Prerequisites: PHYS UN3003 and PHYS UN3007 and differential and integral calculus; linear algebra; or the instructor's permission. This course will present a wide variety of mathematical ideas and techniques used in the study of physical systems. Topics will include: ordinary and partial differential equations; generalized functions; integral transforms; Green’s functions; nonlinear equations, chaos, and solitons; Hilbert space and linear operators; Feynman path integrals; Riemannian manifolds; tensor analysis; probability and statistics. There will also be a discussion of applications to classical mechanics, fluid dynamics, electromagnetism, plasma physics, quantum mechanics, and general relativity.
The biophysics of computation: modeling biological neurons, the Hodgkin-Huxley neuron, modeling channel conductances and synapses as memristive systems, bursting neurons and central pattern generators, I/O equivalence and spiking neuron models. Information representation and neural encoding: stimulus representation with time encoding machines, the geometry of time encoding, encoding with neural circuits with feedback, population time encoding machines. Dendritic computation: elements of spike processing and neural computation, synaptic plasticity and learning algorithms, unsupervised learning and spike time-dependent plasticity, basic dendritic integration. Projects in MATLAB.
The biophysics of computation: modeling biological neurons, the Hodgkin-Huxley neuron, modeling channel conductances and synapses as memristive systems, bursting neurons and central pattern generators, I/O equivalence and spiking neuron models. Information representation and neural encoding: stimulus representation with time encoding machines, the geometry of time encoding, encoding with neural circuits with feedback, population time encoding machines. Dendritic computation: elements of spike processing and neural computation, synaptic plasticity and learning algorithms, unsupervised learning and spike time-dependent plasticity, basic dendritic integration. Projects in MATLAB.
Exposes scientists and engineers to the development, protection, and exploitation of intellectual property rights. Legal processes for obtaining and defending intellectual property rights are detailed. Best practices for innovation and commercialization are explored. Methods for valuation and monetization of intellectual property are illustrated through application of basic accounting and financial principles to case studies.
Prerequisites: PHYS UN3003 and PHYS UN3007 Formulation of quantum mechanics in terms of state vectors and linear operators. Three dimensional spherically symmetric potentials. The theory of angular momentum and spin. Identical particles and the exclusion principle. Methods of approximation. Multi-electron atoms.
This course will study various forms of travel writing within, from, and to the Mediterranean in the long nineteenth century. Throughout the semester, you will read a number of travel accounts to develop your understanding of these particular sources and reflect on the theoretical discussions and the themes framing them, namely orientalism, postcolonial studies, imaginative geographies, literature between fiction and reality, Romantic and autobiographical writing, gender, sexuality and the body, the rise of archeology, adventurism, mass migration and tourism. We will focus on Italian travel writers visiting the Ottoman Empire and the Americas (Cristina di Belgioioso, Gaetano Osculati, Edmondo de Amicis) and others visiting the Italian peninsula (Grand Tourists, Madame De Staël), and we will study the real or imaginary travels of French, British and American writers to the Eastern Mediterranean and to antique and holy lands (Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, Count Marcellus, Austen Henry Layard, Lord Byron, Mark Twain), as well as Arabic travel writers to the West (Rifāʻah Rāfiʻ al-Ṭahṭāwī).
Prerequisites: PHYS GU4021 or the equivalent. Thermodynamics, kinetic theory, and methods of statistical mechanics; energy and entropy; Boltzmann, Fermi, and Bose distributions; ideal and real gases; blackbody radiation; chemical equilibrium; phase transitions; ferromagnetism.
Prerequisites: (PHYS GU4021 and PHYS GU4022) In this course, we will learn how the concepts of quantum mechanics are applied to real physical systems, and how they enable novel applications in quantum optics and quantum information. We will start with microscopic, elementary quantum systems – electrons, atoms, and ions - and understand how light interacts with atoms. Equipped with these foundations, we will discuss fundamental quantum applications, such as atomic clocks, laser cooling and ultracold quantum gases - a synthetic form of matter, cooled down to just a sliver above absolute zero temperature. This leads us to manybody quantum systems. We will introduce the quantum physics of insulating and metallic behavior, superfluidity and quantum magnetism – and demonstrate how the corresponding concepts apply both to real condensed matter systems and ultracold quantum gases. The course will conclude with a discussion of the basics of quantum information science - bringing us to the forefront of today’s quantum applications.
Prerequisites: three terms of calculus and linear algebra or four terms of calculus. Prerequisite: three terms of calculus and linear algebra or four terms of calculus. Fourier series and integrals, discrete analogues, inversion and Poisson summation formulae, convolution. Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Stress on the application of Fourier analysis to a wide range of disciplines.
This graduate seminar explores the rich cultural and historical connections between the Harlem Renaissance in the United States and Haiti, the world's first independent Black Republic. Through an interdisciplinary approach, students will examine the linked literary, artistic, political, and social dimensions of the Harlem Renaissance and Haiti and how they have influenced and interacted with each other through their writers and artists. By analyzing key texts, novels, essays, travelogues, artworks, and historical documents, students will develop a comprehensive understanding of the connections between the Harlem Renaissance and Haiti and how they continue to resonate today. At the end of the course, students will have gained a deeper historical context, including the socio-political backgrounds and global influences that shaped and connected the Harlem Renaissance and Haiti, and will have honed the analytical and critical skills necessary to explore broader diasporic and transnational l connections.
Prerequisites: genetics or molecular biology. The course covers techniques currently used to explore and manipulate gene function and their applications in medicine and the environment. Part I covers key laboratory manipulations, including DNA cloning, gene characterization, association of genes with disease, and methods for studying gene regulation and activities of gene products. Part II also covers commercial applications, and includes animal cell culture, production of recombinant proteins, novel diagnostics, high throughput screening, and environmental biosensors.
Systems biology approaches are rapidly transforming the technological and conceptual foundations of research across diverse areas of biomedicine. In this course we will discuss the fundamental developments in systems biology with a focus on two important dimensions: (1) the unique conceptual frameworks that have emerged to study systems-level phenomena and (2) how these approaches are revealing fundamentally new principles that govern the organization and behavior of cellular systems. Although there will be much discussion of technologies and computational approaches, the course will emphasize the conceptual contributions of the field and the big questions that lie ahead. Lectures and discussions of primary literature will enable students to scrutinize research in the field and to internalize systems biology thinking in their own research. To make this a concrete endeavor, the students will develop mini-NIH-style grant proposals that aims to study a fundamental problem/question using systems biology approaches. The students will then convene an in-class NIH-style review panel that will assess the strengths and weaknesses of these proposals. In addition, the students will have the opportunity to defend their proposals in a live presentation to the class. The course is open to graduate students in Biological Sciences. Advanced undergraduates in biological sciences, and other graduate students with background in biology from other disciplines, including physics, chemistry, computer science, and engineering may also attend after consulting with the instructor.
Poets, Rebels, Exiles examines the successive generations of the most provocative and influential Russian and Russian Jewish writers and artists who brought the cataclysm of the Soviet and post-Soviet century to North America. From Joseph Brodsky—the bad boy bard of Soviet Russia and a protégé of Anna Akhmatova, who served 18 months of hard labor near the North Pole for social parasitism before being exiled—to the most recent artistic descendants, this course will interrogate diaspora, memory, and nostalgia in the cultural production of immigrants and exiles.
The course explores the unique period in Czech film and literature during the 1960s that emerged as a reaction to the imposed socialist realism. The new generation of writers (Kundera, Skvorecky, Havel, Hrabal) in turn had an influence on young emerging film makers, all of whom were part of the Czech new wave.
Developing features - internal representations of the world, artificial neural networks, classifying handwritten digits with logistics regression, feedforward deep networks, back propagation in multilayer perceptrons, regularization of deep or distributed models, optimization for training deep models, convolutional neural networks, recurrent and recursive neural networks, deep learning in speech and object recognition.
Prerequisites: MATH UN1102 and MATH UN1202 and MATH UN2010 or the equivalent. The second term of this course may not be taken without the first. Groups, homomorphisms, normal subgroups, the isomorphism theorems, symmetric groups, group actions, the Sylow theorems, finitely generated abelian groups.
Prerequisites: MATH UN1102 and MATH UN1202 and MATH UN2010 or the equivalent. The second term of this course may not be taken without the first. Rings, homomorphisms, ideals, integral and Euclidean domains, the division algorithm, principal ideal and unique factorization domains, fields, algebraic and transcendental extensions, splitting fields, finite fields, Galois theory.
This Workshop is linked to the Workshop on Wealth - Inequality Meetings. This is meant for graduate students, however, if you are an advanced undergraduate student you can email the professor for permission to enroll.
This course examines the avant-garde art of the fifties and sixties, including assemblage, happenings, pop art, Fluxus, and artists' forays into film. It will examine the historical precedents of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Carolee Schneemann and others in relation to their historical precedents, development, critical and political aspects.
Prerequisites: MATH UN2010 and MATH GU4041 or the equivalent. Finite groups acting on finite sets and finite dimensional vector spaces. Group characters. Relations with subgroups and factor groups. Arithmetic properties of character values. Applications to the theory of finite groups: Frobenius groups, Hall subgroups and solvable groups. Characters of the symmetric groups. Spherical functions on finite groups.
The Gender/Sexuality Workshop is a forum for students interested in social science topics broadly related to gender and sexuality. In particular, it will provide an opportunity for students to read and discuss the works presented in the weekly gender/sexuality workshop, while also sharing and refining their own works in progress. The workshop takes an expansive view of gender and sexuality as a mode of classifying people and as a structure that organizes social life, including work that uses gender/sexuality as a lens to interrogate other social structures such as empire, capitalism, science and knowledge, states and governance, and more. The G/S Workshop will meet every other week over the course of Fall 2024.
Prerequisites: Course Cap 20 students. Priority given to graduate students in the natural sciences and engineering. Advanced level undergraduates may be admitted with the instructors permission. Calculus I and Physics I & II are required for undergraduates who wish to take this course. General introduction to fundamentals of remote sensing; electromagnetic radiation, sensors, interpretation, quantitative image analysis and modeling. Example applications in the Earth and environmental sciences are explored through the analysis of remote sensing imagery in a state-or-the-art visualization laboratory.
Required for second year Genetics and Development students. Open to all students. Prerequisite: at least one graduate-level biochemistry or molecular biology course, and instructor’s permission. Advanced treatment of the principles and methods of the molecular biology of eukaryotes, emphasizing the organization, expression, and evolution of eukaryotic genes. Topics include reassociation and hybridization kinetics, gene numbers, genomic organization at the DNA level, mechanisms of recombination, transposable elements, DNA rearrangements, gene amplification, oncogenes, recombinant DNA techniques, transcription and RNA splicing. Students participate in discussions of problem sets on the current literature.
This course maps the origins of the Italian lyric, starting in Sicily and following its development in Tuscany, in the poets of the dolce stil nuovo and ultimately, Dante. Lectures in English; text in Italian, although comparative literature students who can follow with the help of translations are welcome.
Intensive study of a philosophical issue or topic, or of a philosopher, group of philosophers, or philosophical school or movement. Open only to Barnard senior philosophy majors.
This course provides an introduction to Christianity through the lens of culture and culture theory. Which aspects of Christian faith and practice can we understand as universal or shared, and which are conditioned by the specificities of time and place? Does Christianity itself have a culture, or shape particular understandings of the self and society? Readings are drawn from a range of sources, including primary texts, anthropology, history, philosophy, theology, and fiction. The majority of our focus will be on the modern period, with particular attention to Catholicism and Pentecostalism in the global South (including Africa and Melanesia). Topics covered will include the comparative study of virtues and values (salvation, grace, sincerity), as well as Christianity’s many and varied relationships to the realms of politics, economics, and society.
Students should come away from this course with a solid grounding in major features of Christianity, especially its Catholic and Protestant forms. The course will also provide students with an introduction to culture theory. Critical writing and reading skills will also be a focus, along with class participation. The course will also encourage students to think of ways in which the issues and authors surveyed might provide models for their own interests and research. This course is geared toward graduate students and upper-level undergraduates. Some background in religious studies and/or anthropology or literary criticism is helpful but not required.
Prerequisites: (MATH UN1202 and MATH UN2010) and rudiments of group theory (e.g. MATH GU4041). MATH UN1208 or MATH GU4061 is recommended, but not required. Metric spaces, continuity, compactness, quotient spaces. The fundamental group of topological space. Examples from knot theory and surfaces. Covering spaces.
A substantial paper, developing from an Autumn workshop and continuing in the Spring under the direction of an individual advisor. Open only to Barnard senior philosophy majors.
Prerequisites: MATH GU4051 Topology and / or MATH GU4061 Introduction To Modern Analysis I (or equivalents). Recommended (can be taken concurrently): MATH UN2010 linear algebra, or equivalent. The study of algebraic and geometric properties of knots in R^3, including but not limited to knot projections and Reidemeisters theorm, Seifert surfaces, braids, tangles, knot polynomials, fundamental group of knot complements. Depending on time and student interest, we will discuss more advanced topics like knot concordance, relationship to 3-manifold topology, other algebraic knot invariants.
Enrollment limited to 12 students. Mechatronics is the application of electronics and microcomputers to control mechanical systems. Systems explored include on/off systems, solenoids, stepper motors, DC motors, thermal systems, magnetic levitation. Use of analog and digital electronics and various sensors for control. Programming microcomputers in Assembly and C. Lab required.
This lecture course fulfills the theory requirement in Columbia’s sociology program. It introduces students to post-War sociology by discussing its major paradigms, from Parson’s functionalism to contemporary post-colonial theory or actor-network theory. Each class discusses how a particular theory constructs social reality by making basic assumptions about the component parts of society, how they relate to each other, and what questions emerge that empirical research needs to answer. To illustrate how paradigms conceive and perceive the empirical world differently, each lecture summarizes how intimate, romantic relationships appear when empirically analyzed from a specific theoretical angle.
Introduction to computational biology with emphasis on genomic data science tools and methodologies for analyzing data, such as genomic sequences, gene expression measurements and the presence of mutations. Applications of machine learning and exploratory data analysis for predicting drug response and disease progression. Latest technologies related to genomic information, such as single-cell sequencing and CRISPR, and the contributions of genomic data science to the drug development process.
Prerequisites: MATH UN1202 or the equivalent, and MATH UN2010. The second term of this course may not be taken without the first. Real numbers, metric spaces, elements of general topology, sequences and series, continuity, differentiation, integration, uniform convergence, Ascoli-Arzela theorem, Stone-Weierstrass theorem.
This course introduces you to the rich and diverse tradition of Chinese art by focusing on materials and techniques. We will discuss a wide array of artistic media situated in distinct cultural contexts, examining bronzes, jade, ceramics, paintings, sculptures, and textiles in the imperial, aristocratic, literary, religious, and commercial milieus in which they were produced. In addition to developing your skills in visual-material analysis, this course will also acquaint you with the diverse cultures that developed in China’s center and periphery during its five thousand (plus) years of history. Emphasis will be placed on understanding how native artistic traditions in China interacted with those in regions such as the Mongolian steppe, Tibetan plateau, and Central Asia.
The second term of this course may not be taken without the first. Power series, analytic functions, Implicit function theorem, Fubini theorem, change of variables formula, Lebesgue measure and integration, function spaces.
Study ecology, evolution, and conservation biology in one of the world’s most biologically spectacular settings, the wildlife-rich savannas of Kenya. Although we will meet have a few meetings during the fall semester, the majority of the coursework will be completed during a 16 day field trip to Kenya during winter break. Students will spend their time immersed in an intensive field experience gaining sophisticated training in fieldwork and biological research. Note that there is a lab fee to cover all in-country expenses, and students are also responsible for the cost of airfare to and from Kenya.
Prerequisites: (MATH UN1207 and MATH UN1208) or MATH GU4061 A theoretical introduction to analytic functions. Holomorphic functions, harmonic functions, power series, Cauchy-Riemann equations, Cauchy's integral formula, poles, Laurent series, residue theorem. Other topics as time permits: elliptic functions, the gamma and zeta function, the Riemann mapping theorem, Riemann surfaces, Nevanlinna theory.
Prerequisites: (CHEM UN1403 and CHEM UN1404) or (CHEM UN1604) or (CHEM UN2045 and CHEM UN2046) , or the equivalent. Principles governing the structure and reactivity of inorganic compounds surveyed from experimental and theoretical viewpoints. Topics include inorganic solids, aqueous and nonaqueous solutions, the chemistry of selected main group elements, transition metal chemistry, metal clusters, metal carbonyls, and organometallic chemistry, bonding and resonance, symmetry and molecular orbitals, and spectroscopy.
Prerequisites: Two semesters of a rigorous, molecularly-oriented, introductory biology course, such as UN2005 (
Inc.,
Biochemistry of DNA & Proteins, basic Genetics, Metabolism & Cell Physiology
) and UN2006 (
Cell biology, inc. intra-cellular transport, phagocytosis, protein regulation, as well as Inter-cellular communication, inc., cell-cell contact, receptors/ligands & transporters
). This course will cover the integration of innate and adaptive immune systems, as well as how immune response contributes to health and disease (
e.g., Infectious disease, allergies, autoimmunity, immune deficiencies, the microbiome and cancer immunotherapy
). Students will also become familiar with important immunological methods, which will provide an opportunity to explore some of the current literature. Sophomores will require permission from their advisor to enroll, and graduate student will require the instructor’s permission to enroll. SPS, Barnard, and TC students may register for this course with the instructor’s approval on a Registration Adjustment Form (Add/Drop form), which can be downloaded (
http://registrar.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/reg-adjustment.pdf
) and then returned to the office of the registrar.
The course will discuss how filmmaking has been used as an instrument of power and imperial domination in the Soviet Union as well as on post-Soviet space since 1991. A body of selected films by Soviet and post-Soviet directors which exemplify the function of filmmaking as a tool of appropriation of the colonized, their cultural and political subordination by the Soviet center will be examined in terms of postcolonial theories. The course will focus both on Russian cinema and often overlooked work of Ukrainian, Georgian, Belarusian, Armenian, etc. national film schools and how they participated in the communist project of fostering a «new historic community of the Soviet people» as well as resisted it by generating, in hidden and, since 1991, overt and increasingly assertive ways their own counter-narratives. Close attention will be paid to the new Russian film as it re-invents itself within the post-Soviet imperial momentum projected on the former Soviet colonies.
Please refer to Institute for African American and African Diaspora Studies Department for section-by-section course descriptions.
Hands-on experience with basic neural interface technologies. Recording EEG (electroencephalogram) signals using data acquisition systems (non-invasive, scalp recordings). Real-time analysis and monitoring of brain responses. Analysis of intention and perception of external visual and audio signals.
This seminar explores the history of the medieval Mediterranean world, where the Latin Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic spheres overlapped. Through reading of recent scholarship and select primary sources, the course asks how the integrated study of the various societies in this region—divided to various degrees by geography, religion, and language—is a productive approach in our attempt to understand the medieval past. The course focuses on three thematic clusters: structures (geography, disease, climate and environment), economies, and encounters (religious, political, cultural). The course is designed for and open to advanced undergraduates and MA students. Common readings are all in English.
“Sacred” space in the Indian subcontinent was at the epicenter of human experience. This course presents Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, and Jain spaces and the variety of ways in which people experienced them. Moving from the monumental stone pillars of the early centuries BCE to nineteenth century colonial India, we learn how the organization and imagery of these spaces supported devotional activity and piety. We discuss too how temples, monasteries, tombs, and shrines supported the pursuit of pleasure, amusement, sociability, and other worldly interests. We also explore the symbiotic relationship between Indic religions and kingship, and the complex ways in which politics and court culture shaped sacred environments. The course concludes with European representations of South Asia’s religions and religious places.
Prerequisite: open to public. Presentations by medical informatics faculty and invited international speakers in medical informatics, computer science, nursing informatics, library science, and related fields.
Provides an opportunity for students to engage in independent study in an area of interest. A mentor is assigned.
Elementary introduction to fundamental concepts and techniques in classical analysis; applications of such techniques in different topics in applied mathematics. Brief review of essential concepts and techniques in elementary analysis; elementary properties of metric and normed spaces; completeness, compactness, and their consequences; continuous functions and their properties; Contracting Mapping Theorem and its applications; elementary properties of Hilbert and Banach spaces; bounded linear operators in Hilbert spaces; Fourier series and their applications.
Basic theory of quantum mechanics, well and barrier problems, the harmonic oscillator, angular momentum identical particles, quantum statistics, perturbation theory and applications to the quantum physics of atoms, molecules, and solids.
Foundational for the Master of Science in Earth and Environmental Engineering degree. Provides broader understanding of engineering tools critical/ essential to success in large-scale, engineering projects. Divided into two parts: Module on global/regional flows, and systems approach, and Module on Engineering Principles in Earth & Environmental Engineering. Guest lectures on several topics will be provided.
Probability and simulation. Statistics building on knowledge in probability and simulation. Point and interval estimation, hypothesis testing, and regression. A specialized version of IEOR E4150 for MSE and MSBA students who are exempt from the first half of IEOR E4101. Must obtain waiver for E4101.
A first course on crystallography. Crystal symmetry, Bravais lattices, point groups, space groups. Diffraction and diffracted intensities. Exposition of typical crystal structures in engineering materials, including metals, ceramics, and semiconductors. Crystalline anisotropy.
This course will begin by clearly defining what sustainability management is and determining if a sustainable economy is actually feasible. Students will learn to connect environmental protection to organizational management by exploring the technical, financial, managerial, and political challenges of effectively managing a sustainable environment and economy. This course is taught in a case-based format and will seek to help students learn the basics of management, environmental policy and sustainability economics. Sustainability management matters because we only have one planet, and we must learn how to manage our organizations in a way that ensures that the health of our planet can be maintained and bettered. This course is designed to introduce students to the field of sustainability management. It is not an academic course that reviews the literature of the field and discusses how scholars thing about the management of organizations that are environmentally sound. It is a practical course organized around the core concepts of sustainability.
Contemporary politics are fundamentally urban. The concentration of people, experiences, and resources in space creates a potentially explosive friction between competing aims and interests. At times, these tensions are expressed through consensual deliberation, at others through radical confrontation. As the conventional politics of representative democracy encounter new crises of legitimacy worldwide, the embodied politics of the city become even more important. This course explores the crucial role that cities play in challenging the uneven distribution of power and making claims on the redistribution of resources.
The course is organized into three units: spaces, practices, and institutions. Using urban theory and historical examples, each week critically examines a distinct way in which the city matters to politics. Each unit ends by asking students to deploy this material in analyzing a contemporary case study. At the end of the semester, students synthesize what they have learned into a manifesto that outlines a sustainable, responsible, and realistic program of urban social change.
Connecting cultural and social issues to ethical questions, this course in feminist and critical interdisciplinary studies offers students the opportunity to consider the relationship between values and value in different modes of living. All too often in public discourse ethical values are invoked but not clearly articulated in terms of their meaning, parameters, and relation to each other. This research seminar investigates values through a semester-long consideration of a single overarching question. This version of the course focuses on the environmental humanities, but other instantiations may use this method to consider different issues. Here, the values commonly invoked in public discussions of the environment are considered in relation to each other, placed in larger analytic contexts, and applied. The final section of the course brings the study of values together with a study of major environmental issues, with a focus on inter-relations amongst those issues. The course uses these interdisciplinary and critical approaches that have become central to feminist ethics as the basis for students developing a major semester-long research project on a question of their own choosing.
Basic probability theory, including independence and conditioning, discrete and continuous random variable, law of large numbers, central limit theorem, and stochastic simulation, basic statistics, including point and interval estimation, hypothesis testing, and regression; examples from business applications such as inventory management, medical treatments, and finance. A specialized version of IEOR E4150 for MSE and MSBA students.
This course is designed for students who have completed six semesters of Vietnamese language class or have equivalent background of advance Vietnamese. It is aimed at developing more advance interpersonal communication skills in interpretive reading and listening as well as presentational speaking and writing at a superior level. Students are also prepared for academic, professional and literary proficiency suitable for post-secondary studies in the humanities and social sciences.
This undergraduate-level introductory course provides an overview of the science of nutrition and nutrition's relationship to health promotion and disease prevention. The primary focus is on the essential macronutrients and micronutrients, including their chemical structures, food sources, digestion and absorption, metabolism, storage, and excretion. Students develop the skills to evaluate dietary patterns and to estimate caloric requirements and nutrient needs using tools such as Dietary Guidelines for Americans, My Plate, Nutrition Facts Labels, and Dietary Reference Intakes.