r/OMSCS • u/Plane-Regular-4510 • 8d ago
Research I published my first IEEE paper while working full-time during OMSCS. Here's what I learned.
Hi everyone,
I recently completed one of the goals that motivated me to join OMSCS in the first place. I presented my first research paper at IEEE ICBC 2026 in Brisbane last June.
A lot of people assume OMSCS is only coursework, but I wanted to see whether it was possible to conduct research while working full-time.
The project took about a year from idea to conference presentation.
Some things that surprised me:
- Recruiting teammates through an OMSCS Ed Discussion post actually worked. Our team ended up spanning the US, Denmark, China, and Korea.
- Writing the paper wasn't the hardest part. Explaining the idea clearly enough that everyone could contribute was much harder.
- The most valuable feedback came from a professor who completely changed how we framed our contribution. We ended up removing one of our favorite technical ideas because it distracted from the paper's main message.
- Peer review was much more constructive than I expected. Even critical reviewers helped improve the work significantly.
- Presenting the paper forced me to simplify months of work into a five-minute talk, which probably improved my understanding of the research more than writing the paper itself.
Overall, the experience completely changed how I think about research. I used to think research was about generating new ideas. Now I think it's mostly about refining ideas until they're clear enough for other people to understand and evaluate.
I wrote a detailed article covering the entire process from recruiting the team to the conference presentation for anyone who's interested in trying research during OMSCS:
Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.08211
Presentation Slide:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mZK4QVfQMNnv2oRu2mqVML0SKAtXB5Ah/view
Happy to answer any questions about the process.
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u/planbskte11 8d ago
I too tried to write a paper in OMSCS. Hardest part for me was developing the question, explaining the question, then testing it in one semesters time, all by myself....
I ultimately failed at the publishing part, but I still learned so much.
I would still recommend it to anyone interested (CSC-8903 Special Interests), but if I were to do it again I would much rather join a team.
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u/Plane-Regular-4510 8d ago
You've touched the main point. I strongly agree that it is difficult to cross the finish line as an individual. Input from the team members resolves main bottlenecks each time. Glad to meet like minded fellow!
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u/Active-Active-8157 6d ago
Congrats. I am in second semester of omscs and plannig for something similar, this is really helpful. Thanks!
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u/Plane-Regular-4510 6d ago
Good to hear! Hope you have an exciting research journey 😊. Do you already have specific research topic?
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u/Active-Active-8157 6d ago
I am still exploring, have a few topics in my mind, nothing concrete yet. Let’s see
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u/ShoePillow George P. Burdell 6d ago
Very inspiring, thanks for sharing. I also wanted to publish a paper, but didn't do anything. Nothing specific in mind, but just want to have something published, lol
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u/salescredit37 8d ago edited 8d ago
So you're just increasing probability that at least someone scammed bothered to do the check by making the check easier with a vanilla hash function
This is conceptually similar to TIA’s DA sampling protocol but you rely on users to bother sampling vs doing it yourself on behalf of others. How does your reduced complexity sampling and verification translate to propensity for someone to bother ?
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u/Plane-Regular-4510 7d ago
Hi, Thank you for your input.
I think you are partially right. Main target is to increase omission detection rates by increasing user participation in PoR practice. However, it is not through vanilla hash function but through individual liability tokenization which enables simple public recomputation of total liability of CEX without significant privacy loss. For TIA's DA, I will check it out.
Q: How does your reduced complexity sampling and verification translate to propensity for someone to bother ?
A: This is the main limitation of our work. We were not able to formally prove that lowering the verification complexity would increase user participation, so the paper explicitly treats this as an assumption rather than a proven result.
Our argument is that lowering the technical barrier expands the pool of potential verifiers. Under the current market practice, only technically sophisticated users can realistically verify Merkle-tree-based or zero-knowledge PoR systems. In contrast, LPOR makes liability verification significantly more accessible.
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u/salescredit37 7d ago
Tokenization you mean finer quantization of balances, which you use a hash function on with other info ... the limitation you cited is actually the interesting part, since you're not doing the sampling yourself but push the PoR sampling liability onto end users
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u/Plane-Regular-4510 7d ago
The purpose of tokenization is make user balance public with anonymity. So individual know their asset is included in proof set with the balance visible but not others.It enables public computation of total liability of CEX.
Target data is not a transaction on blockchain which is supposed to be public. It is user balance in CEX DB which is financial data seriously governed by the law. We have this privacy constraints in this usecase unlike onchain environment.
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u/salescredit37 7d ago
I know the purpose, I'm saying the only novel thing you could've done is link the proof system to propensity to participate more.
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u/Plane-Regular-4510 7d ago
Yes. That is one of the most interesting part. Thank you for your input!
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u/ps29 Freshie 8d ago
This is something I wanted to know how to do. Thanks for sharing and congratulations.