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 <H4>Email: christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk,  Office: Strand Building S1.24</H4>
 <H4>If you are interested in a project, please send me an email and we can discuss details. Please include
 a short description about your programming skills and Computer Science background in your first email.
 I will also need your King's username in order to book the project for you. Thanks.</H4>
-<H4>Note that besides being a lecturer in the theory of Computer Science, I am also a passionate
+<H4>Note that besides being a lecturer at the theoretical end of Computer Science, I am also a passionate
 <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)">hacker</A> &hellip;
 defined as &ldquo;a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and
 stretching their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum
 necessary.&rdquo; I am always happy to supervise like-minded students.</H4>
 <ul class="striped">
 <li> <H4>[CU1] Automata Minimisation</H4>
-<p><B>Description:</b>
+<p>
+<B>Description:</b>
 <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterministic_finite_automaton">Deterministic finite automata</A>
 have many uses in Computer Science, for example for lexing
 program code. In order to improve their run-time, automata need to be minimised, that
 is transformed into equivalent automata with the smallest possible number of state
 nodes.
 <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>, etc.
 </p>
 <li> <H4>[CU2] Equivalence Checking of Regular Expressions</H4>
-<p><B>Description:</b>
+<p>
+<B>Description:</b>
 Solving the problem of deciding the equivalence of regular expressions can be used
 to decide a number of problems in automated reasoning. Recently,
 <A HREF="http://www.cs.unibo.it/~asperti/">Andreas Asperti</A>
 proposed a simple method for deciding regular expression equivalence described
 <A HREF="http://www.cs.unibo.it/~asperti/PAPERS/compact.pdf">here</A>.
 code is beneficial for the part involving extended regular expressions.
 </p>
 <li> <H4>[CU3] Machine Code Generation for a Simple Compiler</H4>
-<p><b>Description:</b>
+<p>
+<b>Description:</b>
 Compilers translate high-level programs that humans can read and write into
 efficient machine code that can be run on a CPU or virtual machine.
 I recently implemented a very simple compiler for a very simple functional
 programming language following this
 <A HREF="http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dpw/papers/tal-toplas.pdf">paper</A>
 <A HREF="http://download.intel.com/design/intarch/manuals/24319101.pdf">here<A>.
 A simple assembler for the JVM is described <A HREF="http://jasmin.sourceforge.net">here</A>.
 An interesting twist of this project is to not generate code for a CPU, but
 for the intermediate language of the <A HREF="http://llvm.org">LLVM</A> compiler
 (also described <A HREF="https://wiki.aalto.fi/display/t1065450/LLVM+IR">here</A> and
-<A HREF="http://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html">here</A>).
+<A HREF="http://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html">here</A>). If you want to see
-</p>
+what machine code looks like you can compile your C-program using gcc -S.
+</p>
-<p><B>Skills:</B>
+<p>
+<B>Skills:</B>
 This is a project for a student with a deep interest in programming languages and
 compilers. Since my compiler is implemented in <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>,
 it would make sense to continue this project in this language. I can be
 of help with questions and books about <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>.
 But if Scala is a problem, my code can also be translated quickly into any other functional
 language.
 </p>
 <li> <H4>[CU4] Implementation of Register Spilling Algorithms</H4>
-<p><b>Description:</b>
+<p>
+<b>Description:</b>
 This project is similar to [CU3]. The emphasis here, however, is on the
 implementation and comparison of register spilling algorithms, also often called register allocation
 algorithms. They are part of any respectable compiler.  As said
 in [CU3], however, my simple compiler lacks them and assumes an infinite amount of registers instead.
 Real CPUs however only provide a fixed amount of registers (for example
 There is also a survey
 <A HREF="http://compilers.cs.ucla.edu/fernando/publications/drafts/survey.pdf">article</A>
 about register allocation algorithms with further pointers.
 </p>
-<p><B>Skills:</B>
+<p>
+<B>Skills:</B>
 Same skills as [CU3].
 </p>
 <li> <H4>[CU5] A Student Polling System</H4>
 <p>
 <B>Description:</B>
 One of the more annoying aspects of giving a lecture is to ask a question
 to the students and no matter how easy the questions is to not
 receive an answer. Recently, the online course system
 <p>
 <B>Literature:</B>
 The project requires fluency in a web-programming language (for example
 <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript">Javascript</A>,
 <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP">PHP</A>,
-Java, <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>, <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)">Go</A>, <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>,
+Java, <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>,
+<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)">Go</A>,
+<A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>,
 <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)">Ruby</A>)
 and possibly a cloud application platform (for example
 <A HREF="https://developers.google.com/appengine/">Google App Engine</a> or
 <A HREF="http://www.heroku.com">Heroku</A>).
 For web-programming the
 <A HREF="https://developers.google.com/chart/image/docs/making_charts">Chart Tools</A>
 might be useful, which ar also described in this
 <A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZtgT4jgnE8">youtube</A> video.
 </p>
-<p><B>Skills:</B>
+<p>
+<B>Skills:</B>
 In order to provide convenience for the lecturer, this project needs very good web-programming skills. A
 <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)">hacker mentality</A>
 (see above) is probably very beneficial: web-programming is an area that only emerged recently and
 many tools still lack maturity. You probably have to experiment a lot with several different
 languages and tools.
 </p>
 <li> <H4>[CU6] Implementation of a Distributed Clock-Synchronisation Algorithm developed at NASA</H4>
 <p>
 <B>Description:</B>
 There are many algorithms for synchronising clocks. This
 <A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A>
 describes a new algorithm for clocks that communicate by exchanging
 messages and thereby reach a state in which (within some bound) all clocks are synchronised.
+A slightly longer and more detailed paper about the algorithm is
+<A HREF="http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20110020812">here</A>.
 The point of this project is to implement this algorithm and simulate networks of clocks.
 </p>
 <B>Literature:</B>
 There is a wide range of literature on clock syncronisation algorithms.
 <A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A>,
 which describes the algorithm to be implemented in this project. Pointers
 are given also <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_synchronization">here</A>.
 </p>
-<p><B>Skills:</B>
+<p>
+<B>Skills:</B>
 In order to implement a simulation of a network of clocks, you need to tackle
 concurrency. You can do this for example in the programming language
 <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A> with the help of the
 <A HREF="http://akka.io">Akka</a> library. This library enables you to send messages
 between different <I>actors</I>. <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/node/242">Here</A>
 </ul>
 </TD>
 </TR>
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