(CS/EE 145 & CS 141c) Projects in Networking & Distributed Systems

Course Description

Students work in small groups to design and execute a project in the area of networking, broadly construed. The goal is for the project to either end with a deliverable (e.g. a working web application prototype) or a publishable conference paper. Students should have completed a project proposal and formed their groups during CS/EE 144 before registering for the course.

Instructors

Adam Wierman, adamw@caltech.edu
Steven Low, slow@caltech.edu
K. Mani Chandy, mani@caltech.edu

Course details

This course meets TR 2:30-3:55 in Ann 213.
The course will only meet occasionally, as needed for project presentations, etc.

Course structure

We will not have regular lectures. Instead, each group will meet once weekly with one of the instructors to discuss progress on the project. These meetings are the most important part of the course, so it is very important that all group members attend every meeting.

Additionally to there group meetings, there are four course requirements:

• Maintain a project blog/wiki: To help ensure that the meetings with the instructor are productive, and to allow you to see what the other groups are up to, each group is required to keep a blog/wiki for their project. The blog/wiki should be updated (at least) weekly with a details about the progress you are making. Once you have created a blog you should email Adam Wierman to make sure that it is linked from the course website.
• Project presentation: During the 2nd and 3rd weeks of the term, each group will be required to give a 15 minute presentation overviewing their project. The key goal of the presentation is to highlight the motivation for your project, your audience (e.g. your market if you are creating a product), and other work related to your project. Additionally, you should highlight your progress so far and your plan for the remainder of the term. You can have 1 person in the group present or split the presentation up among the members, whichever is more convenient, but all members should be present. Additionally, you should post your slides on your group blog.
• Final poster session: At the end of the term we will have a course poster session. The poster session will be held May 31, 2:30-4pm in the Annenberg 2nd floor atrium. Awards will be given for the "Best demo" and the "Best poster". To see examples of posters, peek into Adam's Lab (209). If you want to get a closer look at them, just ask Adam to let you in to the Lab for a while. If you have any questions about preparing the poster, discuss them with your mentor.
• Final report: The final report will be due on June 1, 2012 (for seniors and grad students) or June 8, 2012 (for underclassmen). Submit via email to Steven & Adam. The report should be formatted using the standard ACM template and it should be ~8-10 pages long. (This is the typical size of a conference paper.) The format and details of the report will vary depending on the project, so be sure to discuss this during your weekly meetings.

Grading

This is a preliminary breakdown that may change during the term.

• Progress in weekly meetings & Blog -- 40%
• Project presentation -- 15%
• Final poster presentation -- 15%
• Final report -- 30%

This year's projects

• Woomple
  Shayan Doroudi, Henry Li, Joe Wang, Haoyang Ren, Josie Kishi
  project blog: [www]
  presentation date: Tuesday, April 10th, 1st
• onomnom
  Lucia Ahn, Janis Intoy, Tuling Ma, Judy Mou
  project blog: [www]
  presentation date: Tuesday, April 11th, 2nd
• An online interviewing tool
  Kevin Lo, Gustaf Helgesson, Bryan Jadot, Mikail Sushkov
  project blog: [www]
  presentation date: Tuesday, April 12th, 3rd
• Centrality and salary
  Michael Hirshleifer, Ramya Vinayak, Kijun Seo
  project blog: [www]
  presentation date: Thursday, April 12th, 1st
• Predicting congressional swing voters
  Shiyu Zhao, Hari Ravi, Michael Burd
  project blog: [www]
  presentation date: Thursday, April 12th, 2nd
• Unu
  Aaron Levine, Annie Chin, Sasha Boulgakov
  project blog: [www]
  presentation date: Thursday, April 12th, 3rd
• Dance floor dynamics
  Laura Conwill, Chris Dudiak, Tim Meyer, Ben Weitz
  project blog: [www]
  presentation date: Thursday, April 12th, 4th
• 4sight: Predicting the future
  Alex Fandrianto, Tuan Anh Le, Richard O'Dowd, Robert Shimizu
  project blog: [www]
  presentation date: Tuesday, April 17th, 1st
• eMelody
  Daniel Chen, Michael Edwards, Kevin Kowalski, Collin Murphy, Pan Wang, Stephen Worlow
  project blog: [www]
  presentation date: Tuesday, April 17, 2nd
• Autoreview
  Caleb Ziegler
  project blog: [www]
  presentation date: Tuesday April 17, 3rd

Projects from over the years

2011

• SIPing Wikipedia
  Alexandre Boulgakov and Giordan Stark
  final report: [pdf]
  
• A robust multiplayer game
  Mihail Dumitrescu and Nihar Sharma
  final report: [pdf]
  
• CourseFinder
  Jamie Jackson, WenHao Lee, and Isaac Scheff
  final report: [pdf]
  
• Data-center-in-the-Lab
  George Lee
  final report: [pdf]
  
• Semantic blog
  Riley Patterson and Fred Zhao
  final report: [pdf]
  
• Twitter Cascades
  Sonal Gupta, Ben Slawski, Doris Xin, and Wenqi Yao
  final report: [pdf]
  
• CodeBuddy
  Mike Shafer and Nathan Watson
  final report: [pdf]
  
• Security in the smart grid
  Claudia Whitten
  final report: [pdf]
  

2010

• CAKES
  Group members: Chris Kennelly and Daniel Erenrich
  final report: [pdf]
  
• Protocol proxy
  Group members: Sonal Gupta and Thomas Kjeldsen
  final report: [pdf]
  
• Maximizing social influence
  Group members: Dallin Akagi, Rishi Chandy, Anthony Chong, Manuel Lagang, and Jonathan Krause
  final report: [pdf]
• Spoke
  Group members: Ram Kandasamy, Victor Li, and Esther Wang
  final report: [pdf]
  
• Web of tabs
  Group members: Jeremy Coulter, Luke Moryl, Daniel Obenshain, and Walter Mostowy
  final report: [pdf]