Project Logistics

The semester-long project is the largest component of the grade (50%). It is your chance to go deep on one corner of the course material.

Scope

Anything that builds upon or applies optimal transport or flow matching: extending a method to a new problem, or applying an existing method to new data. The method can come from the lectures, from a paper on the reading list, or from somewhere else entirely, and the application can be to any domain you care about. What matters is not the topic but that you have a real question and go after it properly.

What your project has to do

Ask an interesting question. State it plainly and early.
Position it. How novel is this question? It does not have to be novel at all, but you do have to know, and you have to map your question to the closest existing literature.
Describe how you answer it, either with a tool you propose, or by applying something that already exists.
Evaluate how well it works, with actual numbers: use existing benchmarks, or propose your own.
Compare against baselines. You cannot tell how well something you built works without quantitatively comparing it to something sensible: a simple method, an ablation, or a competing method.
State the limitations of what you did, and what you would do next.

Negative results are fine. Sometimes a project does not work out. Say so clearly, show the numbers, and explain what you learned.

Deliverables

A poster, presented in class on Mon Dec 7, one per team. The session runs as a poster session: your team stands by its poster and talks through the work with whoever comes by.

Upload the poster as a PDF on Brightspace by Mon Dec 7, and put a one-line contribution statement on the poster saying who did what.

Teams

Teams of 2–4 students. Register your team members and a team name on Brightspace by Mon Oct 5.

Milestones

Milestone	Due	Notes
Team registration	Mon Oct 5	Your team members and a team name, on Brightspace.
Project check-in	Mon Nov 2	One page on Brightspace: your question, the closest existing work, and how you plan to answer it.
Poster session	Mon Dec 7	In class, one poster per team. Upload the poster PDF on Brightspace.

Submission

Team registration, the project check-in, and the poster PDF are all submitted on Brightspace. Late work is not accepted without prior arrangement.