Part III and MPhil ACS projects and essays
MPhil ACS students in Option A write an essay.
MPhil ACS students in Option B undertake a substantial research project during the Lent and Easter terms. Each project must be supervised by a member of the academic staff (who will also act as one assessor).
Part III students undertake a research project similar to the above ACS project, but of only half the size (and no more than 12,000 words). Each project must be supervised by a member of the academic staff (or alternative approved by Head of Department) who also acts as one assessor.
Timetable
- Monday 21 November 2011: submission of project proposal with coversheet and project resource form
- Wednesday 30 November 2011: approval of project proposals
- End of Lent Term 2012: project progress review
- Tuesday 8 and Thursday 10 May 2012: project progress presentations
- (Monday 14 May 2012 for ACS Option A and Part III students)
- June 1st 2012: final day for project title changes
- Friday 9:00 15 June 2012: final report submission (*hard* deadline)
- Thursday 28 or Friday 29 June 2012: Oral examinations (if required)
- Monday 2 July 2012: Final Examiners' meeting
- Tuesday 3 July 2012: Degree Committee meeting (approval of recommendations; release of class lists)
Resources for students and supervisors
- Some official research essay guidelines (ACS option A)
- Some official project guidelines (ACS option B)
- Some official Part III project guidelines (Part III only)
- A (less formal) project briefing presentation
- A LaTeX template for the project proposal
- Project/essay proposal coversheet
- Project resource form
- Board of Graduate Studies certificate of submission (M.Phil students only)
Please note that all project proposals must be accompanied by a project resource form. If you require, or have organised, a desk within a research group, this should be agreed with your supervisor and arrangements noted under section C of the form.
If your project may involve experiments on human subjects, be sure to read the department's Ethical Review Policy, which explains the steps you need to take to obtain the necessary approval first.
Project suggestions
In practice, we expect students to start thinking about their project in the latter half of Michaelmas term. As mentioned above, all projects must have a faculty supervisor, and so the first step usually involves deciding which research area(s) you are interested in, and then contacting potential supervisors.
You can suggest your own project, but several research groups and members of staff maintain web pages with project suggestions:
- Graphics and Interaction Group
- Security Group
- Systems Research Group / NetOS
- Natural Language and Information Processing Group
- Prof. Lawrence Paulson
- Older suggestions from previous years
In many cases these are indicative and not final: ideally you, in conjunction with the supervisor, will work on fleshing out the details. This will likely involve doing background reading and preparation in October and early November so that the official project proposal submitted on 21 November represents an informed and realistic idea of what you will do.