Independent Work Seminars
The Computer Science Department offers Independent Work Seminars, which allow students and a faculty adviser with shared interests to meet as a group and work on related projects.
Background and Motivation
The main motivation for these seminars is to provide a way for students working on similar projects to get assistance and feedback from their peers.
The IW seminars bring together groups of students working on related problems. Each student chooses and works on their own project, just as in any other IW. The only difference is that meetings occur with faculty and other students in seminar-style once per week at a scheduled time. During the meetings, the students discuss what they are doing, provide feedback to other students, and generate ideas for future work. The seminars provide a great forum for honing small-group presentation and discussion skills that will be essential after graduation. Individual meetings with the faculty adviser can also occur weekly during agreed-upon times throughout the semester.
Within these seminars, it is possible for groups of 2-3 students to work on different parts of the same large-scale project. As an example, a few students might work together on a system for collaborative grading of assignments in MOOCs (massive open online courses) with one student developing the user interface, another designing the algorithms for assigning problems to graders, and a third implementing a system for integrating grader responses in the back-end server. Every student is responsible for writing a paper and making presentations individually, but it might be possible to achieve much more with a collaborative effort than with a set of individual ones (the whole is greater than the sum of parts). In any case, team efforts could be more fun and engaging for the participating students.
What are the Topics for the Independent Work Seminars for Fall 2023?
Name |
Faculty Adviser |
Day and Time |
Rm. # |
| COS IW 01: Natural Language Processing | Christiane Fellbaum | Fridays, 11:00am - 12:20pm |
CS Building Room 401 |
| COS IW 02: Machine Learning and Data Science | Xiaoyan Li | Wednesdays, 1:30pm - 2:50pm |
CS Building Room 302 |
| COS IW 03: Machine Learning and Data Science | Xiaoyan Li | Wednesdays, 3:00 - 4:20pm |
CS Building Room 302 |
| COS IW 04: Help Future Computer Science Students Learn Computer Science | Robert Fish | Wednesdays, 3:00 - 4:20pm |
CS Building Room 301 |
| COS IW 05: Technology Policy | Mihir Kshirsagar | Thursdays, 11:00am - 12:20pm |
Sherrerd Hall Room 306 |
| COS IW 06: Generative AI | Felix Heide | Tuesdays, 3:00 - 4:20pm |
CS Building Room 402 |
| COS IW 07: Generative AI | Felix Heide | Thursdays, 3:00 - 4:20pm |
CS Building Room 402 |
| COS IW 08: Product Manager Bootcamp | Mike Freedman | Thursdays, 1:30 - 2:50pm |
Friend Center Room TBD |
| COS IW 09: Natural Algorithms | Bernard Chazelle | Mondays, 3:00 - 4:30pm |
Friend Center Room TBD |
| COS IW 10: Practical Solutions to Intractable Problems | Zachary Kincaid | Wednesdays, 11:00am - 12:20pm |
CS Building Room 302 |
| COS IW 11: Computational Biology and Medicine | Ben Raphael | Fridays, 1:30 - 2:50pm |
CS Building Room 402 |
Who Should Sign-Up for the Independent Work Seminars?
All students who plan to do independent work for the first time should sign up for an IW seminar. Specifically, this includes all AB juniors and all BSE students signed up for COS 397/8 or 497/8 for the first time. Though the seminars are targeted at first-time independent work students, they are open to any COS junior or senior who is not working on a senior thesis. The content of the IW seminars includes not only independent work on a project, but also guidance about how to choose projects, evaluate progress, design experiments, collaborate with others, make presentations, and other project management skills. These skills are essential for becoming an effective researcher, and provide great training for working in a company or startup. Thus, the seminars are perfectly suited for students doing their first semester of independent work.
If you already have done a previous semester of independent work or want to work on a project outside the scope of the topics offered in any of the IW seminars, then you can make arrangements with a Princeton faculty to advise you one-on-one. To do so, contact the faculty now that you are interested in working with to discuss potential project ideas (probably email is best). If you find a faculty member that agrees to advise you one-on-one, then you can indicate that selection on the IW sign up form by indicating a title, description, and faculty adviser for your project. Please also login to TigerHub and enroll in either COS 397, S99 (BSE juniors) or COS 497, S99 (BSE seniors) for one-on-one projects.
How do I Sign-Up for the Independent Work Seminar?
For Fall 2023, the IW seminars are open to COS BSE students. You will enroll in the IW seminars directly through TigerHub.
BSE juniors will enroll in COS 397 and the seminar number that matches the seminar number above. Example: COS 397, S01 is COS IW 01: Natural Language Processing with Prof. Fellbaum, etc.
BSE seniors will enroll in COS 497 and the seminar number that matches the seminar number above. Example: COS 497, S01 is COS IW 01: Natural Language Processing with Prof. Fellbaum, etc.
Please note: The IW seminar sections share seats between COS 397 and COS 497. The sections don't "talk" to each other in TigerHub. If there is an open seat in the seminar section you want, but it is in the wrong course number enroll in the section with the open seat then email mhornstein@princeton.edu and Mikki Hornstein will switch you into the right course number and section.
Past Independent Work Seminars
Learn about more about past Independent Work Seminar offerings.
