Description
Task 1: Finding Your Own Research Project (3 marks)
Question 1: Assume that you have to do a one semester research project for next semester. Please
identify a research project that interests you and that matches with your skills. List the title of the
proposed project (1 marks), the research area of the project (1 mark) and the proposed ANU
supervisor (1 mark).
The project you propose must be different from your team project in Assignment 3. You can either
come up with your own project idea, or search for a project on one of our project pages, for
example: https://cecs.anu.edu.au/current-students/student-research-projects
Another possibility to find an interesting project is to visit the home pages of our research groups or
of our individual researchers: https://cecs.anu.edu.au/research. There might be more projects listed
on these pages.
There is also an ANU-wide page that has profiles and projects for most ANU researchers. This is
particularly interesting as it allows you to search for keywords of topics that interest you:
https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers.
Just remember that all these project lists are by default never complete and never up to date.
If you are serious about finding a great research project, I recommend the following steps:
1. Narrow down the list of possible supervisors (according to whatever criteria you want to
use)
2. Have a look at their publications and see if you can find something that you find particularly
interesting. A good source for possible research projects is often the “Future Work” or
“Discussion/Conclusion” section of publications.
3. Talk to the potential supervisor and together develop a research project that is individually
tailored towards your interests, your situation and the interests of the supervisor.
As you can imagine, you probably won’t find any of these “personalised” projects advertised.
Note: Please only do step 3 if you are really looking for a research project and not just for the
purpose of this assignment!
I strongly recommend that students who have to do a research project next semester (for
example for COMP2560) use this opportunity to already pick their research project now!
This will give you a lot of additional time to prepare for your next project.
Task 2: Developing Your Project (12 marks)
Please answer the following questions for the research project you have selected in Task 1.
Answering these questions before starting your research is very useful, both for yourself as well as
for someone who evaluates your project proposal. Please try to keep your answers succinct and
use your own words.
Question 2: What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.
Limit: half a page. (2 marks).
Question 3: What is the current state of the art in the area of your proposed project? Please give
the full reference of 3 publications that represent the state of the art and briefly summarize each
of them. Limit: 1 page (3 marks).
Question 4: What is new in your approach, how does it extend the state of the art? Why do you
think it will work? Limit: 1 page (2 marks)
Question 5: Why is this project interesting and important? Who can benefit if you are successful
with it? Who cares? Limit: 1 page (2 marks)
Question 6: What should you do to properly prepare for the project (=before the next semester
starts)? Limit: 1 page (1 mark)
Question 7: What are the fortnightly milestones you set yourself over the next semester in order to
successfully complete the project? How will you know you succeeded? Limit: 1 page (2 marks).
Please note: the listed page limits are guidelines only to give you an idea how detailed your
answers should be. One page is about 500-600 words. If you can answer the questions using less
space, it’s ok. But please try not to use more space.