So here we are. Selecting a topic for our research that we are about to present at the end as the master thesis project. Doing a research seems a difficult and complicated process, at least for now. And one of the hardest parts of it is selecting an area and topic to work on and getting started. There is a huge choise in topics where computer science and AI field can be implemented. The main dilemma here is between our passion, creativity and excitement vs time and resources that we have for it. So the topic must be chellenging and interesting enought to fulfill the expectations but simple enough to be doable.
Professor Kaisler, ex DARPA employee, inroduced George Heilmeier’s Catechism: the way DARPA picked up projects for their research. It consists of 8 questions that the concept of the project should address in order to be approved for development and funding.
•What are you trying to do? • •How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice? • •What’s new in your approach and why will it be successful? • •Who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make? • •What are the risks and the payoffs? • •How much will it cost? How long will it take? • •What are the midterm and final exams to check for success? • •Why now?
As they believed in DARPA, if a project, idea, solution or concept can answer these basic questions, then it might have purpose behind it. I'll be trying to run all my ideas through this questions filter in order to have a better understanding of whether I am going in the right direction.
Either way, opportunities are plenty and worth exploring even if they fail.