CS 8903 Syllabus - DS@GT ARC Interest Group - Fall 2026

Course Overview

The Data Science @ Georgia Tech (DS@GT) Applied Research Competitions (ARC) Fall Interest Group provides an opportunity for students to engage in independent applied research through participation in CLEF challenges. The main goal is to prepare a statement of research for participation in the CLEF 2026 competition during the Spring 2027 semester. The secondary goal is to expose students to the research process and equip students with the skills and experience in information retrieval and applied machine learning necessary to be successful in the Spring 2027 semester.

Class Format

The class format consists of synchronous weekly meetings and office hours. Most of the synchronous meetings will follow this format:

  • 30 minutes of lecture material covering the week's topics
  • 5-10 minutes of questions
  • 20 minutes of student presentations (5-minute max) applying the module's material or presenting on a related topic

Each week, students are expected to attend the scheduled class meeting, participate in discussions, and complete any assigned homework or research tasks. Office hours are available for additional support and guidance. We will at times call on students to engage in discussions and presentation activities during class meetings.

Grading

  • Homework Assignments (5% each) — 15% Homework is graded for completion. There is no late policy, but the homework assignments must be submitted by the end of the semester.

  • Participation — 5% Constructive and positive participation in the class through the various methods of communication, such as in-meeting presentations, office hours, reading group participation, Slack, etc.

  • Statement of Research — 80% The student, individually or as part of a group, produces a clearly written and well-defined statement of research for their selected CLEF task. An example statement of research is provided at: https://notes.dsgt-arc.org/competition/research-process/research-proposal-example/

  • Presentation (extra credit) — 10% At the end of modules 2 and 3, we will provide space for class presentations. Students may optionally choose to give a 5-to-10-minute presentation applying or extending the material beyond the homework. Students are encouraged to apply the material to their selected CLEF task. To allow students extra time for their presentation, they may choose to use their presentation in place of their homework grade.

Late Policy

All deliverables, including homework assignments and the statement of research, are due by the end of the semester. There is no late penalty, but there are recommended due dates provided in the schedule.

Schedule

Week Week Start Meeting Time Module Topics Notes
1 8/24/2026 8/26/2026 08:00 PM EDT Orientation Week
2 8/31/2026 8/31/2026 08:00 PM EDT 1 Course Introduction and Overview / Introduction to PACE
3 9/7/2026 9/9/2026 08:00 PM EDT 1 Intro to CLEF and Topic Selection Class is Wednesday
4 9/14/2026 9/14/2026 08:00 PM EDT 1 PACE, GPU Performance and Debugging
5 9/21/2026 None 1 LLMs and Agentic Workflows Reading DS@GT goes to CLEF 2026
6 9/28/2026 9/28/2026 08:00 PM EDT 1 Homework 1 Due
Post-CLEF Lessons
7 10/5/2026 10/5/2026 08:00 PM EDT 2 Information Retrieval: Text
8 10/12/2026 10/12/2026 08:00 PM EDT 2 Information Retrieval: Vision
9 10/19/2026 10/19/2026 08:00 PM EDT 2 Information Retrieval: Multimodal
10 10/26/2026 10/26/2026 08:00 PM EDT 2 Homework 2 Due
Class Presentations for Module 1
11 11/2/2026 11/2/2026 08:00 PM EDT 3 Embeddings and Metric Learning: Text & Vision
12 11/9/2026 11/9/2026 08:00 PM EDT 3 Embeddings and Metric Learning: Multimodal
13 11/16/2026 11/16/2026 08:00 PM EDT 4 Homework 3 Due
Class Presentations for Module 2
14 11/23/2026 None 4 None Thanksgiving
15 11/30/2026 11/30/2026 08:00 PM EDT 4
16 12/7/2026 12/7/2026 08:00 PM EDT 4 Statement of Research Due

FAQ

See FAQ.