Petition for Substitution to the Advanced Project Requirement

                              Dan Ports
                             drkp@mit.edu

I petition to waive the prerequisite of 6.UAT for 6.UAP, substituting
instead equivalent coursework and research experience. My motivation
for doing so is to make available more time to devote to my UAP/M.Eng.
research, and to be able to take more classes which are related to my
research area.

In lieu of 6.UAT, I claim the following research and communication
experience that is equivalent in scope to 6.UAT and provides more than
adequate preparation for UAP/M.Eng. research:

I am currently involved in a research project that I intend to develop
into a M.Eng. thesis and UAP. Working directly with Professors David
Karger and Frans Kaashoek of CSAIL on a project that bridges theory
and systems, developing algorithms for efficient search/information
retrieval in peer-to-peer systems, and building large-scale systems
based on these principles. A preliminary paper on the design of this
system has been accepted for publication [1] and praised for its
clarity. In addition, I am giving presentations on this work at group
meetings, and will be presenting it later this month at the Fourth
International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems in Ithaca, NY.

In addition, I have taken the following courses with substantial
communication components:

6.033 - Computer System Engineering (Spring '04; grade: A)
  CI-M for Course VI and XVIII, including technical design papers,
  frequent discussions, and oral presentations.

6.111 - Intro. Digital Systems Lab (Fall '03; grade: A)
  CI-M for Course VI and XVIII, including lab reports, project papers,
  and oral presentations.
  
18.313 - Seminar in Discrete Mathematics (Spring '04; grade: A)
  CI-M for Course XVIII, requiring several 50-minute lectures, and
  frequent papers up to 10 pages in length.
  
21M.735 - Technical Design for the Theater (Spring '04; grade: A+)
  CI-M for Course XXI-M, requiring weekly ``tech notes,'' discussions,
  and final design project with paper and presentation.

MAS.111 - Intro. to Doing Research in Media Arts Sciences 
          (Spring '02; grade: P)
  An elective very similar in content and spirit to 6.UAT, including
  guidance on locating a research project, identifying related work,
  writing research reports, and giving and critiquing oral
  presentations on research results.


[1] A. T. Clements, D. R. K. Ports, D. R. Karger. Arpeggio: Metadata
  Searching and Content Sharing with Chord. Proc. 4th International
  Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems, to appear.