Before starting the final project, every team must meet with the instructor as a group to discuss and confirm their paper choice.

Purpose

  • Pick a paper for your team’s final project. You may either:
    • Choose a paper from the candidate pool in the Project Guide, or
    • Propose a new paper not on the list. New picks should be highly cited, published in a top-tier venue (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR), and within the scope of deep reinforcement learning.
  • Avoid duplicates. Each team must work on a different paper. Part of the meeting’s goal is to coordinate so no two teams end up on the same topic.
  • Align on scope. We will briefly discuss what a reasonable baseline and two enhancements look like for your chosen paper, so you leave the meeting with a clear direction.

Paper conflicts: first come, first served

If two teams want the same paper, the team that books and attends the meeting earlier gets it. The later team will need to pick a different paper during their meeting.

This makes scheduling early a real advantage. Don’t wait until the deadline to book — by then the most popular papers may already be taken.

How to book

Use the appointment-booking link on the Moodle page for “Make an appointment with me” to reserve a time slot with the instructor. All team members are expected to attend together.

The booking must be completed — and the meeting held — before the due date shown on the schedule page.

What to prepare before the meeting

Come to the meeting with:

  1. Your top 2–3 paper choices, ranked. Bringing alternates lets us resolve conflicts on the spot without needing a second meeting.
  2. A short read of the abstract and intro of your top pick — enough to answer “what problem does this paper solve, and why is it interesting?”
  3. An initial thought on what environment or task you would use for baseline evaluation.
  4. Names of all team members and a rough idea of how you plan to split the two enhancements.

After the meeting

Once your paper is approved, it is locked in for your team and removed from availability for other teams. You can then proceed to the paper presentation and implementation phases described in the Project Guide.