Singapore University of Technology and Design

This course introduces topics relevant for understanding the modern framework for evaluating investment opportunities. It combines key elements of managerial accounting and finance, as well as modern portfolio and asset pricing theory. The course discusses how to apply the core tool of analytic finance to assess the value of company projects, including those undertaken by start‐ups, and how to analyze financial market conditions to recommend investment strategies. The course discusses topics including key accounting metrics and applying these metrics to evaluate the performance of a company; identity and interpretation techniques to value cash flows from investing in firm projects; developing equity valuation frameworks that link stock prices to firm cash flows and risk; deriving optimal allocation rules for investing in portfolios with one or two risky assets; identifying optimal portfolio allocation rules for many risky assets, such as stocks, commodities, real estate, and bonds; combining the optimal allocation rules with index models to identify the degree of diversification in an optimal portfolio; hypothesizing and deriving a linear relation between risk and expected returns; define factors that determine bond prices; and synthesizing bond pricing relations with no‐arbitrage equilibrium models of spot and forward rates.

This course introduces the broad discipline of biomedical engineering, and the fundamental life science and engineering principles associated with biomedical systems and healthcare delivery. The course focuses on three key application areas of biomedical implants, instrumentation, and diagnostics, and discusses the theoretical and practical considerations relevant to the design and development of biomedical devices, tools, and systems in these areas.

This course is a connected and comparative history of Asia before 1750 that introduces the region’s major political, economic, and intellectual contours prior to British colonization. The course focuses on tracing the history of premodern Asia through three types of transregional cultural formation: large empires, trading zones, and religious ecumene. The course explores and discusses how these formations unfolded across Central and Eastern Asia and South and Southeast Asia and uses them as a lens for thinking critically about the scope of Asia as a geographical, political, economic, and cultural category in premodern history.

This course explores the fundamentals of structure and energetics that underpin materials science. An appreciation of structure underlies nearly every design and application of materials to a greater or lesser extent and many fascinating materials phenomena. The course discusses how to describe the structure of crystalline and non-crystalline states, and the various (e.g., point, line, and surface) imperfections in materials. The course also discusses how to determine the structure using diffraction techniques. The subject matter of this course can be applied to many real-world examples such as materials for fuel cells and batteries, engineered alloys, electronic and magnetic materials, polymers, and biomaterials. The course examines topics including: materials structure, how it is influenced by the interatomic bonding and processing parameters, and how materials properties are determined by the structure; metals, ceramics, polymers, and composites; how to describe the structure of materials using structural descriptors and understanding the difference between gasses, liquids, amorphous, and crystalline solids; defects in crystalline materials: point defects in solids, line defects, slip planes, and dislocations; equilibrium phase diagrams; electronic, mechanical, magnetic, and optical properties of materials; and the structure-processing-properties relationship and the life-cycle assessment for selection of materials and development of sustainable materials in the design of parts, structures, and products.

This course examines the international environment for business and offers theoretical and practical knowledge in implementing international strategies, marketing for successfully penetrating international markets, managing international firms, and potential risks for operating internationally. The content of this course is divided into four parts. The first part covers the international business environment that firms are currently facing, and the opportunity that a firm can have while it expands internationally. The second part offers a basic but systematic knowledge about different modes of international business operations (e.g. export, international marketing, license trade, strategic alliance, direct investment), and the advantages and disadvantages of each mode. The third part focuses on the management of major functions of business operation in an international context, such as how to design an organizational structure for international business; how to manage global production, logistics, and supply chain; and how to manage corporate finance, and international human resources. The last part is dedicated to the influential factors of international business operations: politics and culture, two major factors that impact on and bring potential risks to international business operation. 

This course provides an overview of robot mechanisms, dynamics, and intelligent controls. Topics include planar and spatial kinematics, and motion planning; mechanism design for manipulators and mobile robots; multi-body dynamics; control design, actuators, and sensors; sensing and perception to enable intelligent behavior; and computer vision. Weekly laboratories provide experience with servo drives, real-time control, task modelling and embedded software. Students will build working robotic systems in a group-based term project.