The course project is 35% of the final grade (max project team size: TBD). A list of project ideas will be released in the first month of the course; however, you are welcome to come up with your own project.

Projects typically fall into one of the following categories:

  • Building models/simulators and evaluating to what extent the simulated data capture properties of real data
  • Conducting an in-depth study of a method that was not covered in-depth during class but is related to the course material, including (basic) implementation and evaluation
  • Evaluating how error in the input impacts a method or how error in the output of a method impacts downstream analyses for an application area of your choosing
  • Benchmarking several methods, ideally under interesting and biologically relevant conditions, with the goal of identifying gaps in method performance (and thus future research directions)
  • Developing/improving methods, with the goal of improving accuracy (note: it's helpful to have previously identified some data sets where methods perform poorly)
  • Developing/improving methods, with the goal of improving scalability or parallel efficiency (and either not reducing or else improving accuracy)
  • Analyzing biological data sets (this option is typically reserved for graduate students in biology)

The following questions should be addressed by in your project proposal.

  • What is the objective of your project, that is, what do you hope to achieve and why?
  • Outline your project plan in mode detail, including expected deliverables and timeframe for conducting the work.
  • What specific resources do you need to complete your project (e.g., data sets or compute resources), and do you have access to them?
  • How will you evaluate success?
  • What are the anticipated results of your project?
  • What are some potential challenges that you might encounter?
  • What is the minimal viable project that you expect to be able to complete. In other words, if you encounter the challenges above, what will you write your report about?
  • What are the expected contributions of each team member?
  • What makes your project novel in comparison to prior studies?
  • How does your project relate to the course material?