COMP9444 Notices

Course marks released

Posted by Sonit Singh 25 days ago.

Dear Students,

Course marks (hw1, checkpoints, project, and the final exam) are now released and you can view them via the give system or you can also check from below link.
https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~give/Student/sturec.php

We have scaled project marks based on the peer assessment form. If you find that the total sum of presentation, notebook, and report is not equal to the total proj scores, it means there these are scaled marks. There are many team members who showed concern about other members lower contribution and lack of participation in meetings, writing code, report writing, making slides, and overall working as a team member. We have gone through each of the submitted peer review form and scaled marks.

Please note that mentors and teaching staff have done all checks to make sure we have accurate marking. However, if you think there is a calculation issue or you got zero mark for particular component due to missing file or no submission, please send an email to cs9444@cse.unsw.edu.au within 4 days of this announcement, i.e. 11 May 2025 5pm. Any request after 11 May will not be entertained as we need to finalise marks and upload to central systems.

Kind regards,
Sonit

myExperience Survey closing tomorrow

Posted by Sonit Singh about a month ago.

Dear Students,

Thanks to everyone those who have filled the myExperience survey for COMP9444. As of today, we got 45% participation rate.

Those who have not submitted yet, could you please fill the myExperience Survey as it is closing today. We need at least 50% participation rate to mean meaningful and statistical sense of the survey.

Please log into https://myexperience.unsw.edu.au/ or to Moodle course page and fill in the survey.

Kind regards,
Sonit

Week 10 Guest Lecture (Tuesday 9-11 am)

Posted by Sonit Singh about a month ago.

Dear Students,

It is my great pleasure to announce that we have a guest lecture on "Multimodal AI Reasoning and Agentic AI" by Jingying Gao. I think it's really a great opportunity to get some industry insights on Generative AI and Multimodal application from our guest speaker. I would like to see you all in Week 10 lecture. Please find details below:

Title: Multimodal AI Reasoning and Agentic AI

Abstract : In this guest lecture, we delve into the world of multimodal AI and Agentic AI applications. We will explore the mechanics of text-to-image generation models, including the functioning of diffusion models and their fine-tuning using customised datasets. We will discuss the construction of AI applications based on diffusion models and the stable diffusion model's specific tuning methods. The lecture covers the applications of large language models (LLMs) in text generation and will guide us through building a customised chatbot web application using vector databases (VectorDB) and the GPT-4 model. We will also cover how to develop Neuro-Symbolic systems and AI agents to automate and improve workflows. Finally, we will discuss future directions in AI, such as explainable AI, logical reasoning in multimodal tasks, and AI ethics, to inspire students' innovative thinking and ethical considerations.

Bio : Jingying is a research scientist specialising in multimodal and generative AI, with a focus on VQA, multimodal reasoning and explainable AI. She studied her PhD at the AI & Robotics Lab at UNSW. Her research contributions include papers published at NeurIPS, IJCNN, and other conferences. Additionally, she has served as a reviewer for NeurIPS, ECAI, and IJCAI, and co-organized a workshop at IJCNN. She is also a passionate research scientist working in the industry with over six years of active commercial and academic research experience, preceded by years in managerial and technical roles. She has led the development of various AI and Generative AI applications intended for robots aimed at service duties and in financial services.

Kind regards,
Sonit

Week 10 Group Project Presentation Schedule now Available

Posted by Sonit Singh about a month ago.

Dear Students,

The schedule of Week 10 group project presentations is now available. Please find your team name in the file and check room and session time. Please note that schedule will be different for Friday sessions due to public holiday (ANZAC Day).

You can find Project Presentations Schedule on WebCMS3
WebCMS3 > Project > Project Presentations Schedule

I've already provided detailed instructions on how to wrap up your project work. Please follow them to have consistency, less confusion, and avoiding delays for the release of project marks. You can find these instructions on Ed and WebCMS.

https://edstem.org/au/courses/20513/discussion/2548621

Note: All teams must make live presentations and it is important that all members must be present during the presentation.

If you have any questions, please reach out to us by emailing cs9444@cse.unsw.edu.au

With best wishes!
Sonit

Make sure you are exam-ready!

Posted by Sonit Singh about a month ago.

Dear Students,

The Final Exam is on UNSW Kensington Campus (in-person) and invigilated. Please see below important information from central exams team.

• Prepare for your Inspera exam on campus:
  studentinfo_invigilatedexams.pdf
• Ensure you know when are where your exam is:
  Understanding your exam timetable.pdf
• And most importantly, ensure that you have the correct SEB versions (these are different from last Term): SEB for Mac (version 3.3.3)
  SEB for Windows (version 3.8.0) * *For Windows – Your device can only have one correct SEB version installed. You will need to uninstall the incorrect SEB version prior to the exam.

During the Term 1 2025 final exam session, an onsite IT Helpdesk will be available to support students on exam days . Find it in the John Niland Scientia Building Foyer, G19 on the Campus Map. No booking required!

Operating Hours:

• General queries: Monday to Saturday, 10am - 12pm and 2pm - 4pm
• Students sitting an exam only: Monday to Saturday, 8.30am - 10am and 1pm - 2pm

Other general instructions:

Room: Please check myUNSW.

1. Make sure that your laptops (Bring Your Own Device) be fully charged before coming to the Exam.

2. Your laptop must have Secure Exam Browser (SEB) installed prior to your exam day. The instructions are given at the following link. https://www.student.unsw.edu.au/exams/inspera/on-campus

3. Bring your current UNSW student identification card . Students without an ID card will be required to provide other official photo identification such as a driver's licence or passport at the time of the exam, electronic versions of identification are not permitted. Make sure they are not expired.

4. Bring pen and UNSW approved calculator as the final exam have numerical questions.

5. Rough sheets will be provided during the exam .

6. Reach to the final exam room 20 mins before the final exam start time. Make sure you have logged on to your laptop and you are ready to start, approximately 15 mins before the exam commences.

7. Please read the UNSW exam rules from the link below. https://www.student.unsw.edu.au/exam/rules

8. No additional resources are allowed as it is a closed book exam.

9. Make sure you attempt the Sample Exam before the final exam day so that you are familiar with the type of questions and the interface. You can familiarise yourself with the Inspera as it has few demo tests which you can access by login via UNSW credentials.

https://unsw.inspera.com

Kind regards,
COMP9444 Teaching Team

hw1 (assignment) and checkpoints (Week 1 to Week 5) now released

Posted by Sonit Singh 2 months ago.

Dear Students,

Thanks for your patience as we were busy marking hw1 and collecting checkpoint marks from your tutors. We have now released hw1 marks and checkpoints (week 2 to week 5). You can check your marks by following instructions given towards the end of the assignment or from the below link.

https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~give/Student/sturec.php

We have not applied any late penalty as we need to make adjustments to Special Considerations or ELS approvals. We will do this over this and next week.

Note: You may have received lower marks than you anticipated but we evaluated your submissions based on completeness and correctness based on the marking criteria. Any request solely not meeting your expectations will not be entertained. However, If you think there is a calculation error, any major issue or you have not received your hw1 marks, please send an email to cs9444@cse.unsw.edu.au and we will follow it.

Kind regards,

COMP9444 teaching team

Week 9 Activities and myExperience Survey now opens

Posted by Sonit Singh 2 months ago.

Dear Students,

In Week 9, we have the following activities:

• Lectures covering topics on Autoencoders, Variational Autoencoders (VAEs), Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), and Multimodal Learning .
  
• Group Project Mentoring Session : Please go to your respective mentoring sessions as per the timetable. Detailed project submission guidelines has already been released. Please follow these to wrap up your project work. Please discuss with your mentors if you have any questions.

• myExperience Survey now open : Please fill myExperience survey as it gives us an opportunity to see course and teaching from the students' perspective. We are eager to listen to your feedback and aim to understand and act from your experiences.

Please know that myExperience is confidential and your identity is not included in reports. Results of the survey are not made available until your course results are released.

You can find link to myExperience in Moodle or alternately Please login https://myexperience.unsw.edu.au/ or follow the link in your email to access the survey.

Cheers,
COMP9444 Teaching Team

Sample Exam now Available

Posted by Sonit Singh 2 months ago.

Dear Students,

We have now released Sample Exam so that you have better idea of type of questions you can expect in the Final Exam. The Sample Exam is available on WebCMS3.

WebCMS3 > Sample Exam

Regards,
Sonit

Week 8 Activities

Posted by Sonit Singh 2 months ago.

Dear Students,

In Week 8, we have the following activities:

1. Lectures : Covering topics on Reinforcement Learning

2. Group Project Mentoring Sessions : Please attend project mentoring sessions to seek help from mentors regarding the group project. If you have any issues regarding the group project, please reach out to your respective mentor or send an email to class account. Please go through project submission guidelines so that all teams can deliver quality project in Week 10. See guidelines here https://edstem.org/au/courses/20513/discussion/2548621

3. hw1 marking : Tutors have been marking hw1 submissions. We plan to finish marking by this week and will release hw1 marks and checkpoints by early next week. I will make announcement after we release hw1 and checkpoint marks, so stay tuned.

Have a productive and prosperous week ahead!

Kind regards,
Sonit

Week 7 Activities

Posted by Sonit Singh 2 months ago.

Dear Students,

I hope you had a wonderful flex week 🎉

In Week 7, we have the following activities:

1. Lectures : Covering topics on Word Embeddings and Large Language Models (LLMs)

2. Group Project Mentoring Sessions : Please check timetable available on WebCMS under

WebCMS > Project > Group Project Mentoring Timetable

Please attend these mentoring sessions to seek help from mentors regarding the group project. These mentoring sessions allow team members an opportunity to meet, plan, and discuss activities related to the project work, and also update mentors about your project progress.

3. Project Checkpoints : As we transition to the group project mentoring sessions, there are checkpoints for the group project in Week 7, Week 8, and Week 9. These checkpoints will help teams to make consistent progress before you make final project presentations in Week 10 in your respective mentoring sessions (more details on this later).

As always, if you have any questions, please post on the Ed Forum.

Have a nice and productive week ahead!

Cheers,
Sonit

Group Project Mentoring Timetable now Available

Posted by Sonit Singh 2 months ago.

Dear Students,

Thanks for your patience while course admins were working tirelessly behind the scenes to have the mentoring schedule from Week 7. Heaps of thanks to both Fatemeh and Zahra!

The group project mentoring timetable is now available on WebCMS.

WebCMS > Project > Group Project Mentoring Timetable

Each page has timetable for one mentoring session. You can find Room, Session Time, Mentor Name, Project ID, Project title, Group Name, and all members in your group.

Note: Project Mentoring Sessions starts in Week 7. Please attend these sessions as a group.

We have tried our best to come up with the best timetable based on your preferences. However, you can understand that satisfying each constraint is not feasible nor possible given large number of students (around 800), many mentors, and 33 different sessions.

If you are an existing group, please continue with your amazing group work. If you are allocated to a random group (since you did not find any team or you did not tried even to find one), please communicate with your other team members and start working as a team.

If you have any issues, please send an email to class account ( cs9444@cse.unsw.edu.au ). Please be aware that we may not be able to accommodate every request. However, we will make every effort to address them wherever seems reasonable and adjustable.

Kind regards,

Sonit

Week 6 Activities

Posted by Sonit Singh 2 months ago.

Dear Students,

In Week 6, we have the following activities:

1. There will be no lectures in Week 6 (Flex Week).

2. There will be no tutorials/project mentoring sessions in Week 6 (Flex Week).

2. Group Project Mentoring Sessions start in Week 7 . We are in the process of finalising the group project mentoring timetable based on your data on WebCMS. We will release it on WebCMS (more information on this later). I highly encourage every team member to contribute and keep working even in Week 6 on the group project.

3. Assignment 1 (hw1) deadline is today: Monday, 24 March 2025, 5:00 pm.

4. Use cs9444@cse.unsw.edu.au (class email) for any queries have personal information.

As always, if you have any questions, please post it on the Ed.

Have a nice and productive week ahead. I hope flex week will give you opportunity to catch up with your studies and a short break.

Sonit

Week 4 Activities

Posted by Sonit Singh 3 months ago.

Dear Students,

In Week 4, we will be having the following activities:

• Lectures covering topics on Convolutional Neural Networks and Image Processing
• Tutorial (go to your respective tutorial) for questions on Softmax and Hidden unit dynamics
• Assessments: Assignment 1 has been released. The deadline is 24 March 2025 5:00 pm
• Finalise team for the group project.
  • Each team should have 5 members (Ideally 5 members, no more than 5 members are allowed, no less than 4 members are allowed)
  • Once you have a team of 5 members, you can create a group on WebCMS.
  • Check the projects list and choose an interesting project.
  • Add project ID, Title, and time preferences on WebCMS
  • Please give a sensible name to your group.
• Creating Group Types
  • Go to "Groups" > "Group Types".
  • Click "Create".
  • Fill in the fields as required.
  • Click "Create".
• Join an Existing Group
• • Discuss with members of the existing group.
  • Click on "Join" to join an existing group.

Note: At the moment, more than 150 students are not part of any team. The deadline to form a team for the group project is Week 4 . Please be part of the existing team (if there are less than 5 members, always check with existing members before you join the group). Otherwise, make a post on Ed and get 5 members and then create a new group on the WebCMS.

As always, if you have any questions, please post it on the Ed forum.

Cheers,
Sonit

Assignment 1 (hw1) released

Posted by Sonit Singh 3 months ago, last modified 3 months ago.

Dear Students,

Assignment 1 (hw1) is now released and available on WebCMS. Check WebCMS3 > Assignment > hw1 - Characters and Hidden Unit Dynamics. hw1 report template is also available to download under the Assignment.

Due date: 24 March 2025 5:00 pm

I've made a video providing high-level overview of hw1 specs and how you can submit your hw1 files. Please go through the video before you start working on the hw1.

https://unsw-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/z3534407_ad_unsw_edu_au/Efgna0cpn59In7wlG9Q-q4kB0JiKdykcDEs4MIAOebyAWQ?nav=eyJyZWZlcnJhbEluZm8iOnsicmVmZXJyYWxBcHAiOiJTdHJlYW1XZWJBcHAiLCJyZWZlcnJhbFZpZXciOiJTaGFyZURpYWxvZy1MaW5rIiwicmVmZXJyYWxBcHBQbGF0Zm9ybSI6IldlYiIsInJlZmVycmFsTW9kZSI6InZpZXcifX0%3D&e=G6vdRJ

As always, if you have any questions, please post on the Ed. Also, you can attend weekly consultation session on Wednesday (2-3 pm) in Library 176A.

Good luck!

Cheers,
Sonit

Week 3 Activities

Posted by Sonit Singh 3 months ago.

Dear Students,

In Week 3, we will be having the following activities:

• Lectures covering topics on Cross Entropy, Softmax, Weight Decay, Momentum, and Hidden Unit Dynamics
  
• Tutorial (go to your respective tutorial) for questions on Probability, Entropy, KL Divergence, Wasserstein Distance, Overfitting and Generalisation.
  
• Assessments : Assignment 1 (hw1) will be released this week. I am planning to release a short video to explain hw1 specs. Please watch the recording to know details about the assignment 1.
  
• Form team for the group project
  • Each team should have 5 members (Ideally 5 members, no more than 5 members are allowed, no less than 4 members are allowed)
  • Once you have a team of 5 members, you can create a group on WebCMS
  • Check the projects list and choose an interesting project
  • Add project ID, Title, and time preferences on WebCMS
  • Please give a sensible name to your group.
• Creating Group Types
  • Go to "Groups" > "Group Types".
  • Click "Create".
  • Fill in the fields as required.
  • Click "Create".
• Join an Existing Group
• • Discuss with members of the existing group.
  • Click on "Join" to join an existing group.

Note: At the moment, more than 300 students are not part of any team. The deadline to form a team for group project is Week 4 . Please be part of the existing team (if there are less than 5 members, always check with existing members before you join the group). Otherwise, make a post on Ed and get 5 members and then create a new group on the WebCMS.

As always, if you have any questions, please post it on the Ed forum.

Have a nice and productive week!

Cheers,
Sonit

Week 2 Lecture Slides, Demos, and Recordings now available

Posted by Sonit Singh 3 months ago.

Dear Students,

The slides and demos of Week 2 Lectures are available under WebCMS3 > Course Work > Lectures > Week 2.

Also, Week 2 Lectures Recordings are now available on Moodle. You can view via login to Moodle > COMP9444 25T1 course page > Lecture Recordings.

Cheers,

Sonit

Week 2 Activities

Posted by Sonit Singh 3 months ago.

Dear Students,

In Week 2, we will be having the following activities:

• Lectures (Tue 9 am- 11am; Wed 11am-1pm) covering topics on Probability, Generalisation, Overfitting, and an overview of PyTorch
  
• Tutorial (go to your respective tutorial) for understanding and applying Backpropagation by hand. Also, there will be paper discussion on AlexNet. We have also released Week 1 tutorial solutions, so please go through them at your convenience.
  
• Form team for the group project.
  • Each team must have 5 members (no more than 5 or less than 4 members are allowed)
  • The projects list is on WebCMS3. You can access under: WebCMS3 > Project > Projects List. As a team you have the flexibility to choose an interesting project. Multiple teams can choose the same project topic, so don't worry if you find other team is doing a similar project.
  • Once you have a team of 5 members, you can create a group on WebCMS.
  • Please give a sensible name to your group.

• Creating Group Types
  • Go to "Groups" > "Group Types".
  • Click "Create".
  • Fill in the fields as required (please watch first lecture recording if you are unsure)
  • Click "Create".

Join an Existing group

• Discuss with members of the existing group.
• Click on "Join" to join an existing group.

As always, if you have any questions, please post it on the Ed forum and we will try to respond within 48 hours.

Wishing you a productive and positive week ahead!

Cheers,
Sonit

Week 1 Lecture Slides and Recordings now Available

Posted by Sonit Singh 3 months ago.

Dear Students,

The slides of Week 1 Lectures are available under WebCMS3 > Course Work > Lectures > Week 1.

Also, Week 1 Lectures Recordings are now available on Moodle. You can view via login to Moodle > COMP9444 25T1 course page > Lecture Recordings.

Cheers,

Sonit

Course Activities

Posted by Sonit Singh 4 months ago.

Dear Students,

We have the following activities for the course:

1. Lectures
Lecture A: Tuesday (9 am - 11 am); E19 Patricia O'Shane 104 (K-E19-104)
Lecture B: Wednesday (11 am - 1 pm); Mathews Theatre A (K-D23-201)

2. Tutorials/Project Mentoring Sessions
Check timetable for your respective tutorial sessions. There are exercises which you must attempt and show to your tutors/mentors in your respective tutorials/project mentoring sessions to get 1 mark which accounts for your class participation mark. Tutorials questions will be released on every Friday for the upcoming week’s tutorial. Following table shows list of various exercises for all the weeks and marks distribution.

These checkpoints are designed to make sure you are keeping up with weekly tasks and consistently taking actions to learn the technical material, and the skills required for the successful completion of the assignment and the group project. Each checkpoint is worth 1% of your final grade. You will need to show your work to your tutor during the tutorial or mentoring session to get the weekly checkpoint mark. If you are not able to make up for a particular tutorial for any valid reasons, you can always show your work to your tutor/mentor in the next tutorial.

3. Assessments

Assignment : The assignment will be released in Week 3 and due towards the end of Week 5.

Group Project: It is suggested to start group project early. If you see the above table, you can notice that we have bold text which are skills and checkpoints for successful completion of the group project. Students should form a team of 5 members. To have minimal changes in timetable, ideally we want students to form a team within the same tutorial. This will help you to meet new people, learn from their strengths and complement theirs, foster collaboration, and improve coordination, all of which are important aspects of a group project. However, we will be accommodating minimal changes where students want to form team across different tutorial groups. The tutors/mentors will be guiding you throughout the term for the successful completion of the group project.

Final Exam: The final exam will be in-person and invigilated at UNSW Kensington campus (more details on this later).

4. Additional Resources
Throughout the term, we will be sharing additional resources ( WebCMS3 > Additional Resources ), which can help you to have deeper understanding of the taught concepts and help you to know what current and state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms. It is recommended that you should read these additional resources.

We will be going through all these details in the first lecture. This term, we have over 800 students. While we are committed to providing you with a memorable and enjoyable learning experience, we appreciate your patience as we manage a large cohort.

Cheers,

Sonit

COMP9444 Learning Platforms

Posted by Sonit Singh 4 months ago.

Dear Students,

As we navigate through the excitement of O-Week and look forward to the first lecture, please make sure that you have access to course materials across various learning platforms. We will be making use of mainly three learning platforms:

• Moodle : If you are officially enrolled in the course, you will get default access to the Moodle course page. Please Login to Moodle and make sure you can access course page "COMP9444-Neural Networks, Deep Learning - 2025 T1". We will be using Moodle only for Echo360 (lecture recordings) and for filling myExperience survey towards the end of the term.
  
• WebCMS3 : Again, if you are officially enrolled in the course, you will get access to the WebCMS3 course page. On WebCMS, you can check Course Outline (see left menu items) and timetable (for lectures and tutorials). We will be releasing lecture slides (under Lectures) before the actual lectures (except first lecture)
  
  https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP9444/25T1/

• Ed : Click on the link "Ed Link for the Course" (see left menu) and login to the Ed. Familiarise yourself of Ed (mainly Discussions and Lessons), see icons on the top right of this Ed page.

If you have any issues accessing Ed platform, please send an email to cs9444@cse.unsw.edu.au and we will follow it up.

I hope all of you will ensure that you have access to these learning platforms before our first lecture on 18 February (Tuesday).



Kind regards,

Sonit Singh

Welcome to COMP9444

Posted by Sonit Singh 4 months ago.

Hi Everyone,

A very warm welcome to COMP9444: Neural Networks and Deep Learning in 25T1!

On behalf of COMP9444 teaching team, I am very pleased to have you for this term, and I hope you are going to find this course interesting and engaging as we do.

Neural Networks and Deep Learning plays a critical role in pushing the boundaries of what AI can achieve, making them indispensable for various industries and applications. Their ability to learn and adapt from data has revolutionized many fields and opened new opportunities for solving complex problems. This course provides an introduction to and deep exploration of neural networks and deep learning principles and practice.

This is Orientation Week (O-Week) and here are some suggestions for what you can do this week to ensure that you are well prepared for when the course starts.

• Familiarise yourself with the course structure and the assessment tasks – you can all the information in the course outline
• Start to think about how AI is encountered by you in your daily life and technologies underpinning those applications. Think about Apple’s FaceIDss, Voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa, or Cortana, smart home device, AI in banking, recommender systems on Netflix or ecommerce websites, conversational agents like ChatGPT and DeepSeek.
• Given the AI revolution is gathering even more pace and opening a new world of opportunities, think about what future look like and what does it mean for the future of work.
• Start to think about how you can embrace AI in your workplace and what benefits it can bring to the organization.

We will be using Ed discussion forum for any general questions. Please use the discussion forum on the Ed if you have any questions and teaching team will respond within 48 hours window.

For any specific question (having your personal information), please use class email: cs9444@cse.unsw.edu.au

The best way to get the most out of this course is to:

• Read through the materials and watch embedded videos before each lecture
• Complete quizzes and coding exercises
• Writing and running your own computer programs in PyTorch
• Asking questions and contribute to discussions on the Ed forum
• Consider further exploring topics of particular interest
• Participate in your tutorials (Week 1 to Week 5) and project mentoring sessions (Week 7 to Week 10)

Good luck with this course. I look forward to getting to know each of you and to a stimulating and productive learning journey!

With my very best wishes for a fabulous journey!

Cheers,

COMP9444 teaching team