Master's Thesis & Research - How?
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I'm currently enrolled in a two year Computer Science master's program(just started the first year). At the end i have to sustain a thesis and i talked to one of the professors about this. He said that theoretically it has to be a research project. I'm aiming in doing something related to computer graphics. I always thought that research is very very hard and i'm feeling a bit shaky about this. Considering i will do try to make something out of this my questions are:
1.0 How does research work for someone who has never done *real* academic work?
2.0 What would make a good research project? This is a bit vague, but more helpful would be some directions where research is needed and i could contribute there...
3.0 Thanks!
Hey, nice, where have you enrolled?
1) I think this question will be answered when you find yourself an area of research that interests you. You'll have to start on it straight away. Read research papers, try not to overlook the basics as it will help clear things when you read the advance stuff and of course ask help from your peers and professors.
2) A few things that i can think of are (although they have already been researched on already):
- Water simulation
- Procedural generation; e.g. terrain, trees, plants and even cities!
- Maybe look into real time ray tracing renderers.
- some sort of global illumination in real time.
Hope that helps.
1) I think this question will be answered when you find yourself an area of research that interests you. You'll have to start on it straight away. Read research papers, try not to overlook the basics as it will help clear things when you read the advance stuff and of course ask help from your peers and professors.
2) A few things that i can think of are (although they have already been researched on already):
- Water simulation
- Procedural generation; e.g. terrain, trees, plants and even cities!
- Maybe look into real time ray tracing renderers.
- some sort of global illumination in real time.
Hope that helps.
from my experience, most of the "research work" is scrubbling the net searching papers and more papers, till you find something you like (step 1). Once you find it, step two is searching MORE papers bout what's the State-Of-The-Art, history, bibliography and so on....
it's a hard and time consuming work..unless you start with something already in your mind. If so, you can jump step 1 :D
When I got my master degree, i spent 4 months searching for an "area" and other 3 months searching for papers about that. Once I was pretty sure of which was the best algo, I started trying to find a way to improve it (other 2 months), and a way to implement it (1 month) :D
In any case, if you really decide to take this path, you will spend AT LEAST one whole year studing,crying, studing,crying, studing,crying....till you find a solution, so be really SURE that this is what you want :D
it's a hard and time consuming work..unless you start with something already in your mind. If so, you can jump step 1 :D
When I got my master degree, i spent 4 months searching for an "area" and other 3 months searching for papers about that. Once I was pretty sure of which was the best algo, I started trying to find a way to improve it (other 2 months), and a way to implement it (1 month) :D
In any case, if you really decide to take this path, you will spend AT LEAST one whole year studing,crying, studing,crying, studing,crying....till you find a solution, so be really SURE that this is what you want :D
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Quote:Original post by manxankur
Hey, nice, where have you enrolled?
Interesting.. Well i'm, at the UAIC CS Faculty Romania(shameless plug - we have won the Imagine Cup-software design this year - not me but a few colleagues of mine).
The fact is that i like a lot of topics from collision detection to illumination and shadowing. I find them all very interesting but i think i would most likely do something related to illumination.
Quote:
from my experience, most of the "research work" is scrubbling the net searching papers and more papers, till you find something you like (step 1). Once you find it, step two is searching MORE papers bout what's the State-Of-The-Art, history, bibliography and so on....
it's a hard and time consuming work..unless you start with something already in your mind. If so, you can jump step 1 :D
When I got my master degree, i spent 4 months searching for an "area" and other 3 months searching for papers about that. Once I was pretty sure of which was the best algo, I started trying to find a way to improve it (other 2 months), and a way to implement it (1 month) :D
In any case, if you really decide to take this path, you will spend AT LEAST one whole year studing,crying, studing,crying, studing,crying....till you find a solution, so be really SURE that this is what you want :D
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Hehe, it seems like a lot of work! I definetely have to start early :D. Although research can be tricky: there are so many papers out there that you could talk about something already written about or something very similar to the work of others. I guess this is one thing that makes it so exciting and fulfilling when you realize your work is original among a multitude of others on the same topic.
I never went to school but the algorythm i call my own has got to be constructive solid geometry, I love that one... its so hard to put together so it works.
Makes me proud watching it go.
Another one I really like bringing up is the fourier transform, i just love how its so simple, I could teach it to an 8 year old.
What id really like to invent thats not out there yet??
Probably visual recognition and audio recognition. But even thats out there, but theres got to be heaps more techniques yet to be developed... its real cutting edge.
Makes me proud watching it go.
Another one I really like bringing up is the fourier transform, i just love how its so simple, I could teach it to an 8 year old.
What id really like to invent thats not out there yet??
Probably visual recognition and audio recognition. But even thats out there, but theres got to be heaps more techniques yet to be developed... its real cutting edge.
When researching, be prepared to read a lot of papers. If you're not sure of what to do, one of the best resources to get a feel for the present state of research is conference papers. For graphics, maybe check out some stuff from SIGGRAPH, Eurographics, IEEE Computer Graphics, etc. There's plenty of interesting papers in those conferences.
Best of luck with your grad studies! I started my M.Sc. 8 months ago and although I started out thinking I would do graphics project, my interests have led me to scene reconstruction/multi-view stereo.
Best of luck with your grad studies! I started my M.Sc. 8 months ago and although I started out thinking I would do graphics project, my interests have led me to scene reconstruction/multi-view stereo.
You should also be able to see what topics you like when you are taking your course work as well - you should be exposed to more advanced topics than you had in your undergrad program, so you might see something you like there...
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