Overview
This page has information for students wishing to do
their Master’s Thesis under my supervision. Other
faculty members will have different requirements. Our department
does not yet offer the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science,
though many of our graduates have gone on to that
degree at other institutions.
While primarily a degree that is supposed to be an affidavit
of mastery of a wide breadth of computer science, the M.S.
degree does require a thesis in which some new
ground is broken in some chosen subject area. The thesis
is required to be of publishable quality,
and must demonstrate the student’s ability to perform
and adequately disseminate research.
Students should not undertake a thesis project
in an unfamiliar subject area. If necessary, students are
welcome, and encouraged, to take a one semester independent studies
course in such an area before undertaking the thesis.
Requirements
Before you begin, generate a proposal. It needs to contain:
- A proposed title
- The subject area you are working in
- Why it is interesting
- Goals and objectives
- Any hypotheses you might have now
- What you think you can come up with that we don’t know now
- Tools you will use, if any in your research
Discuss the proposal, and your background and qualifications
with me.
Initially, generate:
- A reading list, in bibliography format, of 40 or so
sources that are important in your area. You do not have
to read all of them, but you do have to put together a useful
list. I assume you will acquaint yourself with at least
some of them. (Don’t stuff this list exclusively with
web articles.)
During the preparation:
- Each week, end me a very short email with a bullet-point summary
of what you did all week (a progress report of sorts). If you
prefer, you may keep a blog instead, as long as it is updated
frequently.
- Meet with me every two weeks to discuss your progress.
Paper Organization
- Title Page
- Table of Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Abstract
- Section 1 — Introduction, whose last paragraph says something
like “The rest of this thesis is organized as follows....”
- Section 2 — Background, covering previous work
- Section 3 — Theory behind the work you are doing
- Section 4 — Implementation, technical details, measurements,
results. etc.
- Section 5 — Conclusions and Future Research
- Appendices, which might contain additional detailed tables,
charts, longer source code snippets, full language grammars, etc.
- Annotated Bibliography
Number the sections as 1, 1.1, 1.1.1, etc., and number
the appendices A, A,1, B, etc. Do not number the
abstract or bibliography.
Some Past Theses Supervised
This list is not complete. I’m in the process of trying to
fill in data from missing semesters. If you know of any I missed,
let me know. Thanks.
- Fall, 2008
- Brian Orr, The Platform Virtualization Threat Environment
- Hussein Al-Ghumgham
- Wenyi Zhu
- Spring, 2008
- Kimiko Schmidt
- Fall, 2007
- Ryan Nakamoto
- Spring, 2007
- Brian Birmingham
- Fall, 2006
- Joey Barrett, YAKIT: Your Awareness Kit
- Joe Boyle
- David Hoffman
- Babak Naffas
- Jeffrey Nicholas
- Roberto Ruiz
- Spring, 2006
- Joephy Hoang, Content-Based Image Retrieval
- Paul Bull
- Harshitha Elango
- Scott Spicer
- Fall, 2005
- Raúl Aguilar, Mixed Language Spam Detection
- Spring, 2005
- Prabhu Anabananthan, Job Manager Extensions for Grid Computing Frameworks
- Amit Desai, The Effect of Divergent Implementations on Application Design in Real-Time Environments
- Dale Kohler, Minnow: Multicast Networked Object-Based Data Store
- Sinu Ranasinghe, Domain Gateway Address-Based DOS Detection Protocol
- Robert Johnson
- Scott McCosh
- Rami Naber
- Fall, 2004
- Criag Ward, Implications of Programming Language Selection on the Construction of Secure Software Systems
- Akin Ajayi, Insight: A Framework for Shallow Text Mining
- James Turner
- Shobana Venugopal
- Spring, 2004
- David Chu, Network Analysis for Distributed Denial of Service Attacks
- Fall, 2003
- Kholoud Khateeb, Creative Author: A Visual Programming Language for Creative Multimedia Authoring
- Ihimu Ukpo, Image Compression Applications of Sector Key Compression
- Daryn Hall ?
- Tong Cheng
- Sumeet Vazier
- Mark Walker
- Spring, 2002
- Debbie Spiegel, Comparative Analysis of Peer-to-Peer Systems
- Mike Chang, A Refined Design Pattern Classification Scheme
- Fall, 2001
- Wei Michael Sun, Smart Answering Management System (SAMS)
- Dale Raymond P. Borja, Software Reliability: Assessment and Assurance
- Sanford Weinberg, Solving the Internet Bandwidth Problem
- Spring, 2001
- James Sanchez
- Fall, 2000
- Shouki Souri, Design and Implementation of a Framework for Visual Document Structure Editing
- Robert G, Hayes, Real-time Java
- Nancy Jahn
- Spring, 2000
- Ernest Murillo, VRML Storyboarding
- James Geddes
- Fall, 1999
- Arthur F. del Rosario, ?
- Herng-Yi Chen, Data Compression
- Sizhang Xiao
- Spring, 1999
- Michael Lee
- Sonjia Fielder
- John Liebenau
- Fall, 1998
- Cesar A. Atehortua, The Internet Access Bottleneck—Is DSL the best solution?
- Chuang Kuan-Shih, Speech Technology
- Spring, 1998
- Edward Womack
- Fall, 1997
- Mike A. Malgeri, Specification for the Addition of a Persistent File Replication Service To CORBAservices
- Ray A. Bala II, Load Balancing Web Traffic on An Intranet
- Neal C. Smith, Animated Application Development Under Direct3D and OpenGL
- Robert T. Bauer, Demonstrating the Undecidability and Incompleteness of Peano Arithmetic with a Higher Order Logic Theorem Prover
- Fall, 1996
- Christine Ng, Image Recognition to Detect Cervical Cancer Cells
- Jonathan Mayner
- Lynn Nakamura
- Spring, 1996
- Baha-din Khasawneh, The Utilization of the Arabic Language in Information Systems
- Daniel Cowles, An Adaptive Derivation of the LZW Compression Algorithm
- Peter Hughes
- Cheryl Stewart
- Yao-Wen Tsai
- Fall, 1995
- Jui Ting Chen
- Vasiliki Sotiriou
- Spring, 1995
- Eric Shulman, Utilizing Ada Code in a Constrained Environment
- Revital Elitzur, A Uniform Database Interface for Object and Schema Versioning
- David Lacey, Natural Language Interface for Object Oriented Databases
- William Kingham
- Fall, 1994
- Janet Howard, An Implementation of the ART-1 Neural Network of Carpenter and Grossberg
- Spring, 1994
- David Coca, A Fuzzy Logic Approach to Database Searching
- Scott Karlin, C++ Classes for Embedded System Development
- Jodine Sasine
- Arturo Gonzalez
- Frederic Stann
- Fall, 1993
- Nils Sandoy, Object Oriented Modeling and Design of Fractals
- Jennifer Chen
- Thomas Tien
- Spring, 1993 (2/2)
- Kurt Harms, Interactive Simulator for Quasi-Static Shortest Path Routing Algorithms using Ada Concurrent Tasking
- John Ralston, Use of Self-Enhancing Databases for Address Matching Systems
- Fall, 1992
- Alberto Velez, Real-Time System Software for Visor Displays
- Robert Greayer, Separate Compilation in Language Design and Program Optimization
- Teial Starks, DB++: A Language for Small-Scale Object-Oriented Databases
- Dean Allingham, The Design of the Language L
- Claude Lataillade
- Joseph Notaro
- Spring, 1992
- Jesus Borrego
- Jose Cardona
- Flora Lee
- Michael Cochrane
- Mildred Samonte
- Stuart Simmons
- Bassam Yammine
- Fall, 1991
- Mukesh Patel, Intel 80387 Floating Point Emulation
- Dean Arnold
- Spring, 1991
- Polly Gee
- Darel Henman
- Jeanne Miyamoto
- Lori Mizuguchi
- Alice Nguyen
- Bonnie Schnapp
- Wade Leinen
- Fall, 1990
- Kary Clements
- Timothy Dinh
- Jay Miya
- Keith Nobuhara
- Peter Seto
Prior to Fall, 1990, comprehensive examinations were given in lieu of the thesis requirement.