Scientific computing project

Project proposal

I am usually hesitant to suggest topics to students because I would prefer to see you pursue projects that

YOU have decided that you are interested in. This is an opportunity for you to explore a new

area at relatively low risk.

Your project may be any one of, or combination of

● An in-depth report of an area of scientific computing that you find interesting and would

like to know more about

● The creation of an instructional module consisting of background, lecture notes and

solved assignments for an advanced topic beyond that which is presented in this course.

If you do this, I would appreciate your permission to use it in a future course if I want, but

that’s not a requirement. This might also apply to exploration of certain Python modules

that aren’t covered in class, that you think might be useful to future students.

● A software project - build, document and demonstrate a software tool of your creation

that helps in some aspect of scientific computing

● I think there’s a very interesting future in “scientific computing as a service” (following on

from the Software as a Service - SaaS - paradigm). It seems that a lot of you have

interests in web programming. If you feel like you have the skills, you might consider

setting up a web service in your VM (or an AWS VM) that performs some kind of

scientific computing services. There are relatively easy-to-use Python-based web

services (e.g. Flask, CherryPy) as well as Django, but there’s still a learning curve with

these.

Ultimately, you will be expected to submit a detailed, comprehensive

report on your project, with meaningful examples and demonstrations where applicable.