Course Info

Instructor: Jeong Joon Park

GSIs: Yunhao Luo, Hyelin Nam

Lecture Format

Each lecture is approximately 80 minutes. The goal of the course is not only to understand the technical content of each paper, but also to practice critically reading, presenting, and discussing research.

Paper Presentation

Starting from Lecture 3, all students are expected to read the two assigned papers before class. For each paper:

  • 25 min presentation (20 min technical presentation + 5 min presenter's critique), ending with 3-5 discussion questions for the class
  • 10 min discussion

See Paper Presentations below for the critique and discussion details.

Project Check-in Presentation

  • Two dedicated project presentation days (Oct 21 & Oct 26), plus roughly one team per lecture after class in the ~2-3 weeks before and after
  • These sessions will be used for project progress presentations
  • See the Final Project section for details on the presentation format and schedule

Paper Reviews

Submit a review for each assigned paper before class through Gradescope, including papers you are presenting.

Review Format

Please follow a CVPR-style review format:

  • Summary
  • Strengths
  • Weaknesses (Major / Minor)
  • Rate the following (1-5: Poor, Fair, Good, Very good, Excellent) with justification
    • Soundness
    • Presentation
    • Contribution

There is no strict character or page limit for the review.

Paper Presentations

Each paper gets a 35 minute slot: a 25 minute presentation from the presenters, then 10 minutes of small-group discussion by the whole class.

Technical presentation
Presenters
Presenters' critique
Presenters
Group discussion
Everyone — groups of 2-6, submit to Gradescope

Details below.

For Presenters

  • Presentation teams consist of <=2 students
  • Sign up for a paper and presentation slot using the sign-up sheet
  • Presenters should prepare a ~25 minute presentation of the assigned paper

Presentation Structure

  • Technical presentation (~20 mins): explain what the paper actually did, technically.
    • Motivation and problem setting: what task the paper addresses and why prior work was insufficient
    • Technical approach: the proposed method, model or architecture, loss functions and training procedure, and any key algorithmic details
    • Experiments: datasets, baselines, evaluation metrics, main results, and ablations
    • Provide enough background so that the class can follow the method, but keep the focus on the paper's own technical contributions
  • Critique (~5 mins): share your own thoughts and opinions of the paper, for example, consider discussing these angles:
    • Strengths: what the paper gets right, and what is genuinely new
    • Weaknesses: overclaimed results, missing baselines, limitations the authors gloss over
    • Validity of the experiments: do the experiments actually support the claims? Are the datasets, baselines, metrics, and ablations appropriate and sufficient?
    • Significance and long-term impact: how much does this change the field, and will it still matter in a few years?
  • Discussion questions (stated at the very end of your 25 mins): these are separate from your critique — give them after you have shared your own take.
    • Give 3-5 discussion questions about the paper for the class
    • Good questions are open-ended and debatable rather than factual recall
    • Presenters do not need to present the answers of these questions to the class. Your presentation is finished once you have stated and shown the questions to the class.
    • Presenters also need to submit answers to the questions in small group as other students will do. Details in For Students below.

Slide Submission Policy

Please submit your slides through the Google Form both before and after your presentation.

  • Pre-presentation submission:
    • Monday presentations: due by Friday EOD
    • Wednesday presentations: due by Sunday EOD
    • The slides do not need to be fully polished, but they should at least clearly show the overall structure and flow of your presentation.
    • You can continue editing your slides after this submission.
    • The teaching staff may provide feedback if needed.
  • Final submission: submit the final version of your slides 15 minutes before the class begins (so we can put your slides on the website and other students can see them!).

For Students

Discussion

  • 10-minute discussion following the presentation (the last 10 minutes of the 35 minute slot for each paper)
  • Students discuss the presenters' questions in small groups of 2-6
  • Each group submits a short discussion summary to Gradescope (one submission per group)

Final Project

The final project is a major component of the course.

  • Teams of approximately 3-5 students
  • Written proposal due Oct 2
  • Progress presentation on two dedicated days: Oct 21 & Oct 26
  • Poster session on Dec 7
  • Report due Dec 9
  • See the Final Project page for the full description, timeline, and report requirements

Logistics

Grading breakdown, Piazza rules, and email rules are on the Logistics page.