Far from obvious renderings of place, maps are spatial arguments about who belongs where and how living should be defined. This course approaches place as something that is contested daily in the U.S. through the struggle of who gets to lay claim to a way of life. From the landscapes of dispossession to the alternative ways marginalized people work with and against traditional geographies, this course centers Black place-making practices as political struggle. This class will look at how power and domination become a landed project. We will critically examine how ideas about “nature” are bound up with notions of race, and the way “race” naturalizes the proper place for humans and non-human others. We will interrogate settler colonialism’s relationships to mapping who is and isn’t human, the transatlantic slave trade as a project of terraforming environments for capital, and land use as a science for determining who “owns” the earth. Centered on Black feminist, queer and trans thinkers, we will encounter space not as a something given by maps, but as a struggle over definitions of the human, geography, sovereignty, and alternative worlds. To this end, we will read from a variety of disciplines, such as Critical Black Studies, Feminist and Intersectional Science Studies, Black Geographies and Ecologies, Urban Studies and Afrofuturist literature. (Note: this class will count as an elective for the CCIS minors/concentrations in F/ISTS, ICORE/MORE, and Environmental Humanities.)
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and MATH UN2010 Students must register for required discussion section. Corequisites: MATH UN2500 or MATH GU4061 The course provides a rigorous introduction to microeconomics. Topics will vary with the instructor but will include consumer theory, producer theory, general equilibrium and welfare, social choice theory, game theory and information economics. This course is strongly recommended for students considering graduate work in economics. Discussion section required.
Students in the regular third-year Arabic track improve reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills through close reading, compositions, class discussions, and presentations in Arabic on topics such as cultures of the Arab world, classical and modern Arabic literature, and contemporary Arabic media. Review of grammatical and syntactic rules as needed. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and MATH UN2010 Students must register for lecture course ECON GU4211 Corequisites: MATH UN2500MATH GU4061 Required discussion section for ECON GU4211 Advanced Microeconomics. The course provides a rigorous introduction to microeconomics. Topics will vary with the instructor but will include consumer theory, producer theory, general equilibrium and welfare, social choice theory, game theory and information economics. This course is strongly recommended for students considering graduate work in economics. Discussion section required.
Prerequisites: MDES W4212. Through reading articles and essays by Arab thinkers and intellectuals of the Twentieth century, starting from the period called Nahda (Renaissance), such as Taha Hussein, Qasim Amin, Abdallah Laroui, Abed Al-Jabiri, Tahar Haddad, Fatima Mernissi and others, students will be able to increase their fluency and accuracy in Arabic while working on reading text and being exposed to the main
themes in Arab thought. The course works with all four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). Arabic is the language of instruction. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
Prerequisites: (ENME E3113) ENME E3113. Static flexural response of thin, elastic, rectangular, and circular plates. Exact (series) and approximate (Ritz) solutions. Circular cylindrical shells. Axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric membrane theory. Shells of arbitrary shape.
Connects basic MEMS transduction elements to applications by analyzing the analog signal chain, sensor packaging, and sensor integration into larger systems. Underlying concepts of analog instrumentation such as filtering and digitization covered. Hands-on projects involve off-the-shelf sensors and single-board computers to create self-contained sensor systems that demonstrate relevant issues.
Review of states of stress and strain and their relations in elastic, plastic, and viscous materials. Dislocation and elastic-plastic concepts introduced to explain work hardening, various materials-strengthening mechanisms, ductility, and toughness. Macroscopic and microstructural aspects of brittle and ductile fracture mechanics, creep and fatigue phenomena. Case studies used throughout, including flow and fracture of structural alloys, polymers, hybrid materials, composite materials, ceramics, and electronic materials devices. Materials reliability and fracture prevention emphasized.
Through reading and writing, students will review Arabic Grammar concepts within the context of linguistic functions such as narration, description, comparison, etc. For example, within the function of narration, students will focus on verb tenses, word order, and adverbials. Based on error analysis in the past twelve years that the Arabic Program has been using Al-Kitaab, emphasis will be placed on common and frequent grammatical errors. Within these linguistic functions and based on error analysis, the course will review the following main concepts: Types of sentence and sentence/clause structure. The Verb system, pattern meanings and verb complementation. Quadriliteral verb patterns and derivations. Weak Verbs derivations, conjugation, tense frames and negation. Case endings. Types of noun and participle: Noun of time, place, instance, stance, instrument, active and passive participles. Types of construct phrase: al-iDafa. Types of Adverbials and verb complements: Hal, Tamyiz, Maf’ul mutlaq, Maf’ul li’ajlihi, adverbs of time, frequency, place and manner. The number system and countable nouns. Types of maa.Diptotes, al-mamnu’ min-aSSarf. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
Is the market a religious system? Can we consider "capitalism" to be a key arena in which the relationship between the religious and the secular is both negotiated and performed? In this course, students will explore the complicated relationship between faith and the market, the religious and the secular, and the evolution of vice and virtue as they relate to economic thriving in the United States. While no hard and fast rules for thinking about the relationship between right conduct and material interests cut across all religious and philosophical traditions, human agents invest real faith into currency, into markets, and into the reigning economic order to bring about increased opportunities, wealth, and freedom to people across the globe. Throughout this semester, we will chart both the long shadows and the future trajectories of these beliefs from our American perspective.
Fourth Year Japanese II, JPNS4218OC, 4 points. You are required to take Fourth Year Japanese I, JPNS4217OC with this course.
Instructor: Itsuko Nakamura
The 4th Year+ Japanese program (4217OC & 4218OC; 8 points/ 2 semesters) is designed for those who have completed at least three years of college-level Japanese or the equivalent (around 450 hours of Japanese study).
Students who want to take this course are expected to be at the
Intermediate-High level
or above of
the ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Proficiency Guidelines
at the beginning of the course. Please note that depending on the results of the placement test, the students may be placed in a different level than they apply for.
For a more detailed description, please follow the links provided: ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines Intermediate:
Speaking
|
Writing
|
Listening
|
Reading
(see the section of “INTERMEDIATE HIGH”)
Authentic materials such as newspaper, novels, and TV news will be used alongside
Donna toki Doo tsukau Nihongo Hyoogen Bunkei 500
(ALC) and
Goidon
(Kurosio Publishers). In addition, the students will have the opportunity to pursue an individualized project based on their own interests and give a presentation about their project at the end of the program.
The goal of this course is to achieve Advanced-Low or above of the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. Upon successful completion of the course, the students will:
have a command of advanced-level grammar and vocabulary including
kango
vocabulary and idiomatic expressions (equivalent to
Prerequisites: MDES UN2202 This is an introductory course to Levantine Arabic for students who have completed two years of Standard Arabic studies, at the Intermediate level. The course is designed to further develop fluency in oral communication, through building students’ familiarity with a less formal register of Arabic, namely the Levantine dialect. The course will convert and recycle some of the previous Standard Arabic knowledge to the dialect, by comparing their prior knowledge to its dialectal counterpart; while at the same time developing students’ new communicative skills in a diverse range of contexts that are essential in any conversational interaction. The course will build students abilities to interact effectively in various areas where Levantine Arabic is spoken. In addition to varied thematic topics, the course exposes students to cultural aspects specific to the region. Additionally, the course will work on both constructing students’ knowledge of dialectal diction as well as other grammatical features of the dialects. Even though the course is designed for communication in the four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking), the emphasis will be mostly on speaking and listening. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
Prerequisites: At least a year of calculus and physics; any 1000-level or 2000-level EESC course. Recommended: EESC2100 (Climate System), EESC2200 (Solid Earth), EESC3201 (Solid Earth Dynamics). Experience using MATLAB, Python/Numpy. This course examines processes controlling how glaciers and ice sheets grow, retreat, modify their landscape and interact with the rest of the Earth system. We focus on what controls surface mass balance, the transformation from snow to ice, ice deformation, basal sliding, the temperature and age of ice, the flow of water through ice sheets and glaciers, and the two-way interactions between ice and the oceans, atmosphere and solid earth. Weekly lectures are accompanied by practical computer sessions that equip students with key numerical and data analysis skills used in research of glacial processes.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4205 or the equivalent. Least squares smoothing and prediction, linear systems, Fourier analysis, and spectral estimation. Impulse response and transfer function. Fourier series, the fast Fourier transform, autocorrelation function, and spectral density. Univariate Box-Jenkins modeling and forecasting. Emphasis on applications. Examples from the physical sciences, social sciences, and business. Computing is an integral part of the course.
Cross disciplinary interfacial engineering principles and applications in sustainable energy and material science. Surface science and systems analysis across different technology sectors - material production and processing, waste management, device manufacture, composites, coatings, ceramics, membranes, biomaterials, and microelectronics.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4204 or the equivalent. Statistical inference without parametric model assumption. Hypothesis testing using ranks, permutations, and order statistics. Nonparametric analogs of analysis of variance. Non-parametric regression, smoothing and model selection.
Russian ideas are familiar to the world through Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s novels. In this course, we will examine key texts in the intellectual tradition that forms the backdrop to these famous works. Emphasis is on close textual readings; but also on how Russian ideas have been read and interpreted across national and cultural boundaries, including in recent English-language works like Tom Stoppard’s play,
Coast of Utopia
. Thinkers include Schellingians and Hegelians, Slavophiles, Populists and Pan-Slavists, and Vladimir Soloviev.
This course introduces the Bayesian paradigm for statistical inference. Topics covered include prior and posterior distributions: conjugate priors, informative and non-informative priors; one- and two-sample problems; models for normal data, models for binary data, Bayesian linear models; Bayesian computation: MCMC algorithms, the Gibbs sampler; hierarchical models; hypothesis testing, Bayes factors, model selection; use of statistical software.
Prerequisites: A course in the theory of statistical inference, such as STAT GU4204 a course in statistical modeling and data analysis, such as STAT GU4205.
Modern theories attempt to characterize the human mind in terms of information processing. But machines that process information do not seem to feel anything; a computer may for instance receive inputs from a video camera, yet it would be hard to imagine that it sees or experiences the vividness of colors like we do. Nobody has yet provided a convincing theory as to how to explain the subjective nature of our mental lives in objective physical terms. This is called the problem of consciousness, and is generally considered to be one of the last unsolved puzzles in science. Philosophers even debate whether there could be a solution to this problem at all. Students in this course may be recruited for participation in a voluntary research study. Students who choose not to participate in the study will complete the same course requirements as those who do, and an individual's choice will not affect their grade or status as a student in the course.
Prerequisites: (CIEN E3125) or equivalent. Review of loads and structural design approaches. Material considerations in structural steel design. Behavior and design of rolled steel, welded, cold-formed light-gauge, and composite concrete/steel members. Design of multi-story buildings and space structures.
Detailed study of the chemical and physicochemical principles underlying separations in development of earth resources in a safe and sustainable manner. Covers wide-range of solid-solid, solid-liquid and liquid-liquid separations used in processing of mineral resources. Interfacial
science and engineering principles of important industrial processes of flotation, flocculation, dewatering, interfacial transport, magnetic/gravity/electrostatic separations, solvent extraction, solid-support extraction, crystallization and precipitation. Emphasis on concepts in interfacial chemistry and concepts associated with 'mines of the future' framework.
Prerequisites: CHEE E3010. Reaction kinetics, applications to the design of batch and continuous reactors. Multiple reactions, non-isothermal reactors. Analysis and modeling of reactor behavior.
This course studies the effects and strategies of the cold war on Arab writing, education, arts and translation, and the counter movement in Arab culture to have its own identities. As the cold war functioned and still functions on a global scale, thematic and methodological comparisons are drawn with Latin America, India and Africa.
Prerequisites: (COMS W3134 or COMS W3136COMS W3137) and (COMS W3203) Introduction to the design and analysis of efficient algorithms. Topics include models of computation, efficient sorting and searching, algorithms for algebraic problems, graph algorithms, dynamic programming, probabilistic methods, approximation algorithms, and NP-completeness.
This seminar explores the Cold Wars impact on Eastern Europe (1940s-1980s) and Eastern Europes Cold War-era engagements with the wider world. We will address the methodologies used by historians to answer questions like these: What was the Cold War? What did it mean, and for whom? We will also look at the Cold War as something more than a series of events; we will consider its value, uses, and limits as a device for framing the second half of the twentieth century.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4205 or the equivalent. Survival distributions, types of censored data, estimation for various survival models, nonparametric estimation of survival distributions, the proportional hazard and accelerated lifetime models for regression analysis with failure-time data. Extensive use of the computer.
Introduces classic and modern algorithmic ideas that are central to many areas of Computer Science. The focus is on most powerful paradigms and techniques of how to design algorithms, and how to measure their efficiency. The intent is to be broad, covering a diversity of algorithmic techniques, rather than be deep. The covered topics have all been implemented and are widely used in industry. Topics include: hashing, sketching/streaming, nearest neighbor search, graph algorithms, spectral graph theory, linear programming, models for large-scale computation, and other related topics
Prerequisites: STAT GU4205 or the equivalent. Statistical methods for rates and proportions, ordered and nominal categorical responses, contingency tables, odds-ratios, exact inference, logistic regression, Poisson regression, generalized linear models.
Prerequisites: (CIEN E3121) and (CIEN E3127) Modern challenges in the design of large-scale building structures will be studied. Tall buildings, large convention centers and major sports stadiums present major opportunities for creative solutions and leadership on the part of engineers. This course is designed to expose the students to this environment by having them undertake the complete design of a large structure from initial design concepts on through all the major design decisions. The students work as members of a design team to overcome the challenges inherent in major projects. Topics include overview of major projects, project criteria and interface with architecture, design of foundations and structural systems, design challenges in the post 9/11 environment and roles, responsibilities and legal issues.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4204 or the equivalent. Introductory course on the design and analysis of sample surveys. How sample surveys are conducted, why the designs are used, how to analyze survey results, and how to derive from first principles the standard results and their generalizations. Examples from public health, social work, opinion polling, and other topics of interest.
Prerequisites: At least a year of calculus and physics; any 1000-level or 2000-level EESC course; basic,programming experience (e.g. EESC3400 - Introduction to Computational Earth Science). Recommended: EESC2100 (Climate System), EESC2200 (Solid Earth), EESC3201 (Solid Earth,Dynamics). The course aims to explore sea level changes that take place over a wide variety of timescales and are the result of multiple solid Earth and climatic processes. The course will link a series of solid Earth processes such as mantle convection, viscoelastic deformation, and plate tectonics to the paleoclimate record and investigate how these processes contribute to our understanding of past and present changes in sea level and climate. The course will step chronologically through time starting with long term sea level changes over the Phanerozoic, followed by Plio-Pleistocene ice age sea level variations and lastly modern and future sea level change. This is a cross-disciplinary course, which is aimed at students with interests in geophysics, cryosphere evolution, ocean dynamics, sedimentology, paleogeography, and past and present climate.
Urban ecology is the study of both the interactions between organisms in an urban environment and the organisms' interactions with that environment. This course facilitates learning about 1) basic principles related to ecological interactions of life on Earth, 2) the causes and consequences of biological patterns and processes in urban environments, and 3) how ecology can inform land use decisions and applied management strategies of natural resources (e.g. water, air, biodiversity), particularly in urban environments. This course aims to provide students with an understanding of the ways in which ecological perspectives can contribute to an interdisciplinary approach to solving environmental problems facing human society. Towards that end, this course covers topics ranging from applied ecology and conservation biology to sustainable development. It uses a cross disciplinary approach to understand the nature of ecology and biological conservation, as well as the social, philosophical and economic dimensions of land use strategies. Although in some ways cities may seem to be isolated from what we would otherwise call "nature," they are not, and this is a major theme of this course. This course includes discussion of biodiversity, ecosystem function, evolutionary processes, nutrient cycling, and natural resource availability in cities. Students will acquire an understanding of the ecology of human-dominated landscapes, the theory and study of urban ecology, and the application of ecological principles to building sustainable urban communities. Students will also explore timely and important urban ecology issues including ecological restoration, invasive species, and biodiversity conservation.
Prerequisites: (CIEN E4232) or instructors permission. Properties of materials used in prestressed concrete; pre-tensioning versus post-tensioning; loss of prestress due to elastic shortening, friction, anchorage slip, shrinkage, creep and relaxation; full versus partial prestressing; design of beams for flexure, shear and torsion; method of load balancing; anchorage zone design; calculation of deflection by the lump-sum and incremental time-step methods; continuous beams; composite construction; prestressed slabs and columns.
Prerequisites: (COMS W3261) Develops a quantitative theory of the computational difficulty of problems in terms of the resources (e.g. time, space) needed to solve them. Classification of problems into complexity classes, reductions, and completeness. Power and limitations of different modes of computation such as nondeterminism, randomization, interaction, and parallelism.
This course will survey historical and modern developments in machine intelligence from fields such as psychology, neuroscience, and computer science, and from intellectual movements such as cybernetics, artificial intelligence, neural networks, connectionism, machine learning, and deep learning. The emphasis is on the conceptual understanding of topics. The course does not include, nor require background in, computer programming and statistics. A crucial aspect of the seminar is for students to become informed consumers of applications of artificial intelligence.
This course studies Sufism as it has emerged, developed, and assumed its presence in Sufi autobiographies and religious and literary writings. The Sufi Path is traced in these writings that include poems like ibn al-Farid’s Poem of the Way. Sufi States and Stations are analyzed to understand this Path that reaches its culmination in an ecstatic sense of Oneness. Sufism is also a social and political phenomenon that unsettles formal theologies and involves Sufis in controversies that often end with their imprisonment and death.
The Covid-19 pandemic has starkly revealed how human health is entwined with environmental factors. In New York City, the ZIP codes that were hit hardest during the deadly first wave of Covid can be mapped using climatological indices, such as heat vulnerability, air quality, and green space proximity. This course will examine how the deep relationship between climate and pandemic might not just be associative, but causal. Poor air quality directly contributes to the transmission of airborne viruses. Habitat loss and climate-driven shifts in animal migration have led to new zoonotic encounters. Still infectious 30,000-year old “giant viruses” have already been discovered in melting Siberian permafrost. At the psychiatric level, climate anxiety has emerged as a clinical condition. Speculative fictions, past and present, invite us to imagine future climate-driven pandemics.
Through interdisciplinary readings in literature and history, virology and the biomedical sciences, seminar discussions, and a skills-building mapping practicum with community partners at Columbia and a New York City climate non-profit, students will study how climate and pandemic have been interconnected in the past, and together we will produce public-facing collaborative research speculating about how they might interact in the future. This is a 4000-level seminar class open to undergraduate and graduate students in a variety of fields; it counts as a core course in the Medical Humanities major.
Success in a social world requires understanding other people’s thoughts and feelings, a process typically referred to as
mentalizing
. Yet, other people’s mental states are not directly observable: you cannot see a thought or touch a feeling. Nonetheless, humans are quite proficient in inferring these invisible states of mind. How do we accomplish these mentalizing feats? In this course, we will answer this question from multiple angles, relying heavily on neuroscience and psychology research. The seminar will discuss recent and classic studies that reveal how humans effectively interpret the people around them, as well as when and why they make mistakes.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4206. The course will provide an introduction to Machine Learning and its core models and algorithms. The aim of the course is to provide students of statistics with detailed knowledge of how Machine Learning methods work and how statistical models can be brought to bear in computer systems - not only to analyze large data sets, but to let computers perform tasks that traditional methods of computer science are unable to address. Examples range from speech recognition and text analysis through bioinformatics and medical diagnosis. This course provides a first introduction to the statistical methods and mathematical concepts which make such technologies possible.
This course is about the Umayyads, one of the premier families of pre-Islamic Mecca who converted to Islam during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. They were the first to make the position of caliph hereditary. Based in Syria, the Umayyad caliphs ruled an Empire that was—at the time—larger than any other in recorded history, ranging from Uzbekistan and Pakistan in the east to Spain and Portugal in the west. In 750, they were overthrown by another family, the ʿAbbasids, who shifted political power eastwards and founded the city Baghdad. A scion of the Umayyads escaped the fate of the rest of his family and fled to Spain, where he ruled as emir in his own name. Generations later, the Umayyads in Spain hearkened back to their Syrian ancestors and proclaimed themselves to be caliphs. They were overthrown in 1031. The history of the Umayyads in Syria is frequently studied separately from Spain; our project this semester is to assess whether this Syrian-Spain divide makes sense.
This course grapples with important historical questions through the example of the Umayyads. They were much maligned in later sources, as the ʿAbbasids controlled the contours of their legacy. They were branded as “not really Muslim” and criticized for their role in the death of the Husayn (the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad) and for bombing Mecca (twice). At the same time, they ruled over the Islamic world in a very formative period. They built the Great Mosque of Damascus, al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of their Rock, and the Mezquita in Cordoba. Telling their history requires balancing extremely negative accounts in written sources with the material remains of their rule. It also requires engaging with many different types of historical sources as their empire reached from Central Asia to Spain.
This seminar will consider the evolution of language at the levels of the word and grammar, in each instance, phylogenetically and ontogenetically. Since humans are the only species that use language, attention will be paid to how language differs from animal communication.
Prerequisites: Pre-requisite for this course includes working knowledge in Statistics and Probability, data mining, statistical modeling and machine learning. Prior programming experience in R or Python is required. This course will incorporate knowledge and skills covered in a statistical curriculum with topics and projects in data science. Programming will be covered using existing tools in R. Computing best practices will be taught using test-driven development, version control, and collaboration. Students finish the class with a portfolio of projects, and deeper understanding of several core statistical/machine-learning algorithms. Short project cycles throughout the semester provide students extensive hands-on experience with various data-driven applications.
Prerequisites: (CIEN E3141) Focus on deep foundations in difficult conditions and constraints of designing foundations. Design process from the start of field investigations through construction and the application of deep foundations.
The hydrologic cycle and relevant atmospheric processes; water and energy balance; radiation; boundary layer; precipitation formation; evaporation; vegetation transpiration; infiltration, storm runoff, snowmelt and flood processes. Routing of runoff and floodwaters. Groundwater flow and the hydraulics of wells. Probabilistic modeling, and extreme-value theory.
“I’m exhausted.” That refrain has rung out repeatedly during the last two years. It has been both a cry for help and a rallying cry. Exhaustion is a state of being characterized by extreme fatigue, torpor and lassitude. It can be a response to the unbearable weight of personal experience or a more extensive cultural formation. It is also a medical symptom (eg anemia and heart failure) and a diagnosis in its own right (chronic fatigue syndrome), though one whose status is uncertain. Exhaustion can be spiritual, intellectual, emotional, sexual, or political. Whether as medical symptom, disease, individual experience or response to impossible expectations, the feelings and causes of exhaustion dominate our conversations.
Exhaustion is often reframed as idleness, especially under economic systems that prioritize productivity, efficiency and work. Idleness carries a negative connotation and the exhausted are stigmatized as lazy or unwilling to work. But idleness itself can be recast as a source of play, freedom and plenitude. Wool-gathering and day dreaming provide the kernels for creative endeavors and alternate possibilities, while slowdowns and strikes position idleness as a form of resistance to hegemonic and exploitative forces that want to “work us to the bone”. Far from an indignity, idleness might be the very balm to an exhausted and weary world.
In this class, we will explore some literary, philosophic and scientific frames for both exhaustion and idleness. We will read novels, plays and short stories by Ottessa Moshfegh, Samuel Beckett and Herman Melville among others as well as illness narratives, case histories, and medical heuristics and theory.
For advanced undergraduates only.
Using a case study approach, this course will offer a focused study of climate change adaptation policy, exploring dimensions of adaptation across sectors and scales. With a thematic focus on pervasive global inequities, students will also consider challenges associated with international development and disaster risk management. An inter-disciplinary framework will enrich the course, and students will learn about perspectives from the natural sciences, law, architecture, anthropology, humanitarian aid, and public policy.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 The study of industrial behavior based on game-theoretic oligopoly models. Topics include pricing models, strategic aspects of business practice, vertical integration, and technological innovation.
Engineering aspects of problems involving human interaction with the natural environment. Review of fundamental principles that underlie the discipline of environmental engineering, i.e. constituent transport and transformation processes in environmental media such as water, air, and ecosystems. Engineering applications for addressing environmental problems such as water quality and treatment, air pollution emissions, and hazardous waste remediation. Presented in the context of current issues facing the practicing engineers and government agencies, including legal and regulatory framework, environmental impact assessments, and natural resource management.
The development of high-speed computers, artificial neural networks, miniaturized sensors, mobile phones, and Big Data has created the conditions for the transformation of artificial intelligence. These changes are not only transforming the world but are also recasting long-standing distinctions like nature/culture, natural/artificial, body/mind, complexity/ simplicity, and organism/machine that have shaped human thought and life for centuries. This refiguring of opposites as irreducibly interrelated was anticipated by Kant’s notion of self-organization and developed systematically by Hegel.
This course will approach current forms of artificial intelligence through Kant’s interpretation of self-organization and Hegel’s dialectical logic and will reread Hegel’s system through “natural” and “artificial” neural networks, complex systems, and information theory. If nature and culture are inextricably interrelated, then is “artificial” intelligence really artificial, and is “nature” every merely natural? What are the implications of these developments for the understanding of human “nature” that has shaped the Anthropocene since the time of Galileo, Newton, and Descartes?
Introduction parametric and non-parametric statistical models applied to climate and environmental data analysis. Time and space data analysis methods will be focused, including clustering, autoregressive models, trend analysis, Bayesian analysis, missing data imputation, geostatistics, principal components analysis. Application to problems of climate variation and change; hydrology; air, water and soil pollution dynamics; disease propagation; ecological change; and resource assessment. The class requires the use of R with hands-on programmings and a term project applied to a current environmental data analysis problem.
This seminar will begin by exploring the dynamic relationship between art, literature and their existing mediascape by examining the literary works of the Yuan and Ming Period, and continuing all the way to the most recognized literary and artistic piece of the late Qing period. The seminar will also focus on the transformation of the media dynamics when the Opium Wars (19th century) brought newer visual and printing technology and media into China. We will explore how these new technologies gave writers new formalistic and thematic approaches when coping with China’s modernization process. (1903-1904).
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 This course uses modern microeconomic tools for understanding markets for indivisible resources and exploring ways to improve their design in terms of stability, efficiency and incentives. Lessons of market design will be applied to developing internet platforms for intermediating exchanges, for auctions to allocate sponsored search advertising, to allocate property rights such as public lands, radio spectrums, fishing rights, for assigning students to public schools, and for developing efficient kidney exchanges for transplantation.
Overview of electrochemical processes and applications from perspectives of materials and devices. Thermodynamics and principles of electrochemistry, methods to characterize electrochemical processes, application of electrochemical materials and devices, including batteries, supercapacitors, fuel cells, electrochemical sensor, focus on link between material structure, composition, and properties with electrochemical performance.
Prerequisites: Comfort with basic discrete math and probability. Recommended: COMS W3261 or CSOR W4231. An introduction to modern cryptography, focusing on the complexity-theoretic foundations of secure computation and communication in adversarial environments; a rigorous approach, based on precise definitions and provably secure protocols. Topics include private and public key encryption schemes, digital signatures, authentication, pseudorandom generators and functions, one-way functions, trapdoor functions, number theory and computational hardness, identification and zero knowledge protocols.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4205 or the equivalent. A fast-paced introduction to statistical methods used in quantitative finance. Financial applications and statistical methodologies are intertwined in all lectures. Topics include regression analysis and applications to the Capital Asset Pricing Model and multifactor pricing models, principal components and multivariate analysis, smoothing techniques and estimation of yield curves statistical methods for financial time series, value at risk, term structure models and fixed income research, and estimation and modeling of volatilities. Hands-on experience with financial data.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4264. Mathematical theory and probabilistic tools for modeling and analyzing security markets are developed. Pricing options in complete and incomplete markets, equivalent martingale measures, utility maximization, term structure of interest rates. This is a core course in the MS program in mathematical finance.
In the wealth of plots, characters, settings, descriptive details and narrative strategies it has generated over the course of three centuries, the European novel has proved to be one of the most inventive and resilient forms of Western literature. Nonetheless, certain paradigms have predominated from the beginning, two of which will form the center of this course: 1) the illusion of a "true," that is historically grounded story, and 2) the bourgeois family as an organizing narrative principle. This course will analyze seven strikingly diverse European novels from Spain, England, France and Austria in order to show the continuity through variation of these two paradigms. Students will read some of the major theorists of the novel (Auerbach, Watt, Bakhtin, Moretti), but the emphasis will be on developing a theory based on the novels themselves. All readings and discussions in English, though reference will frequently be made to the particular linguistic and historical circumstances of the original texts. Students will write weekly response papers to the literary and critical texts, do one in-class presentation, and write a final paper of 15 to 20 pages.
Through a critical reading of diverse mediums, we will explore the entanglements in modern history between Vietnam and Korea, from the fratricidal Korean War and the Vietnam “American” War, up until the two countries’ current unequal relationship based on trade, labor, marriage, and cultural exchange.
This course examines how changes in information and communications technology have, over the past two decades, fundamentally transformed the practices of civil society actors engaged with human rights issues. New communications tools such as Twitter, blogs, and Facebook have changed the ways that organizations communicate with their followers and seek to influence public debate. The increasing accessibility of analytic tools for researching and visualizing changing patterns of human rights abuse has empowered groups to better understand and respond more forcefully to these issues. Indeed, the use of social media as a communications tool has made it a data source for those monitoring and analyzing patterns of activity, in ways that draw increasingly on the techniques of big data analysis.
Prerequisites: For undergraduates: one course in cognitive psychology or cognitive neuroscience, or the equivalent, and the instructors permission. Metacognition and control processes in human cognition. Basic issues include the cognitive mechanisms that enable people to monitor what they know and predict what they will know, the errors and biases involved in self-monitoring, and the implications of metacognitive ability for peoples self-determined learning, behavior, and their understanding of self.
Principles and practice of water treatment and utility management will be presented. Project-based class where students will work in teams to solve an issue for a water utility. Variety of external experts will lecture and serve as a resource for students for the project. Allows students to better understand the role of the water utility in providing safe drinking water in a sustainable manner. Students will become familiar with the challenges facing water utilities, gain knowledge in the design and operation of water treatment systems, and learn how to develop solutions to water supply and water quality issues which will allow them to pursue productive careers in the consulting, utility, or regulatory fields.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 An introduction to the economics principles underlying the financial decisions of firms. The topics covered include bond and stock valuations, capital budgeting, dividend policy, market efficiency, risk valuation, and risk management. For information regarding REGISTRATION for this course, go to: http://econ.columbia.edu/registration-information.
Prerequisites: For undergraduates: courses in introductory psychology, cognitive or developmental psychology, and the instructors permission. Core Knowledge explores the origins and development of knowledge in infants and children, with an additional emphasis on evolutionary cognition. In this course, we will examine evidence from cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, comparative psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics to look at the childs conception of objects, number, space, language, agency, morality and the social world. We will look at which aspects of knowledge are uniquely human, which are shared with other animals, and how this knowledge changes as children develop.
Prerequisites: (PSYC UN2235) or an equivalent course on judgment and decision making ,AND the instructors permission This course reviews current research in the domain of decision architecture: the application of research in cognitive and social psychology to real-world situations with the aim of influencing behavior. This seminar will discuss recent and classic studies, both of decision theory and of applied decision research, to explore the effectiveness—as well as the limitations—of a selection of these behavioral “nudges.”
Prerequisites: (biol un2005 or biol un2401) or BIOL UN2005 or BIOL UN2401 or equivalent This is an advanced microscopy course aimed at graduates and advanced undergraduate students, who are interested in learning about the foundational principles of microscopy approaches and their applications in life sciences. The course will introduce the fundamentals of optics, light-matter interaction and in-depth view of most commonly used advanced microscopy methods, explore important practical imaging parameters, and also introduce digital images and their analysis.
Prerequisites: (biol un2005 or biol un2401) or BIOL UN2005 or BIOL UN2401 or equivalent This is an advanced microscopy course aimed at graduates and advanced undergraduate students, who are interested in learning about the foundational principles of microscopy approaches and their applications in life sciences. The course will introduce the fundamentals of optics, light-matter interaction and in-depth view of most commonly used advanced microscopy methods, explore important practical imaging parameters, and also introduce digital images and their analysis.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4205 and at least one statistics course numbered between GU4221 and GU4261. This is a course on getting the most out of data. The emphasis will be on hands-on experience, involving case studies with real data and using common statistical packages. The course covers, at a very high level, exploratory data analysis, model formulation, goodness of fit testing, and other standard and non-standard statistical procedures, including linear regression, analysis of variance, nonlinear regression, generalized linear models, survival analysis, time series analysis, and modern regression methods. Students will be expected to propose a data set of their choice for use as case study material.
Programming experience in Python extremely useful. Introduction to fundamental algorithms and analysis of numerical methods commonly used by scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Designed to give a fundamental understanding of the building blocks of scientific computing that will be used in more advanced courses in scientific computing and numerical methods for PDEs (e.g. APMA E4301, E4302). Topics include numerical solutions of algebraic systems, linear least-squares, eigenvalue problems, solution of non-linear systems, optimization, interpolation, numerical integration and differentiation, initial value problems and boundary value problems for systems of ODEs. All programming exercises will be in Python.
This course offers an overview of the scholarly debate about the Renaissance during the last twenty years (2001-2021), with a particular focus on the relationship between early modern Italy, Europe, and Muslim Eurasia. This class intends to give students insight into and philological tools to engage the current debate about the revision of the concept—and the period—of the Renaissance (broadly 1350-1570). We will read both primary (Petrarch, Pico della Mirandola, Galateo, Leonardo Bruni, Leo Africanus) and secondary sources in order to understand the main trends of philological and historical research about early modern Eurasia in the last twenty years. We will read about how Petrarch’s anti-Arabism has been analyzed and used by twentieth-century Medievalists. We will explore how Said’s
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influenced the study of the transmission of texts in the Early Modern World. Also, we will try to understand the role of Islam, Muhammad, and the Ottoman Empire in the evolution of European political thought. Similarly, we will dive into Early Modern European representations of the Muslim Other, as well as into Arabic travel writing about Early Modern Europe. The main goal of this class is to discuss with the students about what happened in the field of Renaissance studies in the last two decades, roughly between September 11, 2001 and our current “post”-pandemic world, with a particular attention to the study of literary texts, intellectual and cultural history, the history and theory of translation.
In English.
This course examines the historical and theoretical issues concerning the representation of African Americans in film and media. The course will provide a historical overview while focusing on key themes, concepts, and texts.
Numerical solution of differential equations, in particular partial differential equations arising in various fields of application. Presentation emphasizes finite difference approaches to present theory on stability, accuracy, and convergence with minimal coverage of alternate approaches (left for other courses). Method coverage includes explicit and implicit time-stepping methods, direct and iterative solvers for boundary-value problems.
This course is intended to provide a quantitative introduction to storage of carbon derived from greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, with a focus on geological carbon storage and mineralization in saline aquifers, depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs, and “reactive” subsurface formations (rocks rich in Fe, Ca, and Mg) as well and other natural and engineered storage reservoirs (e.g., terrestrial storage, ocean storage, building materials). Course modules cover fundamental processes such as geochemical fluid-rock interactions and fluid flow, transport, and trapping of supercritical and/or dissolved CO2 in the context of pore-scale properties to field-scale example storage reservoirs and specific integrative problems such as reservoir characterization and modeling techniques, estimating storage capacity, and regulations and monitoring.
This course examines the historical and theoretical issues concerning the representation of African Americans in film and media. The course will provide a historical overview while focusing on key themes, concepts, and texts.
Introduction to the key concepts and issues in computational science aimed at getting students to a basic level of understanding where they can run simulations on machines aimed at a range of applications and sizes from a single workstation to modern super-computer hardware. Topics include but are not limited to basic knowledge of UNIX shells, version control systems, reproducibility, Open MP, MPI, and many-core technologies. Applications will be used throughout to demonstrate the various use cases and pitfalls of using the latest computing hardware.
Prerequisites: CHNS W3301: Classical Chinese I; completion of three years of modern Chinese at least, or four years of Japanese or Korean. Please see department. Prerequisites: CHNS W3301: Classical Chinese I; completion of three years of modern Chinese at least, or four years of Japanese or Korean.
Advanced classical thermodynamics. Availability, irreversibility, generalized behavior, equations of state for nonideal gases, mixtures and solutions, phase and chemical behavior, combustion. Thermodynamic properties of ideal gases. Applications to automotive and aircraft engines, refrigeration and air conditioning, and biological systems.
Astronomers live in era of “big data”. Whilst astronomers of a century ago collected a handful of photographic plates each night, modern astronomers collect thousands of images encoded by millions of pixels in the same time. Both the volume of data and the ever present desire to dig deeper into data sets has led to a growing interest in the use of statistical methods to interpret observations. This class will provide an introduction to the methods commonly used in understanding astronomical data sets, both in terms of theory and application. It is one six classes the department offers every fourth semester.
Introduces the basics of theory, design, selection and applications of turbomachinery. Turbomachines are widely used in many engineering applications such as energy conversion, power plants, air-conditioning, pumping, refrigeration and vehicle engines, as there are pumps, blowers, compressors, gas turbines, jet engines, wind turbines, etc. Applications are drawn from energy conversion technologies, HVAC and propulsion. Provides a basic understanding of the different kinds of turbomachines.
Prerequisites: BIOL W4300 or the instructors permission. A weekly seminar and discussion course focusing on the most recent development in biotechnology. Professionals of the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and related industries will be invited to present and lead discussions.
Introduction to various CO2 utilization and conversion technologies that can reduce the overall carbon footprint of commodity chemicals and materials. Fundamentals of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, reaction kinetics, catalysis and reactor design will be discussed using technological examples such as enhanced oil recovery, shale fracking, photo and electrochemical conversion of CO2 to chemical and fuels, and formation of solid carbonates and their various uses. Life cycle analyses of potential products and utilization schemes will also be discussed, as well as the use of renewable energy for CO2 conversion.
Introduction to various CO2 utilization and conversion technologies that can reduce the overall carbon footprint of commodity chemicals and materials. Fundamentals of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, reaction kinetics, catalysis and reactor design will be discussed using technological examples such as enhanced oil recovery, shale fracking, photo and electrochemical conversion of CO2 to chemical and fuels, and formation of solid carbonates and their various uses. Life cycle analyses of potential products and utilization schemes will also be discussed, as well as the use of renewable energy for CO2 conversion.
Principles of propulsion. Thermodynamic cycles of air breathing propulsion systems including ramjet, scramjet, turbojet, and turbofan engine and rocket propulsion system concepts. Turbine engine and rocket performance characteristics. Component and cycle analysis of jet engines and turbomachinery. Advanced propulsion systems. Columbia Engineering interdisciplinary course.
Non Course Prerequisites: Elementary probability theory (IEOR E3658 or above) and stochastic process (on the level of the first part of IEOR E4106 or STAT G4264) are required. Knowledge on analysis (MATH GU4601 or above) and differential equations (APMA E4200 or above) are required. Knowledge on numerical methods (APMA E4300 and above) and programming skills are required.
Provides elementary introduction to fundamental ideas in stochastic analysis for applied mathematics. Core material includes: (i) review of probability theory (including limit theorems), and introduction to discrete Markov chains and Monte Carlo methods; (ii) elementary theory of stochastic process, Ito's stochastic calculus and stochastic differential equations; (iii) introductions to probabilistic representation of elliptic partial differential equations (the Fokker-Planck equation theory); (iv) stochastic approximation algorithms; and (v) asymptotic analysis of SDEs.