Syllabus

Grading

  • Paper reviews: 45%
    • 9 papers, 5% each
  • Final Project: 50%
    • Team formed by deadline: 5%
    • Project Proposal: 15%
    • Project Presentation: 15%
    • Final Report: 15%
  • Class Particpation: 5%

Paper Reviews

Most work in the class requires reading and reviewing research papers. We will cover about one paper per week. For each paper, you are required to write a review.

The key things your review requires (unless noted by specific questions on the assignment):

  • 1-2 paragraph summary of the paper and their key contributions
  • What is your opinion of the paper (criticisms, limitations, things you liked, potential improvements, strengths, weaknesses according to you)
  • Feel free to puts questions you have after reading the paper in your summary too

We will discuss the key questions in the class for each paper. The goal of the writing the summary is to get you to think deeply about the paper, not to test you. You will not be graded on the correctness of your reviews; any non-trivial review will get you points.

Final Project

The goal of the final project is to gain an in-depth understanding of the materials presented in the course by re-implementing them, applying them to new domains, or extending them. I will share a list of possible project topics. You can also suggest your own project ideas. You project topics are required to be approved by the instructor before you start working on them. If you are already working on a research project that fits the theme of the class, you can use that as your final project (provided you meet all the course deliverables). If you are taking any other class and want to work on synthesis for that domain, feel free to propose such project ideas.

The project will have the following milestones:

  1. Form and register your project group with 2-3 students.
  2. A project proposal where you describe what you plan to do and why it is a good idea. The project should be well scoped and give concrete examples about what is the input/outputs for the synthesizer and a rough idea of how it will transform the input to the output. The proposal should be 1 page long.
  3. A short presentation describing your project.
  4. A final report describing your project between 5-8 pages of length. The report should read like a short paper, so describe what you did with examples, you algorithm, your design decisions, and link to your code repository on GitHub.

The projects will be judged on scope, quality of execution, and originality.

Class Participation

To earn participation points, participate in discussions and ask questions during lectures and online on Discord.

Academic Integrity

Academic misconduct of any kind will automatically result in a 0 score on the paper reviews or project and your actions will be reported to the department chair. You must work on paper reviews individually and projects only with your group. Posting your assignments to internet discussion lists / forums / chatrooms is considered academic misconduct. Sharing your solutions with others is also considered academic misconduct.