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 MS program in FE students. Modeling, analysis, and computation of derivative securities. Applications of stochastic calculus and stochastic differential equations. Numerical techniques: finite-difference, binomial method, and Monte Carlo.
This graduate course is only for M.S. Program in Financial Engineering students. Empirical analysis of asset prices: heavy tails, test of the predictability of stock returns. Financial time series: ARMA, stochastic volatility, and GARCH models. Regression models: linear regression and test of CAPM, non-linear regression and fitting of term structures.
Principles of Ethical Artificial Intelligence across technical and societal dimensions. Combines technical AI and machine learning implementations and ethical analysis. Students will learn to build, audit, and mitigate ethical risks in AI systems using tools like fairness libraries, explainability frameworks, and privacy-preserving techniques. Emphasizes coding, algorithmic critique, and real-world cases.
Topics include: foundations of AI ethics, fairness, interpretability, explainability, accountability, privacy, robustness, alignment, safety, and societal benefit.
Assessments include coding projects, bias auditing assignments, and ethical analysis papers.
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.
This course develops greater proficiency in literary/classical Tibetan, which is the formal language used in all Tibetan publications and foundational to regional dialects. Students engage with diverse genres of writing, including ancient Buddhist canonical and Tibetan historical works, to support their academic research.
Prerequisites: POLS W4710 or the equivalent.
This course will
intensively
examine some of the data analysis methods which deal with problems occurring in the use of multiple regression analysis. It will stress computer applications and cover, as needed, data coding and data processing. Emphasis will also be placed on research design and
writing research reports
.
The course assumes that students are familiar with basic statistics, inference, and multiple regression analysis and have analyzed data using computer software (e.g., any standard statistical programs on micro-computers or larger machines -- Stata, “R”, SPSS, SAS, etc.). Students will be instructed on the use of the microcomputers and the R and Stata statistical software program(s) available as freeware (R) or in the CUIT computer labs (Stata; several campus locations) or through SIPA. The lectures and required discussion section will emphasize the use of “R.” Students may use whatever computer programs they prefer for all data analysis for the course.
This is the required discussion section for
POLS GU4712.
The forms of domination and violence that have characterized the phenomenon of empire have always been interwoven with desire and various forms of intimacy. Personal relationships have been vectors of colonial power as well as sites of resistance. In this course we consider various ways in which love, desire and intimacy have emerged as questions in the French colonial context. The course covers a broad historical and geographic span stretching from the age of plantation slavery to the era of decolonization and from the Caribbean and Louisiana to Vietnam and Africa. We consider both the transmission of categories and practices across colonial contexts and historical transitions and regional specificities. The course methodology is interdisciplinary, drawing on insights from history, sociology and law. The primary lens is, however, be that of literature, a medium in which the personal dimensions of empire have often found expression. We consider how recurrent themes and figures of colonial desire and intimacy have taken shape across different genres and registers of writing.
During the past 15 years the behavior of market options prices have shown systematic deviations from the classic Black-Scholes model. Examines the empirical behavior of implied volatilities, in particular the volatility smile that now characterizes most markets, the mathematics and intuition behind new models that can account for the smile, and their consequences for hedging and valuation.
This course offers a deep dive into French contemporary novelist Annie Ernaux’s auto-socio-biographical fiction. It does so through close readings of some of her major works, organized thematically and across Ernaux’s oeuvre. Close readings of texts will be paired with research notes and recent film adaptations, sociological and theoretical work that has inspired Ernaux, her growing critical reception (amplified by her recent Nobel prize), as well as other writers whom she has inspired. Themes covered include: writing impersonally in the first person; what is auto-socio-biography; exploring women’s desire and sexuality; Ernaux’s feminism and political militancy; ethnographies of contemporary France and the baby-boomer generation; history, time, and memory. Throughout, we will consider what kind of genre Ernaux’s writing is, and what writing as a knife can do. Class taught in French (if you are unsure about whether you have the required level please consult with instructor).
This course is the second course in the graduate-level sequence on quantitative political methodology offered in the Department of Political Science. Students will learn (1) a framework and methodologies for making causal inferences from experimental and observational data, and (2) statistical theories essential for causal inference. Topics include randomized experiments, estimation under ignorability, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, difference-indifferences, and causal inference with panel data. We also cover statistical theories, such as theories of ordinary least squares and maximum likelihood estimation, by connecting them to causal inference methods. This course builds on the materials covered in POLS 4700 and 4720 or theirequivalent (i.e., probability, statistics, linear regression, and logistic regression).
This is the required discussion section for
POLS GU4722.
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to a vast civilizational expanse spread over more than 5000 years of recorded history, centered in Iran and expanded into the wider Persian cosmopolis that extends from the Indian subcontinent to Central Asia to the Caucuses and reaches the Mediterranean coasts, with Persian language, literature, and culture as its “Lingua Franca.” Scholars of the field refer to the Persian Cosmopolis as the vast territory extending from the Balkans to Bengal where for millennia “an integrated sense of moral, social, political, and aesthetic order was informed by the circulation of normative Persian texts.” In this course we explore the main features of that civilization—from its classical to its contemporary manifestations.
May be repeated for credit; content varies.
Prerequisites: Must have completed MDES 2702, equivalent two years of Persian or the instructor's permission.
This course provides experience reading and analyzing Persian language texts, as well as translating them into English. We will also spend some time learning how to read different kinds of paleography, and about various manuscript and print conventions and practices. Supplementary scholarly readings in English will situate the Persian texts. There will be a translation workshop at the end of the semester with related texts of the students choosing, in preparation for a final translation project. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
This course is the fourth course in the graduate-level sequence on quantitative political methodology offered in the Department of Political Science. Students will learn a variety of advanced topics in quantitative methods for descriptive and causal inference, such as simulated-data experimentation, statistical graphics, experimental design, Bayesian inference, multilevel modeling, ideal-point and measurement-error models, and time/spatial/network models. This course builds on the materials covered in POLS 4700, 4720, 4722, and 4724, or their equivalent courses (i.e., probability, statistics, linear regression, logistic regression, causal inference with observational and experimental data, and knowledge of the statistical computing environment R).
This is the required discussion section for
POLS GU4726.
The search for better performance has led investors to explore Alternative Investments that are outside the traditional categories of exchange traded equities, Treasury Bonds, and other
investment-grade fixed income products. The field of Alternative Investments covers a wide range of products such as convertible bonds, Preferred Shares, Hedge Funds, Venture Capital, and
Cryptocurrencies. There is a growing need in the market for students with knowledge of these products and the practical and theoretical know how of valuing and risk managing these investments given that each product has it own nuances and anomalies. This course presents and studies some major Alternative Investment products and ways to evaluate and risk manage them.
An introduction to the recent development in quantum optimization and quantum machine learning using gate-based Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers. IBM’s quantum programming framework Qiskit is utilized. Qbits, quantum gates and quantum measurements, quantum algorithms (Grover’s search, Simon’s algorithm, quantum Fourier transform, quantum phase estimation) quantum optimization (quantum annealing, QAOA, variational quantum eigensolver), quantum machine learning (quantum support vector machine, quantum neural networks).
Prerequisites: POLS GU4700 or equivalent level of calculus. Introduction to noncooperative game theory and its application to strategic situations in politics. Topics include solution concepts, asymmetric information, and incomplete information. Students should have taken POLS GU4700 or have equivalent background in calculus. Permission of instructor required.
This is the required discussion section for POLS GU4730.
Advanced course in computer vision. Topics include convolutional networks and back-propagation, object and action recognition, self-supervised and few-shot learning, image synthesis and generative models, object tracking, vision and language, vision and audio, 3D representations, interpretability, and bias, ethics, and media deception.
MS IEOR students only. Application of various computational methods/techniques in quantitative/computational finance. Transform techniques: fast Fourier transform for data de-noising and pricing, finite difference methods for partial differential equations (PDE), partial integro-differential equations (PIDE), Monte-Carlo simulation techniques in finance, and calibration techniques, filtering and parameter estimation techniques. Computational platform will be C++/Java/Python/Matlab/R.
Prerequisite(s): IEOR E4700. Large and amorphous collection of subjects ranging from the study of market microstructure, to the analysis of optimal trading strategies, to the development of computerized, high-frequency trading strategies. Analysis of these subjects, the scientific and practical issues they involve, and the extensive body of academic literature they have spawned. Attempt to understand and uncover the economic and financial mechanisms that drive and ultimately relate them.
Communication is the bridge between sustainability knowledge and real-world action. The Practicum on Communications for Sustainability Management is a broad survey of how organizations across the private, public, and non-profit sectors design and execute communications strategies and campaigns to advance sustainability goals. We’ll explore how communications professionals build brand narratives, engage stakeholders, and measure the impact of sustainability messaging, and how different practitioners translate complex environmental and social issues into compelling public communications. The course will feature guest speakers each week discussing their own campaigns, creative process, and the application of these strategies in real-world settings.
The Practicum on Communications for Sustainability Management is a dynamic forum featuring a series of lectures and discussions by communications leaders, marketing executives, and other sustainability practitioners both within Columbia University and from other institutions. These lectures emphasize key concepts in strategic communications, branding, and public engagement relevant to sustainability practice. Students will learn how to develop communications campaigns to address issues within myriad organizations, explore storytelling techniques, media strategy, and audience engagement tools.
Data, models, visuals; various facets of AI, applications in finance; areas: fund, manager, security selection, asset allocation, risk management within asset management; fraud detection and prevention; climate finance and risk; data-driven real estate finance; cutting-edge techniques: machine learning, deep learning in computational, quantitative finance; concepts: explainability, interpretability, adversarial machine learning, resilience of AI systems; industry utilization
What is “globalization”? How does it change the way we think about or show art today? What role does film and media play in it? How has critical theory itself assumed new forms in this configuration moving outside post-war Europe and America? How have these processes helped change with the very idea of ‘contemporary art’? What then might a transnational critical theory in art and in thinking look like today or in the 21st century? In this course we will examine this cluster of questions from a number of different angles, starting with new questions about borders, displacements, translations and minorities, and the ways they have cut across and figured in different regions, in Europe or America, as elsewhere. In the course of our investigations, we will look in particular at two areas in which these questions are being raised today -- in Asia and in Africa and its diasporas. The course is thus inter-disciplinary in nature and is open to students in different fields and areas where these issues are now being discussed.
Computational techniques for analyzing genomic data including DNA, RNA, protein and gene expression data. Basic concepts in molecular biology relevant to these analyses. Emphasis on techniques from artificial intelligence and machine learning. String-matching algorithms, dynamic programming, hidden Markov models, expectation-maximization, neural networks, clustering algorithms, support vector machines. Students with life sciences backgrounds who satisfy the prerequisites are encouraged to enroll.
Basic statistical principles and algorithmic paradigms of supervised machine learning.
Prerequisites:
Multivariable calculus (e.g. MATH1201 or MATH1205 or APMA2000), linear algebra (e.g. COMS3251 or MATH2010 or MATH2015), probability (e.g. STAT1201 or STAT4001 or IEOR3658 or MATH2015), discrete math (COMS3203), and general mathematical maturity. Programming and algorithm analysis (e.g. COMS 3134). COMS 3770 is recommended for students who wish to refresh their math background.
Core topics from unsupervised learning such as clustering, dimensionality reduction and density estimation will be studied in detail. Topics in clustering: k-means clustering, hierarchical clustering, spectral clustering, clustering with various forms of feedback, good initialization techniques and convergence analysis of various clustering procedures. Topics in dimensionality reduction: linear techniques such as PCA, ICA, Factor Analysis, Random Projections, non-linear techniques such as LLE, IsoMap, Laplacian Eigenmaps, tSNE, and study of embeddings of general metric spaces, what sorts of theoretical guarantees can one provide about such techniques. Miscellaneous topics: design and analysis of datastructures for fast Nearest Neighbor search such as Cover Trees and LSH. Algorithms will be implemented in either Matlab or Python.
Course overview: The goal of this course is to engage upper-level undergraduates and beginning graduate students in an immersive intellectual experience at the intersection of rigorous scientific inquiry and the history of innovation in molecular biology. The central theme will be curiosity and critical thinking as the twin drivers of both technological innovation and scientific discovery. The course will be divided into a series of modules focused on analysis and presentation of original research papers related to one important breakthrough in molecular biology that occurred during the past century. A prominent theme of the course will be the persistently unpredictable trajectory linking technical research and methodological developments to breakthrough science. Approximately six-to-eight original research papers will be covered in each module, spanning topics from the development of the methods that made the breakthrough possible through practical application of the resulting knowledge.
Three or four of the following breakthroughs will likely be covered in 2023:
Discovery and clinical application of insulin by Banting & Best.
Development of the Trikafta triple drug treatment for cystic fibrosis.
Development of CRISPR for human genetic engineering.
Genetics and pharmacological treatment of human hyperlipidemia.
Development of the Gleevec tyrosine kinase inhibitor to cure Ph+ leukemias.
Development of “next-generation” nucleic acid sequencing methods.
Introduction to human spaceflight from a systems engineering perspective. Historical and current space programs and spacecraft. Motivation, cost, and rationale for human space exploration. Overview of space environment needed to sustain human life and health, including physiological and psychological concerns in space habitat. Astronaut selection and training processes, spacewalking, robotics, mission operations, and future program directions. Systems integration for successful operation of a spacecraft. Highlights from current events and space research, Space Shuttle, Hubble Space Telescope, and International Space Station (ISS). Includes team design project.
Characterization of stochastic processes as models of signals and noise; stationarity, ergodicity, correlation functions, and power spectra. Gaussian processes as models of noise in linear and nonlinear systems; linear and nonlinear transformations of random processes; orthogonal series representations. Applications to circuits and devices, to communication, control, filtering, and prediction.
Zombies are everywhere. All over literature, film, and television. To be fair, zombies have been cinematically popular since 1932, but they are really having a moment right now. Moreover, whereas lots of zombie films in the 80s and 90s were low-brow and shlocky, the zombie genre—in both film and TV—has recently made a name for itself as an elite, highly philosophical, and often highly moving genre. So what’s the story? How and why did that happen? Why are zombies so hot right now? Why are major television studios pouring money into megaseries like
The Last of Us
or
The Walking Dead?
In this class, we will examine the history of the literature and cinema of the undead. By “undead” we will mean embodied revenants who come back to some kind of life or simulacrum of life after death. So, no ghosts, but lots of zombies, ghouls,
draugar,
vampires, and some cyborgs. Through these revenants and undead “monsters,” writers and filmmakers have asked questions about what it means to be a person, who gets to claim the status of a “human,” and what it says about our relationship to the past, present, and future that the dead keep on rising from their graves. As we’ll see, the zombie genre is extremely varied and internally diverse, but it has been, for as long as it has existed, an important genre for thinking through forms of inequality, violence, dehumanization, and existential dread.
I warn you: there is material on this syllabus that is revolting in many different ways. So buckle your seatbelt. If you’re not up for some serious gore, some very offensive ideas, and some troubling philosophies, you may want to take another class.
Along with the American Revolution which immediately preceded it, the French Revolution was the most important political event in modern history. The bloody end of the 18th century ushered in modernity, retrospectively marking a definitive break between “early modern” and “modern” eras. The French Revolution has been endlessly and variously mythologized and analyzed, as well as depicted in polemical writings, novels, poetry, theater, film, and opera. This course is designed as an overview of responses to the ten-year event, concentrating on popular depictions in Francophone and Anglophone works. We will start with contemporary responses and move on through 19th- and 20th-century literary representations of the Revolution, including plays and films, both adaptations of literary responses and original treatments. Readings will include works by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burke, Wollestonecraft, Sade, and Dickens, along with more recent responses.
Introduction to the mathematical tools and algorithmic implementation for representation, processing, and reconstruction of digital images, videos, and visual sensory data. Image representation, filtering, transform, quality enhancement, restoration, feature extraction, object segmentation, motion analysis, stitching, depth estimation, 3D reconstruction, classification, and coding for data compression. A series of programming assignments reinforces material from the lectures.
This course will focus on the interwoven nature of jazz and literature throughout the 20th and early 21st century. We will consider the ways that jazz has been a source of inspiration for a variety of twentieth-century literatures, from the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance to African American drama and contemporary fiction. Our readings and musical selections highlight creative ideas and practices generated through the formal and thematic convergences of jazz and literature, allowing us to explore questions such as: How do writers capture the sounds and feelings of different musical forms within fictional and non-fictional prose? In what ways might both music and literature (and/or their points of intersection) represent ideas of black identity and consciousness? How can certain musical concepts and terms of analysis (improvisation, rhythm, syncopation, harmony) be applied to practices of writing? How does music suggest modes of social interaction or political potential to be articulated in language?
Embedded system design and implementation combining hardware and software. I/O, interfacing, and peripherals. Weekly laboratory sessions and term project on design of a microprocessor-based embedded system including at least one custom peripheral. Knowledge of C programming and digital logic required.
How to write the city? What is an archive for writing the city? What liminal and marginal perspectives are available for thinking about writing the city? What is the place of the city in the global south in our historical imagination? Our attempt in this seminar is to look at the global south city from the historical and analytical perspectives of those dispossessed and marginal. Instead of ‘grand’ summations about “the Islamic City” or “Global City,” we will work meticulously to observe annotations on power that constructs cities, archives and their afterlives. The emphasis is on the city in South Asia as a particular referent though we will learn to see Cairo, New York, and Istanbul.
Rising authoritarianism, climate catastrophe, grinding wars, mass involuntary migration, rampant misinformation and the unsettling possibilities of AI have made the world promised by the human rights project seem a distant or even fanciful prospect. Whatever faith we have in human rights to either secure or remake the world has had good reason to be shaken—or was unfounded from the start. Indeed, since universal rights were proposed there have been skeptics, questioning their abstraction, insufficiency, Eurocentrism, and overreach, among other shortcomings. When it comes to critiquing human rights, is there anything left to be said?
This seminar course considers where the human rights idea and project goes from here. Starting rather than ending with these critiques, we will pursue theoretical and practical attempts to reimagine human rights in their light. How have commentators drawn on liberal, pragmatic, radical democratic, and anticolonial thought to forge a vision of human rights made to the measure of a world in crisis? What are the value and limits of critique in the human rights project? And how do theory and praxis relate in attempts to reconstruct human rights beyond these critiques? In pursuit of answers, we will read political theory, history, philosophy, and ethnography, as well as together assemble an archive of already existing projects to reformulate, resignify, and mobilize human rights in novel directions.
The goal of synthetic organogenesis is to use stem cells to reconstitute aspects of embryo development and organ formation in vitro. Examines the molecular basis of human embryogenesis. Introduces synthetic organogenesis as an interdisciplinary field. Students learn to recognize generic molecular mechanisms behind signaling and cell lineage specification. Covers recent advances in applying engineering and contemporary biology to creating organoids and organs on chips using human stem cells.
Many materials properties and chemical processes are governed by atomic-scale phenomena such as phase transformations, atomic/ionic transport, and chemical reactions. Thanks to progress in computer technology and methodological development, now there exist atomistic simulation approaches for the realistic modeling and quantitative prediction of such properties. Atomistic simulations are therefore becoming increasingly important as a complement for experimental characterization, to provide parameters for meso- and macroscale models, and for the in-silico discovery of entirely new materials. This course aims at providing a comprehensive overview of cutting-edge atomistic modeling techniques that are frequently used both in academic and industrial research and engineering. Participants will develop the ability to interpret results from atomistic simulations and to judge whether a problem can be reliably addressed with simulations. The students will also obtain basic working knowledge in standard simulation software.
China's search for a new order in the long twentieth century with a focus on political, social and cultural change.
:
Philanthropy & Just Societies
will enable Columbia undergraduate students to learn about the history of philanthropy, to understand best practices and ethical underpinnings, to debate its potential in making more just societies, and to consider what it means to give and receive aid at different scales. Students will have the opportunity to participate directly in philanthropic work.
Research training course. Recommended in preparation for laboratory related research.
This course will explore the historical category of Resistance Literature, its theory and practice, its transnational expansion, and its ongoing relevance today. Originally proposed by Palestinian author and political activist Ghassan Kanafani in 1967, “Resistance Literature” named an activist practice of writing that sought to challenge discriminatory state practices, social policies, power structures and lived injustices, as well as to reshape the ideological frameworks that enabled official political structures of oppression in the institutional forms of colonialism (settler and otherwise), neocolonialism, authoritarianism,
apartheid
, systemic racisms, ethnonationalisms, gendered exclusions, and religious discrimination. Examining diverse genres such as novels, poetry, plays, memoirs, films, we will analyze the literary and political strategies, motifs, and modes by which authors around the world over the past century have attempted to use their art to resist oppression, to mobilize public opinion, and to advocate for social change. Collectively, we will attempt to identify literary and formal commonalities across these literatures to identify generic characteristics of Resistance Literature that might distinguish it from Literature in general.
Research training course. Recommended in preparation for laboratory related research.
Prerequisite(s): Approval by a faculty member who agrees to supervise the work. Independent work involving experiments, computer programming, analytical investigation, or engineering design.
Prerequisite(s): Approval by a faculty member who agrees to supervise the work. Independent work involving experiments, computer programming, analytical investigation, or engineering design.