Data Science Capstone
DSC 180AB, Fall 2025 and Winter 2026 at UC San Diego
This is the student-facing course website for the 2025-26 offering of the capstone sequence. See dsc-capstone.org for more general information.
** Note: This schedule is subject to change. We expect this schedule to stabilize by end Sept for the Fall quarter and by mid-January for the Winter Quarter **
Winter 2026 Schedule
| Week | Tasks These are all in addition to Weekly Participation Assignment, which are due on Sundays at 11:59PM. All groups must fill these out, no matter what other requirements your mentors give you. | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Read the Syllabus and Quarter 2 Project specifications. Start attending sections. ✅ Submit your first Weekly Participation Assignment as a group by Sunday, January 11th; make sure to submit a PDF to Gradescope and, as a one time step, to share your Google Doc with us. Link to presentation used in class on Friday, January 9th. | |
| 2 | Work on project! Submit your weekly PA on Sunday, Jan 18th. Submit the first of three Ethics and Society assignments on Gradescope HERE | |
| 3 | Work on project! Submit your weekly PA on Sunday, Jan 25th Submit the second of three Ethics and Society assignments on Gradescope HERE | |
| 4 | Work on your project and meet your TA. Submit your weekly PA by Sunday, February 1st | |
| 5 | Submit the last of the Ethics assignments and your weekly PA (due by Sunday, 8th). | |
| 6 | ✅ Submit your Code and Report Checkpoints by Sunday, February 15th. The Art of Storytelling | |
| 7 | ✅ Submit your Website Checkpoint by Sunday, February 22nd. ✅ Submit your poster draft in line with the Poster Guidelines. | |
| 8 | Present a dry run of your Poster Presentation to your TA as a group. RSVP for your block at the showcase. | |
| 9 | Almost at the finish line! Keep Working! | |
| 10 | ✅ Place your Poster print order for printing with Triton Print. See Piazza for details. Its YOUR responsibility to order the printing and pick it up. </b>. ✅ Submit your poster, report, code, website, and contribution statement by Sunday, March 8th and attend the Showcase on March Friday, 13th | |
Fall 2025 Schedule
| Week | Methodology Lessons and assignments are released on Mondays. Assignments are due on a week later on Mondays at 11:59PM. Participation Assignments are due on each Sunday by 11.59pm | Domain | Project | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Live on Monday, Sept 29: Introduction Read the Syllabus AWS Fundamentals: S3 and EC2 | |||
| 1 | Servers I: Accessing DSMLP | MA 1 (due Oct. 6th) Welcome Survey (due Oct. 6) | ||
| 2 | Servers II: GPUs and Background Tasks | As before, Participation questions are due Sunday evening by 11.59pm These are in addition to any tasks or readings your mentor assigned you. You may skip submitting PAs for Weeks 9 and 10 because of Thanksgiving AND the need to finish up the Q1 project and Q2 project proposals. | ||
| 3 | Software Development for Data Science Watch this video on command-line arguments in Python! | |||
| 4 | Effective Communication and Scientific Writing featuring Prof. Benjamin Smarr | MA 2 (due Oct. 27th) | ||
| 5 | Git | MA 3 (due Nov. 3rd) | ||
| 6 | LaTeX, Markdown, and GitHub Pages (MA 4 due Nov. 10th) | The Q1 Project report checkpoint is due on Friday, Nov 7th | ||
| 6 | Topics on Entrepreneurship | |||
| 7 | Environments and Containerization (MA 5 due Nov 17th) | |||
| 8 | Ethics and Values by Prof. David Danks | MA 6 (due Nov. 24th) | Remember to sign up for and attend the final TA Checkin | |
| 9 | Project Management | Week 8/9 TA Check-In | Work on your Q1 project and Q2 project proposal (Due by Dec 5th) | |
| 10 | No lesson. | Submit your Q1 project as well as the Q2 project proposal (By 11.59pm, Friday, Dec 5th) | ||