Singapore University of Technology and Design

The latest industrial revolution is named as Industry 4.0, which is defined as the combination of smart manufacturing systems and developed information technologies. The success model of Industry 4.0 is enabled by a group of tools such as cloud computing, machine learning, big data, internet of things, and cyber physical systems. This course provides a study of Industry 4.0 and its revolutionary implications to smart manufacturing, smart products/services, and smart cities. The implementation, opportunities and challenges of Industry 4.0 are also discussed. The powerful change in production techniques will require the extensive use of digital intelligence in the entire production process. As one of the important manufacturing methods of Industry 4.0, additive manufacturing (AM) or three-dimensional (3D) printing is introduced in the second part of course. 3D printing offers numerous benefits to a smart factory, such as high production efficiency, time and material saving, rapid prototyping, and decentralized production methods. This course provides a comprehensive study on the liquid, solid and powder-based 3D printing methods. It also offers insights on the applications and future trend of 3D printing.

Automatic methods of Information Retrieval (IR) have gained greater significance in recent years due to the dramatic increase in the amount of data available on the Web. The data is often present in multiple forms (such as text, image, video) and hence it is necessary that the IR techniques being deployed on the web are able to perform various operations such as search and retrieval across all these different data formats. In this course, the study of IR is focused on the methodologies of indexing, processing, and querying of primary textual data and extended to video and image data in the latter part of the course.

Decentralized blockchain-based systems, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, are successful beyond all expectations. Although still in their infancy, they promise to revolutionize how we think of financial, information, and other infrastructures. This course covers the technical aspects of public distributed ledgers, blockchain systems, cryptocurrencies, and smart contracts. It covers how these systems are built, how to interact with them, and how to design and build secure distributed applications.

This course works through the stages of critical thinking and provides a study of the basic principles of ‘clarity’, ‘precision’ and ‘reasoning’; culminating in a debate of complex, current issues affecting the workplace. It also covers management theory and contemporary management practices in a “VUCA” (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment.

This course on leadership and organization management considers the characteristics of human interaction and cooperation that make organizations effective and efficient. Adopting a leadership perspective, the course covers organizational behavior, organizational management, organizational change, and organizational leadership in a range of environmental and cultural contexts. The course develops the concepts of leadership and organization management by introducing well-established theories and practices, progressively exploring their applicability under group and organizational situations of varying contextual uncertainty and cultural diversity. The course guides students towards a practical appreciation of human cognitive, emotional and behavioral characteristics in organizations by developing a framework for applying appropriative global leadership, strategic and operational leadership approaches. 

History often serves as the dramatic backdrop for many popular computer games we play today. Yet such historical representations are often riddled with misrepresentations and inaccuracies. This course provides the historical knowledge necessary to build a credible and coherent history based story for video‐games through the lens of some significant periods in European history such as the history of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire until Charlemagne and notable historical figures including Julius Caesar, Constantine the Great, Attila, and Theoderic. The course focuses on some already existing and very successful video‐games, namely the three versions of the Total War video‐game: “Rome: Total War” (2004) “Rome: Total War” (2005), “Attila: Total War” (2015). Through a better understanding of history, students acquire a firmer grasp of the value of historical knowledge and its rich potential for storytelling and the creation of compelling virtual worlds and online experiences.

This course introduces fundamental concepts for designing and implementing large‐scale distributed systems. The course not only focuses on the design aspects of distributed systems, but also on the fundamental principles to ensure the correctness in a distributed environment. Students apply the concepts via hands on assignments using GO programming language. The course also examines specific concepts of distributed systems e.g. designing distributed file systems (such as in Google File Systems) to accommodate arbitrarily many application‐level users. Finally, it discusses concepts on recovering from faults (both normal and byzantine) in a distributed system.

This course provides research training for exchange students. Students work on a research project under the guidance of assigned faculty members. Through a full-time commitment, students improve their research skills by participating in the different phases of research, including development of research plans, proposals, data analysis, and presentation of research results. A pass/no pass grade is assigned based a progress report, self-evaluation, midterm report, presentation, and final report.

This course nurtures student startups based on their hands-on user-centered design projects. The course proceeds like a 3.5-month pre-seed accelerator for experiential learning with an academic and theoretical foundation drawn from social-technical system design theories and principles. The practical venture building projects are aided with lectures, sprint workshops, panel discussions and weekly readings. Entrepreneurial students learn underlying factors and forces for decisions in the entrepreneurship process and the principles for designing products, processes and people organizations under extreme uncertainty and resource constraints. The course is supported by a large international network of 150+ entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, design and manufacturing experts around the world.

The course covers a broad range of optimization algorithms and models. Topics include linear programming, simplex algorithm, duality, sensitivity analysis, two player zero-sum games, network optimization, minimum cost flow, network simplex algorithm, integer programming, branch and bound methods, cutting plane methods, and dynamic programming.