Data Science Capstone Process
STEP ONE: Look for potential supervisors whose teaching or research addresses data science problems in
which you are interested, and contact them to determine whether they are able to supervise a
capstone project.
• You may, for example, contact one of the instructors of the courses you have taken.
• You may also use the list of potential advisors provided on the Master’s web site.
• More generally, you may browse any JHU faculty web pages (they are accessible through
departments web sites) to identify research you may feel most connected to.
• If you have an internship, and would like to work on your capstone with this company, you
must still contact a JHU faculty member to act as capstone supervisor. You should also
inform the company that capstones include poster presentations and reports, so that your
work related to the capstone cannot be confidential. During your capstone, you should
report your progress to your supervisor at regular intervals. (More generally, if the person
you wish to work with is not a JHU faculty member, you must have a JHU faculty member
oversee the capstone.)
Be aware that faculty may not always have time available to supervise capstones, so you may
have to contact more than one person. You should feel free to suggest a capstone idea to
faculty, but some supervisors will prefer giving you a subject that match their current interests.
You should feel free to ask your faculty advisor for help during the process of determining a
capstone supervisor.
STEP TWO: Start writing your capstone proposal, along with an expected timeline for completion of each
stage of the project. This should be done in concertation with the capstone supervisor (for
example, the supervisor may provide a draft that you will complete). The Capstone Proposal
form can be found here) and you should submit it for review here.
Remember to submit this early so the committee has time to review it and you have time to
register while online registration is still open.
STEP THREE: Register for EN.553.806. Your registration will be “pending” until your proposal has been
approved by the committee.
Your work (for the entire project) should be the equivalent of a 6-credit course, which means you will spend a
minimum of 100 hours over the course of 1 or 2 semesters to complete it. You may plan to divide up the work
into 2 semesters and therefore do 3-credit’s worth in one semester and then the final 3 credit’s worth in your
last semester. Keep in mind that in your final semester, you’re not only finishing up your research and drawing
your conclusions, but you’re also going to prepare a poster to be presented and a report to be submitted to
the capstone supervisor.
What is expected of a capstone supervisor?
A supervisor should approach each capstone project much like they would for any research they engage in
with students. Your role is lead researcher, instructor and mentor. You should expect a certain amount of
work out of your students and you should make those expectations clear. Set up a plan to communicate with
your capstone student once a week or every other week, in a way that is most convenient for you, but several
in-person meetings are highly recommended.
You should be available to answer questions, make suggestions and review progress. Students are required to
present a poster of their research at our Capstone Poster Presentation which will be scheduled 1 or 2 weeks
before the last day of classes. Students are also expected to submit a final report. We recommend to the
student that they submit this report to their supervisor at least 1 week prior to the end of the exam period, to
provide you with time to review and suggest edits. The program’s expectation is that our students are learning
to write better scholarly papers. While the final report is not submitted to the library for publishing, you and
the student should approach it as if it is.
Lastly, your student’s research doesn’t necessarily have to come to the conclusions he or she originally set out
to find, nor do they have to solve a problem, but they need to show that they’ve conducted research and
collected and analyzed data in an attempt to fulfill the proposal that they submitted.
If you have any concerns about your student or his or her progress on their capstone, you may contact the
Data Science Program Director, Prof. Laurent Younes ([Link]@[Link]) or the Sr. Academic Program
Coordinator, Lisa Wetzelberger (lawetzel@[Link]).