Course Project Overview#

There will be a group project to apply things you learn in 06-325 to datasets relevant to chemical engineering. The datasets have been provided by various research groups in our department. The goal of this project is to develop several skills:

  • Working with complex datasets

  • Critically thinking about how ML could or should be applied (including representative train/val/test splits)

  • Experimenting with data featurization and ML modeling techniques

  • Communicating complex statistical and numerical analyses

These are really hard problems. There is not one right way to solve them!

Project Choices#

We have prepared a few datasets from within the ChE department as a starting point for you to investigate. You are welcome to choose from one of these areas, and part of your project will be focusing the aims and deciding what you want to try.

In addition, you are welcome to propose your own dataset/topic area if you have a dataset or challenge from your own class/research/etc. There are a few considerations if you want to do this:

  • The data you use should be public and you should have permission to use it for the course

  • It might take more work to decide the particular task and model

Teams#

Teams of 4 students will be organized through CATME by 9/9 based on project interests and other factors. I think you all have used CATME in prior lab classes.

Deliverables#

  • 9/9: Teams organized based on project interest

  • 9/23: <1 page proposal due on gradescope with the below information. It’s fine if these are drafts/etc, this is just to get you thinking about the process and what you will try.

    • Draft project title

    • Team members

    • Summary of challenge

    • Short description of data

    • Proposed approach (features, models, etc)

    • How will you know if the model works?

  • Week of 10/10 (precise date TBD): Group poster presentation, and jupyter notebook due.

Grading#

  • 10% proposal

  • 50% Poster presentation

  • 40% Notebook/code correctness, organization, description of methods, etc.

Poster templates and info#

You can find two sample poster template here (modified from the template for the Berg Research Symposium posters): 06-325 poster template

  • One has some suggested content/suggestions for your 06-325 project

  • The second one is a a complete research poster by one of the PhD students in my group last year (Brook Wander)

A few helpful links (thanks to Matt Cline!):

You can print the poster using the department poster printer. Make sure you list “06-325 course project” in the email!