ESE 6180-001, Fall 2026 – Final Project

The final project structure and evaluation criteria are inspired by CS6789 at Cornell.

Important Dates

• Final Project Presentations: Please ensure that you will be able to attend the final three classes of the semester (11/24, 12/01, 12/03) in person for final project presentations.

Additional Tentative due dates:

• Project proposal: 09/30

• Midterm report: 11/25

• Final report: 12/09

Grading

• Project proposal: 10%

• Midterm report: 15%

• Final report: 25%

• Final Presentation: 10%

Reports

• Report Format: we will use L4DC (PMLR) format. You must use the L4DC LaTex format.

• Project proposal:

  • Your proposal should be 2 pages maximum (not including references), and should include title, team members, abstract, related works, problem formulation and goals.

  • Be sure to clearly identify the feedback loop in your problem formulation, and what is uniquely ‘‘L4DC’’ about your proposed work.

  • For groups of 2, the project proposal should also clearly outline what each team member will be doing. Both team members are expected to contribute equally to all aspects of the project, i.e., it is not appropriate for one teammate to do all of the technical work, and another teammate to only work on writing up the report.

• Midterm Report:

  • Your report should be 4 pages maximum (not including references). Your midterm report should build on your project proposal, and outline your solution approach, current progress and preliminary results, as well as highlight challenges that you are facing.

  • Be sure to clearly identify the feedback loop in your problem formulation, and what is uniquely ‘‘L4DC’’ about your proposed work and solution approaches.

  • For groups of 2, the midterm report should clearly delineate what each team member has done so far, and what each team member will be doing to finish the project.

• Final Report: Your report should be 10 pages maximum (not including references and supplementary material). Your final report will be evaluated by the following criteria:

  • Merit: Is your problem formulation and solution strategy well-motivated? Can you justify the complexity-level of your approach?

  • Technical depth: Is your project technically challenging? Did you write your own code, or did you use a available software packages? While it is ok for a project to lean more towards theory or implementation, the sum of theoretical + implementation efforts should remain consant (i.e., if you use existing software packages rather than write your own code, the theoretical component of your project should be more ambitious).

  • Presentation: Are your solution approach, assumptions, results, and interpretations of experimental/theoretical outcomes clearly explained and/or justified? Is the report clearly and written? Are the mathematical arguments rigorous and easy to follow? Are graphs/visualizations clear?

  • Be sure to clearly identify the feedback loop in your problem formulation, and what is uniquely ‘‘L4DC’’ about your results.

  • For groups of 2, the final report should clearly delineate what each team member has contributed.

• Final Presentation: Details on the final presentation format will be provided later in the semester once the number of groups is finalized. Your final presentation will be evaluated by how clearly the criteria used to evaluate the final report (merit, technical depth, results) are communicated.

Project Ideas

Students are encouraged to idnetify projects which align well with their existing research interests, and to discuss project ideas with the instructor and/or TA prior to submitting their initial proposal.

We will provide a few project ideas below in the first week or two of the semester. Studying existing “L4DC” theory papers and producing pedagogically accessible and/or simplified proofs is also a good option for the course project. Numerical experiments used to verify conclusions or test conjectures are encouraged.