English

This course offers an introduction to biochemistry, genetics, cell biology, early development, and neurobiology. It is an omnibus lecture consisting of multiple topics. The course teaches the basic concept of molecular and cellular biology, which is the basis of modern biology. Furthermore, it aims to understand the cell as the basic unit of life, analyzing its composition, functions, replication, and differentiation. 

How investors make decisions is determined by human emotion, biases, and cognitive limitations of the mind in processing and responding to information. This course looks at behavioral finance (how investors and markets behave) and experimental finance (principles of designing experiments in finance). It investigates and uses hands-on experiments for the following current topics and applications: nudging; explaining trading behavior (including the role of subjective expectations, overconfidence, risk appetite, emotions, and attention); exploring market bubbles; understanding bank runs (investigating causes, contagions, and preventions); finding the optimal financial communication to clients; and testing the value of financial advice.

Main topics include the design of parallel computers and parallel programming models; shared memory architecture; message passing and distributed memory architecture; parallel programming of computer clusters using MPI and multicore programming using OpenMP; parallel algorithms for sorting, searching, linear algebra, and various graph problems.

The aim of this lecture is to familiarize students with the various methods of media research (both quantitative and qualitative) and their theoretical backgrounds. Students may already know (and be using) some of the methods and theories, but this course aims to enlighten them of other approaches as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the various methods.

The course includes engagement with videos about media research methods as well as discussion of recent articles from media and communication journals. Students will be expected to introduce each article in class to facilitate the discussion. Students will gain an understanding of the different kinds of media research methods, as well as when, how and why they were developed. This is not a practical course so students will not be taught how to use particular methods, but this course should help them make a more informed choice of research methods for their own projects.

This course introduces students to the fundamental theory and practice of the social, political, legal, and ethical implications of computer technologies in Japan and abroad. Through in-class activities, group assignments, and reflection work, students will gain a basic understanding of essential concepts, modern and historical cases, and guidelines for best practice. Key concepts include AI bias; privacy in the social media era; personal data and digital behavior tracking; vectors of misinformation; stereotypes in design, digital inclusion, and more. The main objective is to inform and encourage critical thinking in students who will be playing key roles in deciding, creating, marketing, governing, and disseminating computer technologies in Japan.

Typically, the first class each week will introduce a new topic, with interactive activities (e.g., hands-on demos, brainstorming, quick activities), individual reflection, and group discussion. Students will be given a homework assignment to be completed before the second class that week. That second class will start with a discussion of the homework and introduce the next topic for that week. Students will be expected to complete readings from the text and/or other sources before the next week of classes. Attendance is taken randomly in every class.

This course examines normative and conceptual theories of politics from a global, transhistorical perspective. Students go beyond current theories of “decolonization” to consider how conversations about political life can be and have been transformed on the basis of distinctive concerns that emerge from specific times and places, marked by different levels of affluence, historical connections (or the lack thereof), textual or oral heritages, as well as the experience of imperialism. The course brings these diverse sources into a meaningful discussion about the political questions that they pose, both on their own and in comparison with others. 
 

The course covers the analytical tools and techniques that are necessary to examine a wide variety of fixed income securities and their derivatives. Fixed income securities are financial instruments whose cashflows are fixed and determined in advance. The instruments we cover include treasury and corporate bonds, bond futures, and interest rate swaps. After introducing the notion of yields, duration and convexity, and term structure models, we discuss the evaluation and the risk management of fixed income investments.

The aim of this course is to provide students with the introductory theory of fixed income securities and its applications to the investments. After completing the course, the students will: (i) Be familiar with the basic concepts such as yields, duration and convexity; (ii) Develop and apply the tools for pricing and hedging the fixed income securities; (iii) Understand the theoretical models for the pricing of fixed income securities, and (iv) Master the interest rate derivatives and its applications for hedging and risk management.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The course is centered on the relationships between Italian Literature and Visual Culture, from the second half of the twentieth century to the first decade of the new millennium, with a focus on photography, graphic novel, advertising, cinema, television, and videogames. Special attention is placed on the identification and analysis of the interactions between the different languages and their contextualization in Italy’s contemporary cultural environment. Course topics change yearly. The 2023 topic is: A Transmedia Longseller: IL NOME DELLA ROSA (THE NAME OF THE ROSE) by Umberto Eco.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The course introduces solution algorithms for nonlinear optimization problems that are the basis of many machine learning tools which find applications in telecommunications, electronics, automatic control, and decision support systems. The course is divided into two modules. The first module introduces solution algorithms for nonlinear optimization problems. Topics in this section include: nonlinear optimization: introduction to mathematical programming, models, and algorithms; nonlinear models: unconstrained optimization and constrained optimization; relaxations and penalty algorithms; convex optimization: Lagrangian relaxation and barrier algorithm; and applications of convex optimization to support vector machine and deep learning. The second module introduces basic machine learning techniques for classification and learning. Topics in this section include: algorithms for clustering and classification; neural networks; and laboratory activity on applications for machine learning algorithms arising in real applications.

With a growing number of unsustainable environmental, economic, and social trends, how can different actors work for sustainable alternatives? How can we develop capacities, strategies and tactics that achieve lasting and real changes in the local and global world? To achieve a more vibrant and participatory sustainable development there is a need for great changes, both on the systemic and individual level. These changes can take the form of fast-moving revolutions, but can also be more reformist initiatives as social entrepreneurship in businesses or taking part in local politics. In the course different actors and their strategies for change, globally and locally, are critiqued and analyzed through discussions with guest lecturers and in workshops with fellow students. In the last part of the course students work on a concrete change project, which builds on the discussions and insights gained during the first part of the course.