Organization

The course organization includes the following items: lectures, seminars, workshops, home assignments, report writing, and oral presentation.

Aim and content

This course aims to develop the student's awareness of the underlying structure of scientific and engineering research papers and to improve proficiency in writing and reviewing as well as presenting such papers in public. The paper should be based on a selected topic within a research area in the Computer Systems and Networks or a related field. To this end, the student examines and surveys the current state of the art in a specific field such as e.g. data communication, computer networks, distributed systems, computer security, real-time systems, computer graphics, computer architecture, and computer system engineering and writes an analytical survey paper in this field.  A further goal is that the student should be able to make ethical considerations of his/her work. Ethical issues in general and in connection with scientific writing, e.g. plagiarism and authorship, are an important part of the course. There will be lectures, seminars and workshops in the areas of scientific writing, reviewing and presentation as well as in ethics.

After the course the students shall be able to:

• Get acquainted to a research field:
  • The student should have investigated a selected area of research and deepened his/her knowledge in said area. This knowledge is used for writing a scientific paper.
• Perform an independent literature review:
  • Given a scientific problem in the studied field, the student should be able to find the most relevant papers in scientific literature, review them and communicate the review result.
• Write an analytical survey paper or other scientific paper:
  • The student should be able to plan, structure and write a research related paper in a selected scientific field. The report will be based on already published papers and the student should be able to independently select those papers.  
• Make ethical assessment:
  • The student should be able to make and defend ethical judgement in general, and in particular within the area of scientific writing, e.g. related to plagiarism and authorship. Where applicable, the student should be able to discuss and value the societal and economic consequences of his/her work.

Each research area and a number of related topics will be briefly presented to the student. As a student you will be put in a group with a few other students. To each group will be allocated a topic for the paper that is to be written. Each topic will have a supervisor who will guide the students. The paper should be orally presented. Students are also required to make peer reviews of other groups' papers. 

Important Dates

Examination

To pass the course, the student must: (1) write an analytical survey paper or other scientific paper for a given topic in a specific research area, (2) complete all review assignments of other surveys, and (3) make an oral presentation of the paper, (4) participate in lectures, seminars and workshops in technical writing and presentation techniques, (5) participate in the ethical parts of the course, and (6) complete all  assignments. The course examiner may assess individual students in other ways than what is stated above if there are special reasons for doing so, for example if a student has a decision from Chalmers on educational support due to disability.

Additional information regarding the survey paper can be found on the Survey section via the Modules in Canvas.

Attendance

Attendance in all the lectures (particularly Lectures 1-6) is mandatory. An attendance sheet will be distributed in each of the first 6 lecturer where each student needs to sign. If you cannot attend a lecture for any unavoidable circumstance, please let the examiner (risat@chalmers.se) know it in advance.

Course literature

Teachers 

Examiner and coordinator: Risat Pathan, phone: 070-941 5951

                                               email: risat@chalmers.se

Teacher (writing)                : Raffaella Negretti, phone: 076-606 1663

                                              email: negretti@chalmers.se

Teacher (ethics)                                   : Richard Torkar

Teacher (presentation techniques) : David Sands

Teaching assistants:

• Roman Melnik, course assistant, phone: 070- 750 5185, email: melnik@chalmers.se
• Maria Cervin-Ellqvist, course assistant, phone: 031-772 1164, email: mariace@chalmers.se
  

Supervisors 

• Ulf Assarsson
• Prajith Ramakrishnan Geethakumari
• Nikela Papadopoulou
• Marina Papatriantafilou
• Elad Schiller
• Philippas Tsigas
• Victor Åberg
• Risat Pathan

What's New?

Changes taking effect during Fall 2022:

• All teaching will be carried out on campus.