ROB 498 / 599 · Fall 2026 · Paper seminar
Four sessions, one at the end of each unit. Eight of you sign up for each one, bring a paper, walk the room through it, and then run the discussion. Everything else about the session is deliberately loose.
Ninety minutes on the papers of the unit that just finished, led by you. Eight people sign up to bring a paper and walk the room through it, and everyone else comes and joins the discussion.
I keep a loose eye on the clock and join the discussion along with everyone else.
Roughly four minutes walking the room through the paper, then roughly six leading a discussion about it. Nobody is timing you to the second.
Show the paper itself on screen, or slides if you like making them, or the project page with its video. Whatever gets the idea across fastest.
The one thing to land clearly is the key contribution: what this paper does that was not there before, in your own words, stated so that someone could disagree with it. A figure and a result usually carry it.
No slide deck is required, and there is nothing to submit beforehand. If you do bring slides, three or four is plenty.
Use the rest of the response form as your agenda. You have already answered these questions in writing for other papers, so the room knows the shape of them:
Bring your own answer to each, and use them to start a conversation rather than to deliver a verdict. Asking the room "does anyone believe Table 2?" is a perfectly good way to spend two minutes.
Read what you can and come along. The discussion is most of what makes the session work. Bringing one question about a paper someone else has taken is plenty.
Unit 1, representation and reconstruction. The sign-up is posted on Piazza: add your name and the paper you plan to bring. These are the papers already on the list for this unit, and a paper of your own is just as welcome.
L09 and L10 come after this seminar, so the splatting and feed-forward papers are ones you would be meeting early. Taking one of those is a good way to set up the lecture.
The paper seminar is 30% of the grade for everyone, with your lowest reading response dropped.
Anton grades the session you lead. There is nothing to hand in and no rubric to write to. He is looking for engagement with the paper: a clear statement of the contribution and a discussion that goes somewhere. Polish is not part of it.