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Introduction

I am mainly working in Natural Language Processing [NLP]. (Especially in Sinhala or Tamil). You can refer to my current work here. It doesn't have to be one of the topics that I have worked on. But it is easier if they align. Have a look and we can discuss what type of work you are interested in.

On that, I have also added some possible extensions of my previous and current work here. Given that I already have some groundwork done for these projects, I have a preference for students to pick them. Of course, the scope can be scaled up or down depending on whether an MSc student, an MPhil student, or an undergrad FYP group takes up the project.

The projects work best when the student(s) likes the topic.

For that matter, if you do not find any of the listed ideas interesting, you can come up with your own idea and pitch it to me. If you have some interesting questions you are passionate about, we can discuss a possible project arising from that. For example, some of my projects have been in Law, Education, Bioinformatics, Sinhala Language, etc. (I am no longer working in Bioinformatics). But as you can see, they are very different fields from one another. So if you have a few problems you like, we can see which ones we can make relevant and compose a project.

However, as I said before, I have a preference to get my students to take up one of the suggested projects.

Have a very careful look at the publication requirements listed in this document.

And the consequence of not meeting them.

If you do not fulfil them, your only option would be to change the supervisor, which is a hard thing to do late in the degree.

So be very careful in reading this and understand what you are agreeing to.

If you have not already done so, in your next correspondence, mention your grades for related subjects such as AI, ML, and NLP.

Academic Expectations (Individual)

Before we start, I should also point out that, I have higher expectations of my students than what is generally set by the department. Of course, you have to do all the submissions asked by the department. But, in addition to that I have the following research publication requirements:

Degree

1st Paper

2nd Paper

3rd Paper

4th Paper

Beyond ...

Summary of Minimum Expectation

BSc FYP with N number of students [1 year - Part Time]
  • A publication at a Tier 1 venue.
  • This paper is published at the end of your literature survey. So it may be sometimes even before your formal proposal viva.
  • Examples of venues are ICTer, ICIIS, and MERCon.
  • The number of other papers is determined by max(N-1,2)
  • These papers can also be of Tier 1 venue but anything higher than that is welcome. And also gets you bonus points for the FYP

Anything beyond the minimum requirement is both welcome and encouraged.

 Tier 1 venues: Max(N,3)

MSc (Coursework Degree)
[2 years - Part Time]

 A publication at a Tier 2 venue or higher venue A publication at a Tier 1 venue or higher venue
  • Tier 1 venues: 2
  • Tier 2 venues: 1

MSc (Research Degree)
[1 year - Full Time
or 2 years - Part Time]

 A publication at a Tier 2 venue or higher venue
  • Tier 1 venues: 1
  • Tier 2 venues: 2

MPhil
[2 years - Full Time
or 3 years - Part Time]

 A publication at a Tier 3 venue or higher venue
  • Tier 1 venues: 1
  • Tier 2 venues: 2
  • Tier 3 venues:1

PhD
[3 years - Full Time
or 4 years - Part Time]

 A publication at a Tier 3 venue or higher venue
  • Tier 1 venues: 1
  • Tier 2 venues: 1
  • Tier 3 venues: 2

Venue

Conference Level

Journal Ranking

Comments

Tier 1

U

Q4

  1. They are pretty easy to get in. But by that, they serve as a very good test, which means, if a project cannot even pass the requirements for these venues, that means that the project or the work done by the student is garbage.
  2. Also, note that for a publication of this level, you need to send me the finished draft at least 1 week before the venue deadline.
  3. This draft is an actual draft. This means, that by the time you send this one to me, it is okay to be a bit rough.

C

Q3

Tier 2

B

Q2
  1. These are harder to get into. However, there is a wider variety of venues.
  2. Some B-level venues are just C+ venues where it is reasonably easy to get in.
  3. But others are A- venues that are harder to get in.
  4. Note that for a publication of this level, you need to send me the finished draft at least 2 weeks before the venue deadline.
  5. The rule of thumb for this type of draft is that when you send this to me 2 weeks before, you should be confident that if we submit this paper right then and there to a Tier 1 venue, it will get accepted. The idea is that we use the remaining 2 weeks to improve it to Tier 2.

Tier 3

A

Q1
  1. These are very hard to get into.
  2. Your work needs to compete with the world’s best work.
  3. Note that for a publication of this level, you need to send me the finished draft at least 4 weeks before the venue deadline.
  4. The rule of thumb for this type of draft is that when you send this to me 4 weeks before, you should be confident that if we submit this paper right then and there to a Tier 2 venue, it will get accepted. The idea is that we use the remaining 4 weeksto improve it to Tier 3.

Tier 4

A*
  1. These are even harder to get into.
  2. Your work needs to compete with the world’s best work. Possibly, top 1%.
  3. But it is doable. I have papers published at A* venues and top Q1 journals.
  4. Note that for a publication of this level, you need to send me the finished draft at least 6 weeks before the venue deadline.
  5. The rule of thumb for this type of draft is that when you send this to me 6 weeks before, you should be confident that if we submit this paper right then and there to a Tier 3 venue, it will get accepted. The idea is that we use the remaining 6 weeks to improve it to Tier 4.

Notes:

  1. In case of a rejection or a missed deadline, the student(s) may try and find a comparative conference to earn back the passable grade.
  2. In case of degree conversion (eg: an MPhil converting to a PhD) what you have already done gets counted towards the new degree.
  3. One big reason for the publication criteria is to ensure the quality of work done under me. Given that publications are judged by peers (most of the time under double-blind). We can take it as an unbiased testament to the quality of your work. Thus:
    1. For undergraduate students, the FYP components graded by me as your supervisor are primarily dependent on the degree to which you fulfil the publication criteria.
    2. For post-graduate students, I will not sign your documents as the supervisor unless you fulfil the publication criteria.
  4. All this is the minimum requirement for me to tell the project coordinator "I am okay to let this student go forward to the final defence".
  5. If a project is to be worth more than that AND you want to do better, I will of course help you do that. This means you can replace paper expectations with higher-level papers. (However, unless you have previous publication experience, I recommend the first paper to be at Tier 1)
    1. I have had undergraduate projects that had 5-6 papers published by the end of a 1-year project
    2. I have had some post-graduate students who already published a Tier 1 paper by the time they went to defend their proposal. The papers were about: 1) Their literature survey, 2) A preliminary comparative analysis, or 3) A new dataset they created.
  6. So these are not impossible standards. Do not worry. But yes, they are higher than average standards.
  7. I have a weekly 1 hr individual meeting (online) with my students to discuss research progress (these may later get consolidated across common projects).
  8. Once you have finalized a topic, I expect you to do a literature survey for 4 weeks at minimum where you read and report on 6-8 papers a week to me at the individual meeting.
  9. Then you may write the proposal. So time yourself appropriately.
  10. All the drafting of formal submissions will happen on Overleaf. If you send me a draft of a proposal, paper, or report as a doc, docx, google doc, pdf, etc. I will NOT read it. I’ll return it without reading it.
  11. Reviewing internal submissions:
    1. Your Initial Project Proposal will be considered to be similar to a Tier 1 publication. As such, you need to send me the finished draft at least 1 week before the venue deadline.
    2. Your Literature Survey/PGDip Report will be considered to be similar to a Tier 2 publication. As such, you need to send me the finished draft at least 2 weeks before the venue deadline.
    3. Your Final Report will be considered to be similar to a Tier 3 publication. As such, you need to send me the finished draft at least 4 weeks before the venue deadline.
  12. The point of research supervision is to make you capable of conducting subsequent research without supervision. As such, I will reduce the “handholding” I do for you as time progresses. It is your responsibility to work towards that ability to function without handholding.
  13. Apart from the weekly meetings and emails, I expect to have a quick communication channel with you. The preferred medium is Facebook Messenger. I will have a direct chat/group with you and if you are a postgraduate student, you will also be added to the postgraduate chat group for news and helping each other.

Academic Expectations (Group)

I also have a separate weekly 1hr group meeting (online) where one student presents his/her project to others. This way, they can get feedback from others, get ideas from what others do in their project, as well as practice their evaluation or conference presentations. Since it is a roster arrangement, how often you have to present in the group depends on how many students I have at a given point in time. Currently, I have 9 FYPs, 10+ active part-time master's students, 1 full-time masters student, and 1 full-time PhD student. So they present around once every two months now. When we add students from your batch, it will become ever more relaxed. Group meeting history is accessible here for you to get an idea. As you can see, the first presentation I expect to do for the group is your proposal presentation. That means you get at least 4 weeks of listening to others before you have to present.

Academic Expectations (Collaboration/Ethics)

As you will see below, some of the projects are built on top of one another. And sometimes concurrent projects have overlaps. When this happens, you can get help and advice from other students in the group. Sometimes when one student is working hard on a tight research paper deadline, they might even ask others to help run some code etc. Even at a more subtle level, I might tell student A, "Student B found this paper C in their literature survey" or "Student B already tested method D so you only need to test method E". When something like this happens, I expect Student A to acknowledge Student B's contributions by doing one of the following:

  1. Mentioning B in A's paper acknowledgement, OR
  2. Citing B's papers, OR
  3. Adding B as a co-author

I, as the supervisor will tell you which one or many of these things you need to do. In the case where there is more than one contributor to a paper, I would decide on the  author order. Of course, we will discuss this with all the relevant parties. But I am telling you this right now because I have had bad experiences where: some students/external supervisors not wanting to cite other students or people complaining about the author order.

On the matter of author order, one very important point you have to learn is that research is different from the industry (your place of work or internship). In the industry, code is the product. Then in support of it, you write the documentation. In research, the paper is the product. You write code in support of the paper. Otherwise, how do you think people in archaeology write research papers? So, the author order is determined by the degree of contribution to the writing of the manuscript above all. Thus the person “who wrote the most” or “who formalized the methodology most” is going to get more prominence than the person “who wrote the most lines of code”. In fact, there are instances in some publications where the person who wrote the code is not even an author but instead put in the acknowledgement. So learn the difference.

Teaching Assistant Expectations (Department Support)

The CSE department teaches many courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. We employ final-year undergraduates as TAs for undergraduate courses in years 1, 2, and 3. Obviously, we cannot employ them in final-year undergraduate courses or postgraduate courses. So we employ postgraduate students as TAs for undergraduate courses in year 4 as well as postgraduate courses.

  1. If you are an undergraduate student whose FYP I am the primary supervisor, I expect you to volunteer for TA positions when they are advertised.
  2. If you are a part-time postgraduate student whose I am the primary supervisor, I expect you to take at least one subject to TA in a given semester.
  3. If you are a full-time postgraduate student whose I am the primary supervisor, I expect you to take at least two subjects to TA in a given semester.
  4. For undergraduate students, it is not required that you give preference to the subjects that I teach. But for postgraduate students, it is recommended to give preference to the subjects I teach.
  5. If I am not the primary supervisor, then the primary supervisor will decide whether you need to take TA positions or not.
  6. TAing involves grading as well as preparing some teaching material.
  7. If and when you are tasked this way, the department will pay you for TA duties.