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. 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:
1. Presentations. (30%)
2. Technical report. (40%)
3. 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. 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. 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?