CPS 701
Introduction to Graduate Study

Instructor
Jeff Chase (chase@cs.duke.edu)
Logistics
Meets once per week: see the calendar
Fall 2020: Friday 1:45 - 3:00, on Zoom (at least for now), links on Sakai
Piazza

  • 11/13: Link wander and wrapup
  • 11/6: Special guest Marilyn Butler on GradCentral, advisors and committees, and the RIP. See also the self-assessment sample for first-years
  • 10/30: Alberto Bartesaghi
  • 10/24: Brandon Fain
  • 10/16: Peer review. Readings on resources page.
  • 10/2: Research integrity culture: commercialization, conflicts of interest
  • 9/25: Science in the public interest: Endless Frontier, public funding and NSF, intellectual property
  • 9/18: Mentoring. See: Managing your mentors [PDF]
  • 9/11: Empirical evaluations. See the useful checklist for publishing empirical evaluations (ACM SIGPLAN)
  • 9/4: Selected papers, discussion of contributions and positioning.
  • 8/28: Research and publications. [PDF, PPTX]

 
CPS 701 is an introduction for incoming graduate students in computer science. Topics for discussion include: computer science as a research discipline, views of what consitutes a research contribution, approaches to research in different subfields, tools and methodologies, publishing and presenting research results, the role of computer science as an "amplifier" in other sciences, ethical and policy issues, the information technology industry, grants and funding, and guidelines for success as a graduate student and as a scientist.

Topics