This course offers 3rd year undergrad students the opportunity to learn about computer graphics concepts tailored around serious games. Serious games are defined as games with an application outside pure entertainment. Examples include heritage, well-being, and sustainability. These provide excellent examples of applied interdisciplinary computer graphics. Students will discover how to design a serious game, what to consider in the process, the need for LSEP considerations and use their skills to develop a VR application using Unity as a game engine. Along the way, we will delve in some philosophical questions. We will also discuss important aspects such as game requirements, ethics, the rendering pipeline, 3D modeling, materials and textures, projections and coordinate systems, lights, particles, networked games, AR and VR (XR).
Big Data is a ubiquitous term used in numerous domains from arts to sciences. In this course offered to 1st-year master students, we explore ways of tackling Big Data by following the CRISP-DM approach with real-life examples in regression and classification in Python. We will tackle aspects of getting, storing, cleaning and analyzing the data. The approach will emphasize the importance of distributed cloud computing by focusing on solutions based on PySpark. Along the way we will focus on some real-life problems from the smart grid/city domain.
This course introduces 1st-year master students to key aspects related to academic and technical writing. Various types of articles will be discussed and analyzed with students learning how to write good papers by focusing not only on the technical aspect but also on the reflective critical part that builds on prior work and leverages their results. The principles of what makes a good presentation will also be introduced. At the end of the course, students will be equipped with an additional set of skills complementing their technical background.
This course provides an introduction to doctoral students on what it means to write a scientific paper in computer science. It takes them through topics such as reflective practice, LSEP issues, planning, formatting and structuring a scientific paper, searching for a suitable venue, and publishing, presenting and getting feedback. How to search for and attract funding and how to write a grant proposal will also be discussed as these are vital for young researchers to consolidate their careers and independence as they build their research teams.
Introduction to astronomy in culture touching on elements of observational astronomy, archaeoastronomy, ethnoastronomy and the history of astronomy. By the end the student will have a basic knowledge of astronomy in culture.