Computer Science 590.01
Topics in Computational Structural Biology


Overview | Syllabus | Schedule | How to give a good talk
Supplemental Materials | Some Relevant WWW Links

Grading

Grading: Grades will be based upon (a) your presentations in class, (b) class participation/discussion, (c) the notes you scribe for your presentation, (d) feedback on the notes scribed by others, and (e) assigned homework exercises (if any). If you are not giving a presentation, "(a)" will be graded based on your report.



Reports

You may be assigned one or more reports to do during this class. This section discusses what is entailed in a report.

Your reports should:

We do not want a book report or a repeat of the paper's abstract. Rather, we want your considered opinions about the key points indicated above. Of course, if you have an insight that doesn't fit the above format, please include it as well. Your reports will be graded on content, not length. For most of the papers we read, one or two well thought-out paragraphs should be sufficient. You are, of course, welcome to write as much as you want.
If you were not assigned to do an in-class presentation, you must, in addition to the project, write a critique (report) on one of the papers we read. Your critique should be a detailed analysis of the methods presented, their flaws, strengths, and weaknesses. You should consider improvements and extensions in your critique. Reports should be about 10 pages single-spaced.

You must

  1. Turn in a written critique, and
  2. Make a web page about your critique.

Acknowledgments: Some of the discussion of how to give talks and reports was borrowed, with thanks, from Greg Gangor's description of the reviews used in his class at CMU.



Required Textbooks

The Textbook for this class is: Algorithms in Structural Molecular Biology (MIT Press, 2011).


Recommended Textbooks

Here is a list of other recommended textbooks.