not a good idea to start a research just because it is a hot topic. If you are not interested in doing research, then I don’t think you will be a good researcher.

How to start research on a topic? Top-down: find out recent research papers on the topic first. Then find necessary related materials which help you to understand these papers. Bottom-up: read some materials (books, surveys, etc) for the background of the topic, then find some interesting topic and related research papers.

In any events, to do research means you have to do a lot of readings and perhaps some programming. If you haven’t read a lot of materials, then you can’t start a real research. In many cases, you still can’t get expected results after you put a lot of efforts on research.

How to know what I am doing is not a real research? I start working on some problems just after reading some textbooks or some web articles. I have never read a recent research paper related to the topic I am working on. I don’t know any conferences or journals which are related to the topic I am working on.

How to get research materials? Web search (Google, Google Scholar, specific web, research group, researchers’ personal web, …) Library (journals, books, proceedings, …), interlibrary loan. Professors (our department or other university) or other researchers.

Good comprehensive materials for a research topic include recent survey papers, recent PhD these, etc. Usually, introduction articles, web articles are not very helpful for research. A good researcher knows the main journals and main conferences in his/her research area.

How to know the materials found are good materials? The materials are found from good journals (in master list of Science Citation Index, high impact factors). The materials are found from the key conferences of that research area. The material was highly cited by other researchers. The authors are famous or have worked on the topic for a long time.

There are many garbage papers and materials over the web and world. There are many garbage conferences and journals in the world. Reading garbage materials will not only waste time but also lead to a wrong direction. Consult your supervisor before you study the research materials you found yourself.

How to select a topic? A problem which you are very interested in. A problem suggested by your supervisor. You find something is wrong in a research paper or some improvement of a research paper. A problem asked by a research paper and you have some idea to answer the question.

How to read research papers A good research paper usually needs to read several times. Try to understand the main problem the paper is considered first. Try to understand the main results of the paper. Read the detail of the proofs and new ideas if the paper is important to your research.

Always have a pen and scratch paper on hand when you read a research paper. Create small examples usually will help you to understand the paper. Find out what are the difficulties for you to understand and try to find useful reference papers or materials. Discuss the difficulties with your supervisor or other professors.

Make sure that you are really understand the paper. Usually there are typos and possible errors in research papers. Always ask yourself why the author(s) did that and whether there is a easier way or other way to do the same thing during the reading. Find out what is the best thing for the paper and what is the deficiency of the paper.

What you will do for this course? To prepare for doing research. To learn how to find useful research materials. To learn how to find research problems. To learn how to do presentation and write technical reports. To learn how to discuss problems with other people.

What are the differences between this course and other courses? Most work of this course is not done in classes. Need to read more materials than other courses. More independent studies. More discussions with other people.

The grads of the courses The mark of this course determined by three factors: Presentations. (30%) Technical report. (40%) Discussion in seminars.(30%)

Presentations Provide an abstract before the presentation. The materials lead to a research topic, while provide necessary background knowledge. Most of the audience can understand your presentation. Answer questions and comments that demonstrate your understanding of the materials.

Discussion Understand other students’ presentations. Discuss with instructor by emails. Give comments or questions to other student’s presentation. Discuss with other students during the seminars. Write a discussion sheet after each of the presentations done by other students.

Report It is recommended to write report using LaTex or Microsoft Word. The report will not cover all the presentations in this course. The requirements of the reports will be distributed later.

Topics in one of the following areas: Networks and network security. Data mining and data security Cloud computing Access control. AI HCI Coding theory Graphic and image processing. Some other topics you are interested in.

Note The above listed are research areas, not the topics. Each student needs to decide an area and find out a topic. General information about an area is not a research topic. A research topic should be a very specific one.

Activities Every student will give 2 presentations in this course. The presentation usually started with some general information about your topic. Then go to certain depth of a topic. You can’t use materials that you already presented in other courses.

You may contact other professors for the topic you investigated You may contact other professors for the topic you investigated. However, you cannot use the same materials used for the other reading courses. You should decide your topic in this week and let me know by email. In the email, you need to tell me your topic and the supporting materials. You need to find out main materials for your topic and list them in your email.

Meanwhile you can start to prepare your first presentation. First presentation is a short presentation (about 20 minutes). In first presentation, give an overview of your topic and give main references about the background knowledge of your topic. The second presentation will be about 30 minutes. This will talk about a more details of your topic.

In this seminar, you are not only asked to working on your own topic In this seminar, you are not only asked to working on your own topic. You should also take part in listening other students’ presentation, understanding their topics and discussing in the classes. The major work for this course is not in the class, but out of the class. You need to pay a lot of time to read materials.

The key points of this course are finding useful materials and understanding the materials. It is not a good idea to pretend that you understand the material. If you can’t understand some thing, then you should discuss with the instructor or classmates. If you can’t explain clearly to other students about your topic, then most probably you are not really understand your topic.

When reading research materials, try to understand thoroughly. If you can’t understand some key things, then you need to find related materials. Usually, it is impossible to understand a research paper without reading some references and related materials.

Hope you will enjoy this course ! Questions about this course?