What is this course? In this course, you will get the opportunity to get to know a few Gems from the world of theoretical Computer Science and more precisely about Networks, Counting/Sampling and Evolutionary Optimization.
What will be expected of you? In groups or alone, you will choose one from a list of available topics. Each topic will give you a supervisor among the three PhD students below. The topics will be discussed and chosen on the first meeting (10th of April). You will then have to prepare a talk and an interactive exercise that you will have to carry out on one of the slots of this course.
What is the goal of this course? This course aims at making you familiar with the concepts reading, writing, presenting and teaching in the scientific world. You will be given written material which you will have to carefully understand, prepare a talk and an interactive exercise, write a report on the topic for your supervisor and finally give the talk and the exercise to the other students in order to make them understand as much as possible of your topic.
What do I need to attend this course? The topics this year will revolve around three main themes, for Networks, Counting/Sampling and Evolutionary Optimization. The supervisors will provide close to 20 topics and are also open to topic propositions from you. So, knowledge taught in Math I, Math II, TI 1 and TI 2 can be helpful to you but there are no mandatory requirements.
We also expect from the students to enjoy reasoning, as well as critical and abstract thinking.
How does the grading work? You will be graded on three aspects. The talk, the interactive exercise and the write up. The talk and the exercise will be on the day of your presentation where you will have to teach the other students and make them participate using the exercise (Be creative!). The write up is a relatively short report (around 5 pages) about your topic that you will give to your supervisor; a good or a bad write up can increase or decrease your grade by one step.
Anything else? Yes, a few other things. The language of the presentation, the exercise and the write-up is english. The material that will be provided by your supervisors will also be in english. One of the three supervisors are native german speakers and can also provide guidance in german throughout the preparation. However, sufficient english (writing and reading) skills are expected from you.
For any other question, do not hesitate to send an e-mail (in english) to George.
Register for the course on the moodle page!
