Submit your project proposal on Moodle by Thursday, March 5 at 23:59pm. Also post your proposal on Slack in the #project-hub thread.

Deliverables

Submit two PDF files on Moodle:

  1. A two-page project proposal (not including references).
  2. A PDF of the full conversation you had with an LLM while researching and preparing the proposal. You may additionally include a link to the conversation if your LLM platform supports sharing links.

You may include a brief description of your manuscript preparation methodology in an appendix (not counted toward the two-page limit).

Writing a Proposal

The purpose of any proposal is to convince the reviewer to fund the project, whether the context is a research grant, a company initiative, or a course project. To do that, several elements must be clear and compelling. The structure below applies broadly to proposal writing and should guide how you organize yours.

1. Why Does the Project Matter?

Open by establishing the significance of your project. What are the applications and implications of the work? Why should a reader care? Keep the scope wide enough to appeal to a broad audience. If you know who the reader is, write for them. If not, make it general so that it reaches more people. A proposal that only speaks to a narrow specialist audience limits its own impact.

2. What Is the Existing Work?

Show that you are familiar with the field and that you have read enough to know what you are talking about. Cite relevant prior work: who did what, what methods they used, and what they found. In an ideal proposal (and especially in a research setting), you would also show that you have done related work yourself. This section builds credibility and sets the stage for identifying the gap.

3. What Is Your Proposed Contribution?

After reviewing existing work, make the transition clear: despite all that has been done, there remains a gap. No one has done exactly what you are proposing. State your hypothesis and summarize your approach. Make your contribution explicit, and break it down into specific aims:

  • Aim 1: …
  • Aim 2: …
  • Aim 3: (if applicable)

Each aim should be concrete and actionable.

4. Problem Statement and Methodology

Elaborate on how you will tackle the problem. The goal of this section is to convince the reader that your approach is both doable and innovative, and that you have a solid understanding of the gap and how to close it. Describe the data you will use, the models or algorithms you plan to apply, and how the pieces fit together. If you have preliminary results, include them here. The key message is feasibility: the reviewer should finish this section believing the project can be achieved.

5. Timeline

Provide a schedule for completing the work. Break the project into phases (data collection, model development, experiments, writing) with approximate dates. This gives both you and the reviewer concrete evidence that the project is achievable within the available time.

6. References

Include a list of references cited in the proposal. This does not count toward the two-page limit.

LLM Conversation Requirement

You are required to submit the full conversation you had with an LLM (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) while preparing this proposal. The conversation should demonstrate that you:

  • Searched for a real, meaningful contribution rather than accepting the first suggestion.
  • Asked critical questions, pushed back on generic answers, and refined your ideas.
  • Engaged with the literature and used the LLM as a research tool, not just a writing tool.

The grade you receive is a combination of two components:

  1. The quality of the proposal itself. This is evaluated independently of the LLM. Is the writing clear? Is the problem well-motivated? Is the methodology sound? Is the contribution real?
  2. The depth of your LLM-driven research. Did you show inquisitiveness, curiosity, and intellectual depth in how you used the tool? Did you iterate, challenge, and refine?

Using an LLM to produce a polished but shallow proposal will not score as well as using it to genuinely explore a problem space and arrive at a well-considered project.

Submission: Upload two PDFs (proposal + LLM conversation) on Moodle and post your proposal on Slack in the #project-hub thread by Thursday, March 5 at 23:59pm.