Prerequisites: extensive musical background. Analysis of instrumentation, with directional emphasis on usage, ranges, playing techniques, tone colors, characteristics, interactions and tendencies, all derived from the classic orchestral repertoire. Topics will include theoretical writings on the classical repertory as well as 20th century instrumentation and its advancement. Additional sessions with live orchestral demonstrations are included as part of the course.
To introduce students to programming issues around working with clouds for data analytics. Class will learn how to work with infrastructure of cloud platforms, and discussion about distributed computing, focus of course is on programming. Topics covered include MapReduce, parallelism, rewriting of algorithms (statistical, OR, and machine learning) for the cloud, and basics of porting applications so that they run on the cloud.
This course will explore various topics in the History of U.S. foreign relations. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly writings, we will explore the history of the United States and the world with an eye toward the impact of American power on foreign peoples. Students will also use the semester to design, research, and write a substantial essay that draws on both primary and secondary sources on a topic chosen in consultation with the professor.
Markov Decision Processes (MDP) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) problems. Reinforcement Learning algorithms including Q-learning, policy gradient methods, actor-critic method. Reinforcement learning while doing exploration-exploitation dilemma, multi-armed bandit problem. Monte Carlo Tree Search methods, Distributional, Multi-agent, and Causal Reinforcement Learning.
Application of polymers and other materials in drug and gene delivery, with focus on recent advances in field. Basic polymer science, pharmacokinetics, and biomaterials, cell-substrate interactions, drug delivery system fabrication from nanoparticles to microparticles and electrospun fibrous membranes. Applications include cancer therapy, immunotherapy, gene therapy, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine. Course readings include textbook chapters and journal papers. Homework assignments take format of assay responding to open-ended question. Term paper and 30-minute PowerPoint presentation required at end of semester.
The class, which is open to advanced undergraduate and graduate students, will explore silent and early sound films from the period of the Weimar Republic. Close analysis of films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, Metropolis, M, Dr. Mabuse, The Blue Angel and others will be combined with a historicist exploration of the cinematic medium in the 1910s and 1920s. Specific topics of discussion include anxieties about the hypnotic power of the moving image, shell shock, spirit photography, the "New Woman," the mass ornament. All readings and class discussions are in English and all films have English sub- or intertitles.
Data visualization and how to build a story with data. Using complex data or statistics to communicate results effectively. Learn to present analysis and results conscisely and effectively.
OKR framework and different variations. Measurement techniques (A/B testing, validation, correlation, etc.) Identifying what to measure in product experience and business initiatives. Data-driven decision making.
Applied Analytics focus querying and transforming data with SQL, defining and visualizing metrics, measuring impact of products / processes. Tools and techniques to convert raw data to business decisions, statistical analysis. Be able to apply these techniques to real-world datasets.
Course covers major statistical learning methods for data mining under both supervised and unsupervised settings. Topics covered include linear regression and classification, model selection and regularization, tree-based methods, support vector machines, and unsupervised learning. Students learn about principles underlying each method, how to determine which methods are most suited to applied settings, concepts behind model fitting and parameter tuning, and how to apply methods in practice and assess their performance. Emphasizes roles of statistical modeling and optimization in data mining.
The philosophy of Gilles Deleuze has emerged as one of the richest, most singular adventures in post-war European thought; Foucault considered it the most important in France, and more generally, in the 20th century. In all of Deleuze's work there is a search for a new 'image of thought.' But how did art figure in this search, and how did the search in turn appeal to artists, writers, filmmakers, architects, as well as curators or critics? In this seminar, we explore the complex theme of 'thinkin in art' in Deleuze, and its implications for art in the 21st century or for the global contemporary art of today.
Fundamentals of heterogeneous catalysis including modern catalytic preparation techniques. Analysis and design of catalytic emissions control systems. Introduction to current industrial catalytic solutions for controlling gaseous emissions. Introduction to future catalytically enabled control technologies.
The New York City Watershed: From Community Displacement to
Collaboration and Climate Adaptation
brings students to the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York to learn first hand from researchers and practitioners who help supply over ten million New Yorkers with safe and abundant drinking water while also working to build social, economic and environmental capital in the towns and villages located in the watershed surrounding the city’s reservoirs – all against a backdrop of increasing climate-related disruption.
The class will learn how New York City and a coalition of upstate watershed communities worked to end nearly a century of mutual resentment, displacement and extraction by entering into the
Watershed Agreement of 1997
, which has become a widely renowned model for collaborative and equitable water resources management planning in the twenty-five years since its completion. Students will engage with several of the Watershed Agreement’s original negotiators and with the local elected officials, agency staff and non-profit leaders who implement its signature “
multi-barrier
” strategy for drinking water protection through open space preservation, support for sustainable farming practices and investments in clean water infrastructure and sustainable economic growth in watershed communities. They will also learn how increases in storm intensity and warming driven by climate change threaten to upset the delicate balance between New York City’s need for safe drinking water and the socio-economic interests of upstate watershed communities.
Upon completion of the course, students will better understand the challenges involved in creating and implementing collaborative, multi-stakeholder plans for water resource management and host community benefits in today’s increasingly climate-disrupted world.
Introduction to principles, analysis, and applications of electric machines; transformers, DC machines, induction motors, and synchronous machines. Fundamentals of electromagnetic energy conversion, steady-state and dynamic machine models.
In this seminar we will read the complete published plays of August Wilson along with significant unpublished and obscurely published plays, prose, and poetry. The centerpieces of this course will be what Wilson termed his “century cycle” of plays: each work focusing on the circumstances of Black Americans during a decade of the twentieth century. As we consider these historical framings, we also will explore closely on what Wilson identified as the “four B’s” that influenced his art most emphatically: Bessie Smith (sometimes he called this first B the Blues), Amiri Baraka, Romare Bearden, and Jorge Luis Borges. Accordingly, as we consider theoretical questions of cross-disciplinary conversations in art, we will study songs by Bessie Smith (and broad questions of the music and literary form), plays, prose, and poetry of Baraka (particularly in the context of Wilson’s early Black Arts Movement works), the paintings of Bearden, and the poetry and prose (along with a few lectures and transcribed interviews) of Borges. We will use archival resources (online as well as “hard copy” material, some of it at Columbia) to explore Wilson’s pathways as a writer, particularly as they crisscrossed the tracks of his “four B’s.” Along the way we will examine several drawings and paintings (from his University of Pittsburgh archives) as we delve into the rhythmical shapes, textures, and colors he used on paper and canvas as well as in his plays. Visitors to the class will include Wilson’s musical director Dwight Andrews and at least one of his regular actors.
Examines interpretations and applications of the calculus of probability including applications as a measure of degree of belief, degree of confirmation, relative frequency, a theoretical property of systems, and other notions of objective probability or chance. Attention to epistimological questions such as Hume's problem of induction, Goodman's problem of projectibility, and the paradox of confirmation.
The last decade of 20 th century witnessed a rapid convergence of three C’s: Communications, Computers, and Consumer Electronics. This convergence has given us the Internet, smart phones, and an abundance of data with Data Science playing a major role in analyzing these data and providing predictive analytics that lead to actionable items in many fields and businesses. Finance is a field with a large amount of information and data that can utilize the skills of Data Scientists, however, to be effective in this field a data scientist, in addition to analytic knowledge, should also be knowledgeable of the working, instruments, and conventions of financial markets that range from Foreign Exchange to Equities, Bonds, Commodities, Cryptocurrencies and host of other asset classes. The objective of this course is to provide Data Science students with a working knowledge of major areas of finance that could help them in finding a position in the Financial Industry. The wide range of topics covered in this course besides expanding the range of positions where students could be a fit, it gives them more flexibility in their job search. The course will also be of value to them in managing their own finances in the future.
Each offering of this course is devoted to a particular sector of Operations Research and its contemporary research, practice, and approaches. If topics are different, then course can be taken more than once for credit.
Each offering of this course is devoted to a particular sector of Operations Research and its contemporary research, practice, and approaches. If topics are different, then course can be taken more than once for credit.
Each offering of this course is devoted to a particular sector of Operations Research and its contemporary research, practice, and approaches. If topics are different, then course can be taken more than once for credit.
This Columbia University course offers a project-based learning experience focused on systematic quantitative investment. It covers the full data science workflow, from concept to performance evaluation. Students will engage in a real-time financial forecasting competition, using open-source financial and alternative data, to make and present investment decisions. Ideally, this course suits students aspiring to careers as quants or data scientists in the financial sector.
The course focuses on a PRACTICAL study of how to quantify & predict RISK in organizations by using learnings from: Regression analysis; Monte Carlo simulation; Factor analysis; Cohort analysis; Cluster analysis; Time series analysis; Sentiment analysis. Expectation is that incoming students should have a basic understanding of such concepts and statistics. The course will offer meeting & listening to CXO's & top executives from companies who have implemented robust AI & Applied Risk solutions to solve real-world problems in their own industries.
It will give students a great opportunity to learn practical applications of predictive analytics to solve real business problems
By taking this course, students will gain the tools and knowledge to develop a comprehensive new venture that is scalable, repeatable and capital efficient. The course will help students formulate new business ideas through a process of ideation and testing. Students will test the viability of their ideas in the marketplace and will think through the key areas of new venture. The first part of the course will help students brainstorm about new ideas and test the basic viability of those ideas through of process of design and real world tests. After an idea is developed students will work towards finding a scalable, repeatable business model. We will cover customer discovery, market sizing, pricing, competition, distribution, funding, developing a minimal viable product and many other facets of creating a new venture. The course will end with students having developed a company blueprint and final investor pitch. Course requirements include imagination, flexibility, courage, getting out of the building, and passion.
The IEOR Department hosts Business Analytics Practitioners Seminars throughout the Fall and Spring semesters. There are 5-6 seminars per semester, for a total of 10-12 seminars a year. These seminars feature a variety of academics and professionals in the field of Business Analytics; they are meant to educate and expose students to the latest research and practice.
First year BA students are required to attend all BA seminars during their first year
as well as submit journals about the material.
Primer on quantitative and mathematical concepts. Required for all incoming MSBA students.
Basic radiation physics: radioactive decay, radiation producing devices, characteristics of the different types of radiation (photons, charged and uncharged particles) and mechanisms of their interactions with materials. Essentials of the determination, by measurement and calculation, of absorbed doses from ionizing radiation sources used in medical physics (clinical) situations and for health physics purposes.
How do global capital flows, neoliberal rationalities, and elite-led (re)development projects shape urban space around the world—including the buildings, transit infrastructures, and campus environments that we navigate on a daily basis? To what extent are our imaginaries concerning urban space, and the places that we inhabit and traverse, similarly molded by global-capitalist dynamics? In turn, what role do cities play as privileged sites in the maintenance, reproduction, and spread of global capitalism—as well as of efforts to contest it (for example, under the framework of promoting a “right to the city”)?
This courses explores, from a critical political-economy perspective, the nexus between urban space and the global capitalist system. Specifically, we will analyze how global capitalism makes and remakes contemporary cities, including the built environment and socio-spatial dynamics therein, but also the dialectical processes through which cities and spatial logics simultaneously reshape global capitalism and its geographies of accumulation. Throughout, we will engage with diverse, transdisciplinary interlocutors, sources, and media to highlight not only the links between the contemporary city and the generation and/or perpetuation of inequalities, social hierarchies, and environmental degradation—but also alternative models for affordable housing, climate-friendly construction, and the democratization of urban space.
Naturally, our embeddedness in New York City will provide an important vantage point from which to contemplate these issues. Additionally, we will pay particular attention to cities in Brazil, Latin America more broadly—the world’s most urbanized region—and elsewhere in the Global South, where especially acute elite anxieties concerning modernity, underdevelopment, and globality have led to recurring (and often European-inspired) efforts to refashion urban space, as well as to create entirely new cities.
Moving between different languages and alphabets is a constitutive aspect of the diasporic experience. To remember or forget the mother tongue, to mix up two or more languages, to transcribe one writing system onto another are all modes of negotiating geographical displacement. This course introduces students to literature about and by Greeks of the diaspora in Europe, the Balkans and America over the past two centuries exploring questions of migration, translation and gender with particular attention to the look and sound of different alphabets and foreign accents – “It’s all Greek to me!” Authors include Benjamin, Broumas, Chaplin, Chow, Conan Doyle, Kafka, Kazan, Morrison, Papadiamantis, Queen, Valtinos and Venuti.
Prerequisites: none; high school chemistry recommended. This course is open to graduate students, and juniors and seniors within DEES, Sus Dev, Engineering, Chemistry, Physics, and APAM - or with the instructors permission. Survey of the origin and extent of mineral resources, fossil fuels, and industrial materials, that are non renewable, finite resources, and the environmental consequences of their extraction and use, using the textbook Earth Resources and the Environment, by James Craig, David Vaughan and Brian Skinner. This course will provide an overview, but will include focus on topics of current societal relevance, including estimated reserves and extraction costs for fossil fuels, geological storage of CO2, sources and disposal methods for nuclear energy fuels, sources and future for luxury goods such as gold and diamonds, and special, rare materials used in consumer electronics (e.g. ;Coltan; mostly from Congo) and in newly emerging technologies such as superconducting magnets and rechargeable batteries (e.g. heavy rare earth elements, mostly from China). Guest lectures from economists, commodity traders and resource geologists will provide ;real world; input.
Introduction to continuous systems with the treatment of classical and state-space formulations. Mathematical concepts, complex variables, integral transforms and their inverses, differential equations, and relevant linear algebra. Classical feedback control, time/frequency domain design, stability analysis, Laplace transform formulation and solutions, block diagram simplifcation and manipulation, signal ow graphs, modeling physical systems and linearization. state-space formulation and modeling, in parallel with classical single-input single-output formulation, connections between the two formulations. Transient and steady state analysis, methods of stability analysis, such as root locus methods, Nyquist stability criterion, Routh-Hurwitz criterion, pole/zero placement, Bode plot analysis, Nichols chart analysis, phase lead and lag compensators, controllability, observability, realization of canonical forms, state estimation in multivariable systems, time-variant systems. Introduction to advanced stability analysis such as Lyapunov stability and simple optimal control formulation. May not take for credit if already received credit for EEME E3601.
Risk management models and tools; measure risk using statistical and stochastic methods, hedging and diversification. Examples include insurance risk, financial risk, and operational risk. Topics covered include VaR, estimating rare events, extreme value analysis, time series estimation of extremal events; axioms of risk measures, hedging using financial options, credit risk modeling, and various insurance risk models.
Risk management models and tools; measure risk using statistical and stochastic methods, hedging and diversification. Examples include insurance risk, financial risk, and operational risk. Topics covered include VaR, estimating rare events, extreme value analysis, time series estimation of extremal events; axioms of risk measures, hedging using financial options, credit risk modeling, and various insurance risk models.
Overview of robot applications and capabilities. Linear algebra, kinematics, statics, and dynamics of robot manipulators. Survey of sensor technology: force, proximity, vision, compliant manipulators. Motion planning and artificial intelligence; manipulator programming requirements and languages.
This course introduces the central historical issues raised by ancient Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic literature through exploration of some of the crucial primary texts and analysis of the main scholarly approaches to these texts.
Principles of nontraditional manufacturing, nontraditional transport and media. Emphasis on laser assisted materials processing, laser material interactions with applications to laser material removal, forming, and surface modification. Introduction to electrochemical machining, electrical discharge machining and abrasive water jet machining.
Principles of nontraditional manufacturing, nontraditional transport and media. Emphasis on laser assisted materials processing, laser material interactions with applications to laser material removal, forming, and surface modification. Introduction to electrochemical machining, electrical discharge machining and abrasive water jet machining.
Hands-on studio class exposing students to practical aspects of the design, fabrication, and programming of physical robotic systems. Students experience entire robot creation process, covering conceptual design, detailed design, simulation and modeling, digital manufacturing, electronics and sensor design, and software programming.
(Lecture). An overview of jazz and its cultural history, with consideration of the influence of jazz on the visual arts, literature, and film. The course will also provide an introduction to the scholarship and methods of jazz studies. We will begin with Ralph Ellisons suggestive proposition that many aspects of American life are jazz-shaped. How then might we define this music called jazz? What are its aesthetic ingredients and forms? What have been its characteristic sounds? How can we move toward a definition that sufficiently complicates the usual formulas of call-response, improvisation, and swing to encompass musical styles that are very different but which nonetheless are typically classified as jazz? With this ongoing problem of musical definition in mind, we will examine works in literature, painting, photography, and film, which may be defined as jazz works or ones that are jazz-shaped.” What is jazz-like about these works? Whats jazz-like about the ways they were produced? And how, to get to the other problem in the courses title, is jazz American? What is the relationship of art to nation? What is the logic of American exceptionalism? What do we make of the many international dimensions of jazz music such as its many non-American practitioners? And what do representations of jazz artists in literature and film tell us about what people have thought about the music?
This course examines the intricate interplay between climate change, human activities, and environmental policies on the vulnerable Tibetan Plateau, the source of rivers for 3 billion people downstream. Topics to be covered include ecology, historical climate shifts, glacial retreat, water resource management, rangeland degradation and restoration, socioeconomic impacts, climate adaptation, and urbanization. With a multidisciplinary approach, and through lectures, discussions and guest speakers, students will gain a holistic understanding of this critical issue and learn skills to interpret and synthesize scientific research into a broader humanities context.
This seminar will examine the history of the impact of technology and media on religion and vice versa before bringing into focus the main event: religion today and in the future. Well read the classics as well as review current writing, video and other media, bringing thinkers such as Eliade, McLuhan, Mumford and Weber into dialogue with the current writing of Kurzweil, Lanier and Taylor, and look at, among other things: ethics in a Virtual World; the relationship between Burning Man, a potential new religion, and technology; the relevance of God and The Rapture in Kurzweils Singularity; and what will become of karma when carbon-based persons merge with silicon-based entities and other advanced technologies.
(Lecture). This lecture course is intended as the first half of the basic survey in African-American literature. By conducting close readings of selected song lyrics, slave narratives, fiction, poetry, and autobiography, we will focus on major writers in the context of cultural history. In so doing, we will explore the development of the African- American literary tradition. Writers include, but are not limited to, Wheatley, Equiano, Douglass, Jacobs, Harper, Dunbar, Chestnutt, Washington, Du Bois, and Larsen. Course requirements: class attendance, an in-class midterm exam, a five-page paper, and a final exam.
An introduction to the mathematical and computational foundations of data analysis with linear models. Develops theoretical and computational understanding of numerical linear algebra algorithms for problems including data fitting, data classification, clustering, and data reduction. Focus includes vector spaces, matrix factorization, least squares methods, and singular value decompositions. Illustrations on a variety of engineering applications, including power networks, autonomous and electric vehicles, quantum computing, medical imaging, and systems biology.
Required for undergraduate students majoring in OR:FE. Characteristics of commodities or credit derivatives. Case study and pricing of structures and products. Topics covered include swaps, credit derivatives, single tranche CDO, hedging, convertible arbitrage, FX, leverage leases, debt markets, and commodities.
This third year (or fifth semester) course in the Hindi-Urdu program aims to continue building upon the existing listening, speaking, reading, writing, and cultural skills in Hindi.Students will be exposed to a variety of authentic materials, such as stories, plays, newspapers, magazines, videos, and film clips. They will be expected to expand their vocabulary, enhance their grammatical accuracy, and develop their cultural appropriateness through enthusiastic participation in classroom activities and immersion in the speech community outside.
The objective of the course is to promote meaningful interaction with literary texts and strengthen students’ language skills to understand and describe situations and people in diverse academic settings of modern Hindi. Writing in the target language will be emphasized throughout the semester to enable students to use their diverse vocabulary and grammatical structures. This course will prepare students for “Advanced Hindi-II.”
Prerequisites: Two courses in psychology, including at least one course with a focus on research methods
and/or statistics, and permission of the instructor.
Review of theories and empirical research related to religious cognition and behavior. Topics include the
foundations of religious belief and practice, people's concepts of religious ideas, and the lack of religious
belief/identity (e.g., atheism), among others.
Prerequisites: The instructors permission. As music moves into the 21st century, we find ourselves surrounded by an ever-evolving landscape of technological capability. The world of music, and the music industry itself, is changing rapidly, and with that change comes the opening – and closing – of doorways of possibility. What does this shift mean for today’s practicing artist or composer? With big label recording studios signing and nurturing fewer and fewer artists, it seems certain that, today, musicians who want to record and distribute their music need to be able to do much of the recording and production work on their own. But where does one go to learn how to do this – to learn not only the “how to” part of music production, but the historical underpinnings and the development of the music production industry as well? How does one develop a comprehensive framework within which they can place their own artistic efforts? How does one learn to understand what they hear, re-create what they like and develop their own style? This class, “Recorded Sound,” aims to be the answer. It’s goal is to teach artists how to listen critically to music from across history and genres in order to identify the production techniques that they hear, and reproduce those elements using modern technology so they can be incorporated into the artist’s own musical works.
Prerequisites: Two years of prior study in Urdu or one year of Urdu for Heritage Speakers I&II courses at Columbia University, or approval of the professor. This is a one-semester course in advanced Urdu language. It will be taught in the fall semester. The goal of the course is to develop students’ linguistic skills i.e. listening, speaking, reading, writing and cultural skills in Urdu, and give students in-depth exposure to some of the finest works of classical and modern Urdu prose. Special emphasis will be given to developing a high-register vocabulary. Necessary grammar points will also be explained for developing an accurate and nuanced understanding of the Urdu language. After completing this course, students will be able to read and enjoy Urdu classics and critical academic texts related to various disciplines i.e. old tales, short stories, essays, history, satire, criticism, politics, current issues etc. along with effective speaking skills suited to active interaction in the speech community and a more advanced academic discussion for undergraduate and graduate students. Students will develop an in-depth understanding of South Asian society and culture as well. This course will prepare students to take MDES GU4635 Readings in Urdu Literature I.
This course considers the relationship between state power, scientific knowledge, and the natural world in its many manifestations—from sixteenth-century colonial “bioprospecting” to present-day initiatives in sustainable development. Throughout, we focus on two interrelated threads: the history of efforts to “govern” the natural world, and the role of science in enacting these modes of governance. Themes and topics include: the relationship between science and empire, the centrality of resource control to the consolidation of political authority, the history of wilderness preservation and conservation, the environmental dimensions of the history of international development, strategies of indigenous rights movements, the emergence of market-based approaches to environmental crises, and the invention of sustainable development. Though primarily historical in its focus, the course also draws on literature from science and technology studies, political ecology, environmental anthropology, and postcolonial studies.
Systemic approach to the study of the human body from a medical imaging point of view: skeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive, and urinary systems, breast and womens issues, head and neck, and central nervous system. Lectures are reinforced by examples from clinical two- and three-dimensional and functional imaging (CT, MRI, PET, SPECT, U/S, etc.).
Theory of convex optimization; numerical algorithms; applications in circuits, communications, control, signal processing and power systems.
This course is designed to introduce contemporary children’s rights issues and help students develop practical advocacy skills to protect and promote the rights of children. Students will explore case studies of advocacy campaigns addressing issues including juvenile justice, child labor, child marriage, the use of child soldiers, corporal punishment, migration and child refugees, female genital mutilation, and LBGT issues affecting children. Over the course of the semester, students will become familiar with international children’s rights standards, as well as a variety of advocacy strategies and avenues, including use of the media, litigation, and advocacy with UN, legislative bodies, and the private sector. Written assignments will focus on practical advocacy tools, including advocacy letters, op-eds, submissions to UN mechanisms or treaty bodies, and the development of an overarching advocacy strategy, including the identification of goals and objectives, and appropriate advocacy targets and tactics.
This course focuses on how to identify, evaluate, and capture business analytic opportunities that create value. The course covers basic analytic methods alongside case studies on organizations that successfully deployed these techniques. The first part of the course is on using data to develop insights and predictive capabilities with machine learning techniques. The second part focuses on the use of A/B testing, causal inference, ethics, and optimization to support decision-making.
This course will educate students and support effective coastal resilience planning and climate justice through social and data science learning and data acquisition and analysis, making use of emerging technologies and best practices for collaboration with environmental and climate justice practitioners.
Instruction is provided in two areas: i. Climate adaptation planning & climate justice; and, ii. Data science: acquisition, analysis and visualization. Students and instructors will work with participating community-based climate and environmental justice organizations to collect and analyze biological, geographic and socio-economic data relevant to local resilience needs. Once this data has been acquired or generated and quality-assured, the students and community partner organizations will prepare it for presentation to federal, state and local planning officials, to help ensure that the resilience goals and related concerns identified by our community partners will be fully reflected in future planning by those officials.
Upon completion of the course, students will better understand the challenges involved in creating and implementing collaborative, data-informed, multi-stakeholder plans for coastal resilience and ecosystem restoration in today’s increasingly climate-disrupted world. Successful completion of this course will partially fulfill the
Analysis and Solutions to Complex Problems
coursework requirement within the Undergraduate Major in Sustainable Development.
This course serves as a guide to the field of macromolecular materials chemistry, with a strong focus on the synthesis and design of polymers for tackling outstanding issues in polymer sustainability. The course will cover fundamental topics in polymerization techniques: step growth, conventional chain growth, ionic, controlled radical polymerizations, and ring opening polymerizations. As this course is primarily intended for engineers, great emphasis is placed on common, practical approaches to polymer synthesis and developing structure-property relationships. Fundamental topics will be expanded on using literature examples to demonstrate their applications in polymer sustainability.
Introduction to phylogenetic relationships, evolution, and ecology of the major groups of arthropods, with emphasis on insects. Lab: indentification of common families of spiders and insects of the northeastern United States.
You will be asked to watch a lot of movies for this course. Some of the films will be assigned primarily to provide background and will receive only glancing attention in class; others (as indicated) will be the focus of our discussion. Your postings on Courseworks will draw from both categories of assigned films.
Prerequisites: Two courses in psychology, with at least one focusing on statistics and/or research methods in psychology, and permission of the instructor. Review of basic psychological research that is relevant to questions people frequently encounter during the course of everyday life. Potential topics for this seminar include research on decision-making, emotion, and/or interpersonal relationships.
Typically, a course in social theory or political philosophy might be taught with two different emphases—as intellectual history, or as a theoretical tradition. In the first approach canonical texts are examined in relation to their political, social, economic and cultural contexts. In the second approach “classic” texts are systematically compared to one another to show both similarities and differences in their approach, and to place them in some developmental sequence. In either case, the textual corpus tends to focus on the historical experiences of the North Atlantic as both normative and universal.
Instead, this seminar focuses not merely on the placement of social theory in global contexts but rather, has as its explicit focus texts generated by thinkers who seek to theorize the geohistorical complexities of modern worldmaking through social forms and lifeworlds that stand askew to dominant approaches to the study of capitalist modernity. The South is conceived here as a set of relations and not as a place, less as a geographical location than a heuristic tool that might reorient discussion on fundamental questions about equality and difference, politics and personhood as these have taken shape as world historical questions of our time.
The seminar is particularly interested in the interface between subaltern and minority pasts as these confront material contexts of resource extraction and labor exploitation, and the distinctive manner by which embodied difference intersects social inequality. That is, we will think about the relationship between historical identities and their material substrate. Broadly speaking, the seminar will bring into conversation work generated in the Americas, especially African American scholarship that engages questions of slavery and subjectivity, black vitality, and Afropessimism together with approaches addressing problems of anticolonial politics, postcolonial sovereignty, ideas of Islamic universality, and global Marxisms. That is, we seek to direct the energies of social thought toward questions of translation, alterity, and historical comparison. A broad familiarity with colonial histories, anticolonial thought, and/or with canonical texts of social theory would be helpful, but not necessary.
The seminar will focus on key concepts such as anticolonial thought; racial capitalism, primitive accumulation; caste-race comparison; political aesthetics; and left and right populism. Readings for the seminar will include a mix of r
Chemical and physical aspects of genome structure and organization, genetic information flow from DNA to RNA to Protein. Nucleic acid hybridization and sequence complexity of DNA and RNA. Genome mapping and sequencing methods. The engineering of DNA polymerase for DNA sequencing and polymerase chain reaction. Fluorescent DNA sequencing and high-throughput DNA sequencer development. Construction of gene chip and micro array for gene expression analysis. Technology and biochemical approach for functional genomics analysis. Gene discovery and genetics database search method. The application of genetic database for new therapeutics discovery.
Prerequisite(s): IEOR E4106 or E3106. Required for undergraduate students majoring in OR:FE. Introduction to investment and financial instruments via portfolio theory and derivative securities, using basic operations research/engineering methodology. Portfolio theory, arbitrage; Markowitz model, market equilibrium, and the capital asset pricing model. General models for asset price fluctuations in discrete and continuous time. Elementary introduction to Brownian motion and geometric Brownian motion. Option theory; Black-Scholes equation and call option formula. Computational methods such as Monte Carlo simulation.
This course presents basic mathematical and statistical concepts that are essential for formal and quantitative analysis in political science research. It prepares students for the graduate-level sequence on formal models and quantitative political methodology offered in the department. The first half of the course will cover basic mathematics, such as calculus and linear algebra. The second half of the course will focus on probability theory and statistics. We will rigorously cover the topics that are directly relevant to formal and quantitative analysis in political science such that students can build both intuitions and technical skills. There is no prerequisite since this course is ordinarily taken by Ph.D. students in their first semester. The course is aimed for both students with little exposure to mathematics and those who have taken some courses but wish to gain a more solid foundation.
NOTE: This course does not satisfy the Political Science Major/Concentration research methods requirement.
Prior knowledge of Python is recommended. Provides a broad understanding of the basic techniques for building intelligent computer systems. Topics include state-space problem representations, problem reduction and and-or graphs, game playing and heuristic search, predicate calculus, and resolution theorem proving, AI systems and languages for knowledge representation, machine learning and concept formation and other topics such as natural language processing may be included as time permits.
This graduate course is only for M.S. Program in Financial Engineering students, offered during the summer session. Review of elements of probability theory, Poisson processes, exponential distribution, renewal theory, Wald’s equation. Introduction to discrete-time Markov chains and applications to queueing theory, inventory models, branching processes.
This is the required discussion section for
POLS GU4700.
Computational approaches to the analysis, understanding, and generation of natural language text at scale. Emphasis on machine learning techniques for NLP, including deep learning and large language models. Applications may include information extraction, sentiment analysis, question answering, summarization, machine translation, and conversational AI. Discussion of datasets, benchmarking and evaluation, interpretability, and ethical considerations.
Due to significant overlap in content, only one of COMS 4705 or Barnard COMS 3705BC may be taken for credit.
This graduate course is only for M.S. Program in Financial Engineering students, offered during the summer session. Discrete-time models of equity, bond, credit, and foreign-exchange markets. Introduction to derivative markets. Pricing and hedging of derivative securities. Complete and incomplete markets. Introduction to portfolio optimization and the capital asset pricing model.
The Ottomans ruled Southeast Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Anatolia for nearly half a millennium. The objective of this seminar is to explore the rich and growing literature on the social, cultural, political, and economic history of this bygone empire, whose legacy still persists, in one way or another, in some twenty-five contemporary successor states from the Balkans to the Arabian Peninsula. The seminar is designed to contextualize the Ottoman experiences within the broader structures of global and regional histories during the late-medieval and early modern eras. Each week, we will focus on a particular theme, assess the current state of scholarship on the topic, and reflect upon a specific set of primary sources useful for the study of the issue. The themes we will explore include, but are not limited to, identities and mentalities, governance of the empire and its bureaucracy, the status of minorities and confessional politics, literacy and the use of the public sphere, legal culture and pluralism, the environment, and science and technology. Please be advised that this seminar will avoid the mere chronological narrative of Ottoman political and institutional history, which often recounts the transformation from the 'terror of Europe' to its 'Sick Man.' Throughout the course, we will emphasize the gradually evolving nature of the multi-layered, multi-ethnic, and multi-lingual Ottoman polity, society, and culture to challenge such essentialist and ahistorical assessments of past Ottoman experiences.
This research seminar explores the nexus between race and enslavement in the Middle East and broader Indian Ocean world. This course will re-envision the contours of the Middle East as part of a larger geography that extends beyond Southwest Asia and North Africa, highlighting its deep ties to what is often called “Black Africa.” It also looks at Blackness within the Middle East and examines its long history of belonging, exchange, and migration. It investigates the kinds of knowledge production required to erase these ties and connections, and to produce a vaguely “brown” racial sphere that both homogenizes the Middle East and removes any references to Blackness from its history and societies. Throughout the course, we will probe the memories and legacies of enslavement across the Middle East and Indian Ocean world. How has enslavement and the lives of those enslaved
been remembered, defined, written about, and narrated in both academic and non-academic texts? What were the factors that enabled remembering or forgetting these pasts and the people’s lives they controlled? And how do these narratives relate to the questions of race? This course considers narratives and their afterlives from throughout North Africa, the Nile Valley, West Asia, and South Asia.
Lab fee: $50. Theory and use of alpha, beta, gamma, and X-ray detectors and associated electronics for counting, energy spectroscopy, and dosimetry; radiation safety; counting statistics and error propagation; mechanisms of radiation emission and interaction. (Topic coverage may be revised.)
While helping students advance their levels of oral and written expression, this course focuses on literature of the modern and medieval periods, with particular emphasis on the development of the modern novella and traditional and new forms of poetry. In addition to literature, students are introduced to a wide variety of genres from political and cultural essays and blogs to newspaper translations of the early 20th century. They will be further exposed to ta´rof in reference to a wide variety of socio-cultural contexts and be expected to use ta´rof in class conversations. Students will be exposed to popular artists and their works and satirical websites for insight into contemporary Iranian culture and politics. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
Introduction to how shape and structure are generated in biological materials using engineering approach emphasizing application of fundamental physical concepts to a diverse set of problems. Mechanisms of pattern formation, self-assembly, and self-organization in biological materials, including intracellular structures, cells, tissues, and developing embryos. Structure, mechanical properties, and dynamic behavior of these materials. Discussion of experimental approaches and modeling. Course uses textbook materials as well as collection of research papers.
This course examines the basic methods of data analysis and statistics, through multivariate regression analysis, that political scientists use in quantitative research that attempts to make causal inferences about how the political world works. The same methods apply to other kinds of problems about cause and effect relationships more generally. The course will provide students with extensive experience in analyzing data and in writing (and thus reading) research papers about testable theories and hypotheses.
An introduction to capital markets and investments providing an overview of financial markets and tools for asset valuation. Topics covered include the pricing of fixed-income securities (treasury markets, interest rate swaps futures, etc.), discussions on topics in credit, foreign exchange, sovereign ad securitized markets—private equity and hedge funds, etc.
This is the required discussion section for
POLS GU4710.