English

This course explores how global “Unicorn” startups, such as OpenAI, Uber, Airbnb, ByteDance, SpaceX, and Taiwan’s Appier and Gogoro, evolved from early ideas into billion-dollar enterprises. Using the proven frameworks of Silicon Valley’s start-up ecosystem, the course emphasizes the Business Model Canvas and customer development methodology to ensure strong product–market fit and effective pivoting strategies. Through a team-based, hands-on approach, students form startup teams, test business hypotheses outside the classroom, and refine their models through direct feedback from professors, entrepreneurs, and investors. The course provides real-world experience in building scalable ventures, culminating in the creation of a viable business model ready for competition or seed funding opportunities.

This course provides students an interdisciplinary introduction to climate change, using approaches from both the social sciences (history, sociology, geography, politics, economics), and the natural sciences (engineering, physics, biology). The course provides a brief look into historical and sociological causes of the climate crisis, followed by both the physical and human consequences. The course has a strong focus on potential solutions, drawing on ideas from engineering and science (renewable technology), and politics, sociology, and economics (social change).  This leaves students with a positive, action-based knowledge base on the context of the climate crisis, and current theories on how to act.

This course covers machine learning techniques to analyze visual data. Specifically, this course focuses on fundamental machine learning and recent deep learning methods that are widely used in visual data analysis and discusses how these methods are applied to solve various problems with visual data. This course consists of lectures, practices, and projects. 

Topics include Introduction to CV/DL, Convolutional neural networks, Training, optimization, data, Few-shot learning, Object detection and segmentation, RNNS, Domain adaptation, Multimodal learning, Deployment. 

Prerequisite: Basic knowledge of Python 

This course provides an opportunity to examine current youth policy debates and how they have been framed and organized in different cultures, particularly in East Asian and Western contexts. Students focus on various social problems and challenges experienced by young people, compare welfare systems and how they are shaped by different cultural values, and discuss policy measures and welfare organization in a range of topical youth issues, including housing, poverty and inequality, work and education, and social connections in the "digital age."

This course develops and interprets the mathematical foundations of statistics including theories of stochastic variables, variable transformations, sample distribution, estimation, and hypothesis testing. 

Students explore calculus and probability theory necessary to analyze data and draw statistical inferences about the population. Thus, there is a major focus on deriving statistical estimators which are functions of data and a focus on studying their statistical properties. The course covers point and interval estimation methods which are widely used in academia and industry. After establishing statistical procedures to obtain inference about the population, we apply them to real problems by using Excel. If time permits, we will talk about linear regression models and Bayesian methods, which are both essential in quantitative finance, actuarial science, medical science, etc. Please note that the lectures are in-depth regarding mathematical proofs of theorems in the textbook; students should expect the class to be theoretical and rigorous. 

Prerequisites: An undergraduate level understanding of calculus and probability. Students should have a solid understanding of integral with one variable (calculus with two variables will be very helpful for advanced topics) and integral by parts.  

How did the cities in the Mediterranean world develop from the 4th to the 8th century? How did the arrival of Christianity and Islam influence the built environments, and how did the urban populations engage with the monuments of the pasts? This course uses texts and material culture (art, architecture and objects) to examine how people lived in, thought about and interacted with the urban space. Students begin with a critical examination of the models that scholars have used to explore the process of urban change. The course adopts a thematic approach by addressing the organization of physical space, examining the fabric of the late antique city, and exploring social and religious practices in the urban environment. Towards the end of the course, students return to the present to explore how archaeological practices and heritage management influences the view of the late antique city.

This course takes an interdisciplinary approach by introducing contemporary development issues in the Global South. It draws on literature from Political Science, Economics, History, and Sociology. The module explores and analyzes the intersection of politics, history, sociology, governance, and economics in relation to development in the Global South. It does so by investigating the influence of colonialism, governance, culture, institutions, conflicts, and external forces on the development trajectories in the Global South. Empirically, the course addresses important questions such as: What is the connection between colonial history and development in the Global South; Why have some countries within the Global South developed faster than others since the WWII; What has been the impact of institutions on development in the Global South; What has been the impact of natural resources on politics and development in the Global South; Are there forms of corruptions compatible with development in the Global South; What is the role of foreign aid and foreign direct investments in development, including the China-effect in the Global South? e module also introduces students to important political economy theories such as Neo-patrimonialism, Corruption and Clientelism, Developmental state, Decoloniality. It achieves all the above by offering space for a diversified body of literature and perspectives.
 

This course provides an introduction to research methodology with an emphasis on experimentation. The goal of this course is to teach students how to turn an idea into a good research question and then turn that question into rigorous research studies. To do so, we survey a variety of basic and advanced research techniques, including experimental, behavioral, observational, survey, and physiological methods. Students participate in discussions to understand the applications of each class topic to their research interests. Finally, students design their own studies that utilize methodological approaches.  

Topics include Having and testing ideas, Operationalization and issues of validity, Statistical power and correlational design: measurement construction, Experimental design, Repeated sampling, Survey, Unobtrusive measures and observation, Inducing and assessing emotions, Physiological methods, Dyadic and group designs, Meta-analysis and cross-cultural research, Presenting and publishing research. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The student is expected to understand the functions and processes of transformations within the media industries and the innovations connected to new digital technologies applied to creative industries.

The digital revolution has fundamentally reshaped our world, transforming how we create, distribute, and consume everything from news and entertainment to social connections. This course is an in-depth exploration of the economic principles and models that govern this new landscape. The course is focused on two of the most important media industries, music and video. Each of them is introduced and analyzed in the value chain, all the relevant typologies of players, and how the technological evolution and the changes in consumer habits are influencing the markets’ dynamics and their structure.

In this course, students design a social research project; understand the principles and assumptions associated with qualitative research; select and justify the most appropriate research method to answer particular research questions; discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various research methods; distinguish and apply suitable types of analysis to varying research designs; apply appropriate ethical standards to research design; and understand issues of power, inequality and exploitation in qualitative research.