Submitting the Thesis Evaluation Request by MS/PhD Students (IIIT Hyderabad) : NOTES

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Submitting the Thesis Evaluation Request by MS/PhD Students
(IIIT Hyderabad)

The thesis evaluation request should contain:

1. Essential details: name, roll no, advisors, key contributions
2. Synopsis: background, key references (2-3 pages)
3. Research resume: research experience, contributions, publications (in reverse chronological order), short abstract of thesis
4. Expert reviews: received from conferences of journals for the key publications (submit the reviews even if the paper was not accepted)

The complete thesis should be submitted within 2 weeks in a spiral bound (use LaTex/Word/PFD formats).

Time Schedules

1. Thesis evaluation request: at least 1 month before defense (1-2 months for doctoral dissertation proposals)
2. Thesis submission: at least 3 weeks before defense (2-3 months for doctoral dissertation evaluation)
3. Open presentation: at least 1 week before defense
4. Thesis defense and approval by committee

Expectations and Evaluations of Theses

3 categories: theoretical, experimental, system-building. The institute expects the thesis to be accepted by the peer experts in specific respective area.

1. Publication in journal and focused conferences: complete the work, write the paper, send it to the conference.
2. Sending the thesis by the PG committee for evaluation: to 1-2 experts in the field (may result in a long process, often extending to months).

Instructions to fill the Request Form

1. Name, Roll no, Advisors.
2. Key contributions: Enumerate the contributions of the work undertaken to the prior art (3-4 pages for PhD dissertations).
3. Nature of contribution: largely theoretical, largely experimental?, or largely system-building. A good thesis would have high marks on one of these dimensions and average marks in one or more of the other.
4. Publications: Peer reviewed publications are the best means to establish the depth and importance of one's research contributions (theoretical/experimental/system-building). Journal, Conferences. PhD dissertations take a long time for fruition and a student has ample time to get a journal paper or two accepted. The contributions of a PhD dissertation should be equivalent to 2 good international journal papers (different topics).
5. International Journals: Published by reputed publishers like IEEE, ACM, Elsevier, Springer (Transactions of).
6. Top conferences: Depends primarily on the kind of people running it and the effort they put into it. IJCAI, SIGGRAPH, FOCS, SIGMOD, ICCV, STOC, ICPR, ISCA.
7. Domain-focused conferences: SPCOM, FSTTCS, ICON, ICVGIP.
8. National Journals: IETE, CSI.
9. Dissemination conferences: low value.
10. Other conferences: may be negative value.
11. System building: MS/PhD students are encouraged to build systems. However, innovation and critical analysis are essential for a research thesis (new insight into the system, the process of its design, conceptualization, implementation, performance of the system on all kinds of test cases). Most conferences will accept system building papers.
12. Patents: Typically, patents take years to grant but should be applied for at the earliest opportunity and legally before any open publication of the work appears.
13. Demonstrations: Some conferences have official demonstrations to which you can submit your system.
14. Software packages: The real achievement is in getting people to use it, and give you feedback on it.

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