Advanced topics in signal processing, such as multidimensional signal processing, image feature extraction, image/video editing and indexing, advanced digital filter design, multirate signal processing, adaptive signal processing, and wave-form coding of signals. Content varies from year to year, and different topics rotate through the course numbers 6880 to 6889.
Advanced topics in signal processing, such as multidimensional signal processing, image feature extraction, image/video editing and indexing, advanced digital filter design, multirate signal processing, adaptive signal processing, and wave-form coding of signals. Content varies from year to year, and different topics rotate through the course numbers 6880 to 6889.
Advanced topics spanning electrical engineering and computer science such as speech processing and recognition, image and multimedia content analysis, and other areas drawing on signal processing, information theory, machine learning, pattern recognition, and related topics. Content varies from year to year, and different topics rotate through the course numbers 6890 to 6899. Topic: Big Data Analytics.
Advanced topics spanning electrical engineering and computer science such as speech processing and recognition, image and multimedia content analysis, and other areas drawing on signal processing, information theory, machine learning, pattern recognition, and related topics. Content varies from year to year, and different topics rotate through the course numbers 6890 to 6899.
Advanced topics spanning electrical engineering and computer science such as speech processing and recognition, image and multimedia content analysis, and other areas drawing on signal processing, information theory, machine learning, pattern recognition, and related topics. Content varies from year to year, and different topics rotate through the course numbers 6890 to 6899. Topic: Quantum Computing and Communication.
A reading course in an advanced topic for a small number of students, under faculty supervision.
Prerequisites: Graduate student status, calculus, or instructor permission Priority given to first year PhD students in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Computing has become an indispensable tool for Earth Scientists. This course will introduce incoming DEES PhD students to modern computing software, programming tools and best practices that are broadly applicable to carrying out research in the Earth Sciences. This includes an introduction to Unix, programming in three commonly used languages (Python, MATLAB and Fortran), version control and data backup, tools for visualizing geoscience data and making maps. Students will learn the basics of high performance computing and big data analysis tools available on cluster computers. Student learning will be facilitated through a combination of lectures, in-class exercises, homework assignments and class projects. All topics will be taught through example datasets or problems from Earth Sciences. The course is designed to be accessible for Earth Science graduate students in any discipline.
Selected topics in electrical and computer engineering. Content varies from year to year, and different topics rotate through the course numbers 6900 to 6909.
How can we define the image in the digital age? Can we (still) believe our eyes? What is underneath the image? As we will see in this course, these fundamental questions are not new within the history of media. Through the ages, the image has been questioned and redefined as image, surface, visual representation, index, etc. Philosopher Vilém Flusser once remarked that the composite essence of digital technology was already embedded in photography because the photographic image is an image composed of points, which the human eye synthesizes into an image. This course revisits Flusser’s notion of the “technical image” and proposes to rethink the image beyond its visual dimensions, from the perspectival image of the Renaissance to the AI-generated image of today. Instead of following a strict chronological path, we will delve into various theoretical debates on “what is an image?” – ranging from the binary image of textile to the haptic image of video art, from the technological image of the optical toy to the operational image of surveillance and warfare. Both mainstream and experimental films will be analyzed and discussed as critical interventions in the history of image technologies.
Prerequisites: calculus. Recommended preparation: linear algebra, statistics, computer programming. Introduction to the fundamentals of quantitative data analysis in Earth and environmental sciences. Topics: review of relevant probability, statistics and linear algebra; linear models and generalized least squares; Fourier analysis and introduction to spectral analysis; filtering time series (convolution,deconvolution,smoothing); factor analysis and empirical orthogonal functions; covariance and correlation; methods of interpolation; statistical significance and hypothesis testing; introduction to Monte Carlo methods for data analysis. Problem sets and term project require use of MATLAB or Python.
Anyone who pursues a career as a college faculty member will teach writing—either formally, in a writing class, or informally, as we work with students who are new to our disciplines. However, many graduate students in the humanities have received no substantive training in the burgeoning field of writing studies. In English, career opportunities in writing studies have outpaced other field areas. The MLA’s 2016-2017 jobs list reported that 851 positions were advertised in English, 10% fewer than the previous year. Of those jobs, 217 were in writing studies, 187 were in British literature, and 172 were in American literature. Given that writing studies positions are also advertised elsewhere, the gap is likely larger. This seminar will explore key debates in writing studies research and teaching methodologies, program development, and disciplinary and institutional status. Writing studies is the newest name for “rhetoric and composition,” a field which declared its existence in the mid-1960s, and draws its praxes and theories from classical rhetoric, applied linguistics, cognitive and developmental psychology, literary criticism, civic education, creative writing, and progressive pedagogy. Scholarship in writing studies since the 1960s has sought to deepen our understanding of how transactions work among writers, readers, and texts. Writing studies prompts us to track how standards for “good” or “appropriate” academic writing change over time, and how the teaching of writing responds to social, political, institutional, and disciplinary forces. The readings in this course will help us to articulate our own philosophies of writing and shape approaches to pedagogy in our own fields. Topis will include the following: how writers develop; intellectual practices that foster community among learners; the ethics and politics of textual transactions, including assessment; students’ rights to their own language; literacy acquisition across media; working in transnational and translingual spaces; genre and rhetorical theory; fostering knowledge and skills transfer; the impact of intersectionality on pedagogy and program design; and labor justice. We will read works by foundational writing studies scholars including John Dewey, Wayne Booth, bell hooks, Victor Villaneuva, Jr. A. Suresh Canagarajah, and the current president of the Modern Language Association, Anne Ruggles Gere. Participants will have the opportunity to ask how writing studies can deepen the understanding of writing in our fields, regardless
This proposed course allows for a variety of potential advanced courses to be taught as part of the proposed concentration on control.
Principles of writing clear and rigorous science texts and giving great presentations. The Writing component focuses on the construction of logical arguments, reporting and interpretation of data, composing process, and strategies for redrafting and editing. Genres include Introductions, Data Commentaries, Results/Discussion, Conclusions, Abstracts, Requests for funding, Research statements, Professional emails, Blogs. The Presentation component looks at development of the presentation story, use of visuals, fluent delivery, asking and responding to questions. Speaking contexts include research talks, lab talks, conference presentations, poster talks, job talks, interviews, industry pitches. Pass/No Pass only, based on completion of assignments and participation in class exercises.
Credit may not be used to satisfy degree requirements.
This class will look at the history of conspiracy theories in American culture from the 50s and 60s (UFOs, the red scare, JFK’s assassination) to the 21st century (from 9/11 truthers to Covid conspiracies and QAnon) with particular attention to cinematic representation. What is the lure of conspiracy theories? Are there particular reasons that conspiracy theories thrive in American culture? Do different media forms and platforms encourage the spread, and even transform the content, of conspiracies? What is the difference between theory in the social sciences and humanities and conspiracy theory? We will read a range of theoretical material including writings by Richard Hofstadter, Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, Eve Sedgwick, Sianne Ngai, and many others. Films will include:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
The Parallax View
,
Videodrome
,
The Matrix
,
Get Out
, and others.
Selected topics in Natural Language Processing (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check the "topics courses" webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in Natural Language Processing (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check the "topics courses" webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Provides students the opportunity to present work in progress or final drafts to other students and relevant faculty to receive guidance and feedback.
MRST Directed Readings, Independent study. Students should meet with the Program Director and Program Manager before registering for this course.
Illuminated, exposed, projected, magnified—the cinematic face is at once spectacular and mysterious, commanding and vulnerable, an inexhaustible object of wonder. The seminar will explore the workings of the human face as privileged object of representation, as figure of subjectivity, as mode and ethic of address through film theory and practice. How has the technological, mass-circulating art of the moving image mediated this singular entity—this visual incarnation of the
person
? How did it confront its mythic and iconic resonance, its charge of identity and identification, its revelatory and masking play of expression, its social, racial, and affective registers? Among filmmakers and writers who inform our discussion: Roland Barthes, Mary Ann Doane, Carl-Theodor Dreyer, Jean Epstein, Buster Keaton, Alfred Hitchcock, Emmanuel Levinas, Claude Lévi-Strauss, James Baldwin, Andy Warhol, Gilles Deleuze, and others.
CLEN 6998 GR is a twin listings of an undergraduate Comparative Literature lecture provided to graduate students for graduate credit. If a graduate student enrolls, she/he/they attends the same class as the undergraduate students (unless otherwise directed by the instructor). Each instructor determines additional work for graduate students to complete in order to receive graduate credit for the course. Please refer to the notes section in SSOL for the corresponding (twin) undergraduate 1000 or 2000 level course and follow that course's meeting day & time and assigned classroom. Instructor permission is required to join.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
Selected topics in computer science (advanced level). Content and prerequisites vary between sections and semesters. May be repeated for credit. Check “topics course” webpage on the department website for more information on each section.
ENGL 6998 GR is a twin listings of an undergraduate English lecture provided to graduate students for graduate credit. If a graduate student enrolls, she/he/they attends the same class as the undergraduate students (unless otherwise directed by the instructor). Each instructor determines additional work for graduate students to complete in order to receive graduate credit for the course. Please refer to the notes section in SSOL for the corresponding (twin) undergraduate 1000 or 2000 level course and follow that course's meeting day & time and assigned classroom. Instructor permission is required to join.
ENGL 6998 GR is a twin listings of an undergraduate English lecture provided to graduate students for graduate credit. If a graduate student enrolls, she/he/they attends the same class as the undergraduate students (unless otherwise directed by the instructor). Each instructor determines additional work for graduate students to complete in order to receive graduate credit for the course. Please refer to the notes section in SSOL for the corresponding (twin) undergraduate 1000 or 2000 level course and follow that course's meeting day & time and assigned classroom. Instructor permission is required to join.
ENGL 6998 GR is a twin listings of an undergraduate English lecture provided to graduate students for graduate credit. If a graduate student enrolls, she/he/they attends the same class as the undergraduate students (unless otherwise directed by the instructor). Each instructor determines additional work for graduate students to complete in order to receive graduate credit for the course. Please refer to the notes section in SSOL for the corresponding (twin) undergraduate 1000 or 2000 level course and follow that course's meeting day & time and assigned classroom. Instructor permission is required to join.
First part of two-term MA Thesis sequence for MRST MA Students.
M.A. Thesis Course for MARS-REERS program.
Second part of two-term MA Thesis sequence for MRST MA Students.
M.A. Thesis Course for MARS-REERS program.
This course is designed to provide an introduction to the process of political development. It introduces a set of analytic tools based on the strategic perspective of political science and political economy to evaluate the current debates in political development and to draw policy-relevant conclusions. Throughout the course, we will discuss the political dimensions and the challenges of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development along with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and their transformations - (1) education, gender and inequality; (2) health, well-being and demography; (3) energy decarbonization and sustainable industry; (4) sustainable food, land, water and oceans; (5) sustainable cities and communities; and (6) the digital revolution for sustainable development - as modular building blocks.
First, we will explore the politics of economic development: the role of leadership, political systems, and institutions in promoting growth. We study the mechanisms that underlie the persistence of poverty. Utilizing numerous country case studies, we will answer: What is political development? What explains why some countries have prospered while others remain poor, violent, or unequal? Why do we observe growth, stability, and freedoms in some and not in others?
Second, we will explore the causes and consequences of the state, political institutions, and democracy. What is at the root of state capacity, political participation, and other aspects of political development? What is the role of property rights and the rule of law in development? How do we promote gender equality and empowerment? How do we detect and mitigate the effects of corruption? How do we foster political stability?
In the third part of the course, we will focus on policies that foster stability and development. We will critically examine the effects of Western intervention in the developing world, historical legacies of slavery and colonialism, and the various tools of foreign policy: aid, democracy promotion, and military interventions. We will further explore the extent to which outside interventions alleviated poverty and whether they improved public goods provision or promoted political stability. Finally, the course will consider the role of emerging powers in the context of global governance and their influence on the future course of development in the Global South.
This required overview course for MPA-DP students examines the evolving concept of sustainable development and its implications for policy and practice. Drawing from social, economic, political, and environmental frameworks, the course explores the tensions and synergies inherent in achieving economic prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability.
Students will engage with current global milestones such as the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Climate Agreement, and the forthcoming Pact for the Future, while also reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on inequality and development trajectories. The course provides both foundational theory and applied perspectives, with particular attention to transformational ideas and real-world challenges facing sustainable development today.
In the latter part of the semester, development practitioners introduce case studies from specific countries and regions to highlight practical applications. Through lectures, discussions, guest speakers, and debates, students will build analytical and communication skills essential for professional work in sustainable development.
English communication proficiency is important for academic achievement and career success. Columbia Engineering provides English communication instruction for students who would like to improve their communication skills in English. In a small group setting (15-20 students), enrollees will obtain opportunities to interact with the instructor and fellow classmates to improve communication skills.
Until recently, due to their laissez faire underpinnings, market economies eschewed significant and overt government planning of sector-specific incentives and investment guidance. Nevertheless, in recent years many countries with quite different economic systems have embraced programs of targeted investment in specific industries as an integral part of a long term strategy of economic development. While the rationale for fostering innovation in strategic industries has a long and venerable tradition, there are also many current and historical examples of the potential for misallocation, malinvestment and rent-seeking protectionism in the actual record of centrally planned economies.
Recent Chinese advances in fostering the world’s largest investments in renewable energy, battery technology, electrified mobility, ultra-high voltage transmission and a supply chain ecosystem for automation and artificial intelligence both in deployments and manufacturing capacity may represent an extensive and illuminating example of the sustainable development potential of industrial policy. The field course will combine 5 weeks of preparatory in-person on-campus instruction followed by a 9-day field tour of instruction and visits to government agencies and companies in the renewable energy, battery technology, and electric vehicle manufacturing companies in China.
This elective course will provide training for those wishing to investigate the rationale, methods, limitations and examples of targeted government intervention to encourage investment in sustainability-related industries. The syllabus will include the logic of green industrial policy, the strengths and limitations of the policy toolkit, China’s experience with 5-year plans and the details of its directed growth in key green industrial sectors, as well as lessons for other countries. The content is designed to be of interest to Sustainability Management students whose career goals will lead them to strategy & planning positions in either private corporations, government agencies or international organizations. The course will be open to a maximum of 20 students, with priority given to SUMA and MoSSS students. An intermediate course in economics at the undergraduate level is a highly recommended prerequisite.
This course explores the use of financial information for internal planning, analysis, and decision-making. The main objective of the course is to equip you with the knowledge to understand, evaluate, and act upon the many financial and non-financial reports used in managing modern firms.
Managing any modern firm requires information about the firm’s products, processes, assets, and customers. This information is a key input into a wide range of decisions: analyzing profitability of various products, managing product-line portfolios, setting prices, measuring and managing profitability of customers, making operational and strategic decisions, evaluating investments, guiding improvement efforts, and so on.
The focus of this course is on modern internal-reporting systems. We will discover that many firms do not provide their managers with useful information; we will see numerous examples of value destruction and bankruptcies caused by this. We will also investigate some modern ideas in how an organization’s internal information system should be designed to enhance value creation; and we will see how world-class firms take advantage of their competitors’ internal-reporting mistakes.
To attain the right level of understanding, we will briefly explore the mechanics of the many techniques used to prepare internal reports. But the emphasis in this course is very much on interpretation, evaluation, and decision-making.
We will examine the following key topics:
? Designing managerial information systems to support an organization’s strategy.
? Determining which financial and non-financial metrics are necessary for success in various competitive environments.
? Evaluating profitability of products, services, assets, and customers.
? The capabilities and the limitations of various reporting systems in guiding value-maximization, cost-control, and improvement efforts.
? The limitations of traditional cost-estimation systems.
? Activity-based costing and activity-based management.
? Estimating and managing the costs of capacity resources.
? Relevant costs and relevant revenues in business decisions.
? The information necessary to evaluate long-term business decisions.
? The incentives created by various performance-evaluation techniques.
This course approaches political development from the perspective of the Global South. Rather than treating development as a linear or universal process, it asks how colonial legacies, unequal insertion into the international economy, commodity dependence, late industrialization, and geopolitical competition have shaped different trajectories of political and economic change. We will examine how these forces affect state formation, institutional capacity, democratization, authoritarianism, populism, resource-dependent democracies, organized violence, corruption, clientelism, and political order.
A central theme of the course is the tension between commodity dependence and industrialization. We will compare regions and cases in which primary commodity exports, extractive economies, and external vulnerability have constrained development with cases in which states built industrial capacity, governed markets, and reshaped their position in the international economy. The course closes by returning to this question in the context of climate change and green neo-extractivism, asking whether the green transition creates new development opportunities or reproduces older patterns of dependence, extraction, and unequal environmental costs.
Throughout the semester, students will engage with comparative cases and empirical evidence to evaluate competing explanations for political development and underdevelopment. The course is designed for students with interests in comparative politics, international development, political economy, public policy, and global governance. While theoretically grounded, it emphasizes analytical application to contemporary policy challenges facing emerging and developing countries.
In a world of growing complexity, where politics often appears increasingly fragmented, affective, and detached from purely material interests, political psychology offers essential tools for understanding some of the most urgent political and policy challenges of our time.
Contemporary politics is increasingly shaped by polarized in-group and out-group identities, the politicization and criminalization of immigration, anxiety and denial surrounding climate change, the spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation, and growing support for strongman leaders amid distrust of institutions. At the same time, public policy often succeeds or fails not only because of institutional design or material incentives, but because of how people perceive problems, process information, respond to uncertainty, trust authorities, and make decisions in contexts of scarcity, fear, identity, and social pressure.
These developments make psychological mechanisms central to explaining how different political actors, including voters, politicians, policymakers, party elites, social movements, interest groups, media actors, and bureaucrats, perceive political reality, form judgments, design policies, and make decisions. Political psychology examines how human psychology shapes political life, and how political contexts, institutions, identities, and conflicts shape individual behavior.
This course introduces students to the main theoretical foundations of political psychology and connects them to behavioral public policy. We begin by examining major approaches to political behavior, including rational choice and its behavioral critiques, personality and evolutionary perspectives, emotion, nonverbal behavior, heuristics, and motivated reasoning.
The course then turns to policy applications, exploring how psychological mechanisms shape the design, communication, implementation, and uptake of public policy in areas such as poverty, prejudice and discrimination, climate change, and policymaking bias. Throughout the semester, students will engage classic and recent research, with particular attention to experimental evidence and its relevance for real-world political and policy problems.
The course is designed to help students critically assess empirical studies, compare different explanations of political behavior, and apply behavioral insights to concrete policy challenges.
Violent political conflict leaves durable legacies. In this course, we will explore the effects of various forms of political violence, including intrastate conflict, mass atrocities, communal violence, and forced displacements. We will begin with the processes of peace and reconciliation that often mark transitions from active conflict to post-conflict environments. We will then turn attention to cycles of violence before shifting to the influence of conflict and violence on state institutions and regimes. Turning to comparative political behavior, we will explore victimization from violent political conflict as a force in shaping the social and political lives of those directly affected as well as their descendants and communities. We will investigate why some iterations of violent political conflict generate politicizing effects – with victims voting more, protesting more, taking on more leadership roles, etc. – while others facilitate withdrawal from the political sphere. We will consider the role violence plays in shaping and reshaping the boundaries between groups (ethnic, national, religious, etc.). Tangentially, we will analyze how violence alters relationships within one’s in-groups. The final segment of the course will focus on the memorialization of past conflict as an arena in which identities and political goals are forged, contested, and remade. Through the course, students will generate informed critiques of policy regimes in post-conflict contexts, and will apply course concepts and methods to evaluate policy outcomes in these contexts.