English

The course explores the relationship between religion and artificial intelligence (AI), examining how AI challenges, complements, and transforms religious beliefs and practices. It covers theological implications, ethical considerations, and the philosophical questions that arise from AI's impact on spirituality, morality, and religious traditions. The course also investigates how religious perspectives can inform the development and use of AI. Students study the anthropological perspective of humans and AI entanglement in the religious sphere, and learn to understand the historical and contemporary interactions between religion and technology. They analyze how AI influences religious beliefs, practices, and institutions, and they critically assess ethical and theological challenges related to AI. Finally, they explore how religious traditions contribute to discussions on AI ethics and morality, and they engage with philosophical questions regarding consciousness, personhood, and the soul in the context of AI.

This course examines some of the most significant issues facing the world today such as the recurrence of violence between and within countries; the difficulty of lifting large numbers of people out of poverty; what is to happen to people who do not have a home in any country; increasing environmental destruction; intensifying global financial instability; and whether the current structures and processes of governance are adequate to address these issues. 

This course introduces the fundamentals of regression modeling, providing essential knowledge for students pursuing advanced study in statistics or careers as professional statisticians. Topics include parameter estimation in linear models, hypothesis testing for model comparison, model selection techniques for predictive purposes, detection of assumption violations, and identification of influential observations.

This course is designed to acquire knowledge of fundamental and advanced concepts in optics, and a general understanding of when and how these concepts are possible and appropriate to use. The course deals with optical devices and their operation and aims to provide students with practical knowledge in optical design using a ray-tracing program. The course has the following content. Every topic is coupled to a chapter or parts of a chapter in the course book: Ray optics, matrix formulation; Wave optics, interference; Fourier optics, diffraction; Electromagnetic optics; Anisotropic media; Polarization, Jones matrix formalism; and Optics of layered media and photonic crystals.
 

Climate change is a global policy challenge whose solutions need to transcend national borders to address its multilayered causes and courses of action. This course reflects on transnational climate governance through the case of the EU Green Deal by exploring case by case its relevant stakeholders: in-house policymakers, member states, civil society, private and international actors. These stakeholders are viewed in parallel to climate policy domains (social and intergenerational justice, carbon markets, sustainable finance), and its tools (lobbying, negotiations and legislative procedures). This course provides a comprehensive approach to studying climate governance, combining theoretical concepts with practical examples, engaging students with real-life policy developments.

This course invites students to rethink their preconceptions about studying the complex modern topic of religion by introducing them to key approaches and debates in Religious Studies, including historical, sociological, and anthropological approaches. It uses these to examine through a comparative and theoretically informed perspective empirical examples and case studies of how religion/s are articulated by diverse people in multiple settings. The course gives prominence to people's everyday ideas and practices about religion, while also indicating the broader disciplinary shape of the Study of Religion/s.

This course introduces students to the field of Development Economics. The object of the course is to equip students with a greater understanding of the process of economic development and the challenges faced by nations and individuals to transit out of poverty. The course covers a range of economic problems in developing countries and discusses - both from a theoretical and an empirical perspective - possible strategies to overcome these problems. Topics include inequality, and poverty reduction; nutrition and poverty traps; markets for land, credit, and insurance; agricultural transformation; and evaluation of development programs and international trade.

This course introduces parallel programming and covers the following main topics: 1) Vector and superscalar processors: architecture and programming model, optimizing compilers (dependency analysis and code generation), array libraries (BLAS), parallel languages (Fortran 90). 2) Shared-memory multi-processors and multicore CPUs: architecture and programming models, optimizing compilers, thread libraries (Pthreads), parallel languages (OpenMP). 3) Distributed-memory multi-processors: architecture and programming model, performance models, message-passing libraries (MPI), parallel languages (HPF). 4) Hybrid parallel programming for clusters of mutlicore CPUs with MPI+OpenMP.