Procedures for Thesis and Project Work

In such courses students are supposed to perform a semester long project applying "their knowledge about the major discipline, skills, and methods to conduct research, ranging from the identification of suitable (short-term) research projects, preparatory literature searches, the realization of discipline-specific research, and the documentation, discussion, and interpretation of the results", according to the Jacobs Module Handbook (as always, see also your applicable CS BSc handbook).

All project topics center around analysis of massive multi-dimensional arrays using the rasdaman datacube engine. Therefore, it is indispensable to familiarize with it early on. We will assist you with the learning curve, as well as the project overall, through tutorials and regular synchronization meetings.

As I am anchored in Practical Computer Science (and also IT industry) I put high emphasis not only on the result, but also on how it is achieved - particularly: how planful, structured, and sustained the pace is. My Software Engineering course should give a good impression. Among others, emphasizing (i.e., grading) work style is also a soft skills training for your future career.

Procedure

All projects conducted with me and my research group uniformly follow this scheme:

• Fixing the topic
  • Study the topics offered and find your preferred candidates
  • Discuss with me what is most suited for you (skills, interest, etc.) to come to a decision
  • Communicate that you have a topic with me to the Study Program Coordinator
  • ...all of that before the drop/add deadline, as per university regulations. Actually, you may want to do it long before that to gain extra time for the work. Due to resource constraints, I can accept only N students, tpyically first-come / first-serve.
• Familiarize with the topic
  • Study the initial literature provided, find more; collect that in a state of the art report (this will become a chapter in your thesis)
  • get all software to run which you need for your work (such as, if required, installing rasdaman community on your laptop using one of the recommended ways listed at www.rasdaman.org)
  • Elaborate the research questions (also part of your thesis)
  • make a plan, codified into Gantt chart + milestones + deliverables (this will become an annex to your thesis)
• Carry out the work (implementation, evaluation, etc. as per your work plan)
  • We meet weekly (virtually) to discuss progress; be prepared to give a status update on your work.
  • before each meeting send a brief report by mail to me stating: what have I done? what problems do I have? what are my next steps?
  • after each meeting, send me a mail with the action items determined
  • If in doubt discuss with colleagues or contact my research team.
• Grading involves quality of the results, progress made from meeting to meeting, meeting attendance, meeting presentation quality, and further aspects relevant from a software engineering / project management perspective. Details will be presented early in the semester.
• Submission of thesis work
  • presentation at agreed date (fix a slot in time!), then thesis submission, then software handover
  • no extensions
  • no work over summer

  Hints

  Some condensed recommendations which will help you in successfully mastering the project:

  • Start early, or you will be lost. Early means: at the latest (!) start of semester, better earlier.
  • This project can only be completed successfully if all steps discussed in the meetings are followed closely - beware: work starts with week one, not at or after drop/add period!
  • This project "involves a high degree of independence" (again citing the Module Handbook) which involves high own responsibility. Therefore, it is up to you to ensure all deadlines communicated are kept, and that material delivered is of sufficient quality. Recommendation: Whenever in doubt, ask - proactively and sufficiently ahead of deadlines.
  • No extensions, except for medical excuses. The final deadline always remains invariant - should there be too many medical excuses to allow meaningful finalization of the project then the "makeup" will be another topic next year. Tutorials missed will have to be learnt by yourself from the material provided, there will not be repetitions.

  Finally

  ...let us dive into the fascinating world of "Big Science Data" !