Technical University Berlin

This course provides an introduction into how automated and model-based problem solving works, as applied by machines, and the flaws these decisions might have. Students analyze examples from operations management considering supply chains, as well as production and service environments, in a quantitative manner. Students work with real world data, analyze, visualize, draw conclusions, and come up with optimal management decisions. Students are given a short introduction into analyzing and visualizing data using Excel spreadsheets, if time allows, using the R and Julia programming languages. The course instructs students on how to draw conclusions using different kinds of regression and smoothing methods on the data provided. To handle uncertainty in real world environments, students cover methods like simulation and different models of stochastic programming. This course is aimed at participants interested in quantitative modeling (including the math and probabilistic background) who are motivated to learn programming to apply the newly learned methods.

This course covers the following topics: the historical emergence of the landscape to its present appearance through the interaction of natural and anthropogenic factors; the impact of current land use and social processes on current and future landscape development and its impact on the natural balance and society; an overview of the broad semantic field of the terms landscape, cultural landscape, and natural landscape as well as their use in social and professional discussion. In general, the possibilities of environmental and landscape planning instruments are addressed, to react to the mentioned processes and to actively influence landscape development. Students learn about current challenges that play a key role in the further development of environmental planning as well as in the environmental assessment of projects and plans on the basis of current research approaches and results. The course content includes: the transformation of classical constellations in the human-environment-relationship and increasing also "green" sustainability competitions; important theoretical references without which the classification of good professional practice is hardly possible; how the effectiveness of environmental planning and assessment can be measured, how relevant methodological approaches can be designed (including strengths and weaknesses analyzes) and how the expected effects can be tracked; which manipulations can also be subject to environmental planning and testing and with which quality assurance approaches can be countered; the field of tension between established forms of participation to increased direct democratic participation and how this can be fruitfully taken up in planning and decision-making processes; the central issue of freedom of information and access to environmental data in their dimensions and practical implications, including the more difficult.

This lecture serves as an introduction to historical urban studies and its rich spectrum of topics. Using a wide array of questions as our starting point, the course investigates major themes and concepts in interdisciplinary metropolitan studies such as space and place, temporality and history, nature and the urban environment, urban typologies, urban development and ideology, infrastructures and networks. Each session is devoted to a specific question in order to examine primarily the historical but also the contemporary implications of distinct urban developments.

This course offers students the opportunity to envision future applications of biotechnology. The course covers various interaction and design techniques for working with living media. Five of the most used design techniques are explored in the context of bioluminescent bacteria and algae. Moreover, students learn, in a practical manner, how to culture these micro-organisms, and how to build tools that allow them to engage with the living organisms. Each week begins with theory (lectures), followed by a hands-on workshop and a creative session. The course concludes with a publication of the future pieces designed by the students. The lectures introduce the biological aspects of the target organisms (e.g., nutrients, metabolism, growth and reproduction), as well as various design techniques that enable interaction with the organisms through all five senses: visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile. During the workshops, the students practice how to successfully grow living organisms and how to build bio-reactors and measuring tools for maintaining a living culture. The creative sessions engage the students in designing and conceptualizing based on living media. Throughout the course, students have the opportunity to visit biodesign project spaces and studios in Berlin for inspiration.

The course explains what Virtual Reality is, history of how and why it was developed, and the potential future use of it. Exercise gaming(exergaming) is defined, and the benefits of the connection with Virtual Reality are covered. Students are taught how to develop a Virtual Reality game with Unity and then they engage in a practical workshop by creating a use case design, a game scenario, and then they prototype and develop the first game itself. They are required to perform a usability test and then learn how to analyze and incorporate the results into a next app version.

This course takes into account the fact that planning is always a communicative process. It takes place against the background of the legal and social requirements for public participation in planning as well as the need to create acceptance for planning by involving affected and interested actors. In addition to the discussion of these requirements as well as practical examples of communication and cooperation in the context of nature conservation and environmental planning, the following topics are treated: basics of communication, moderation, participation process including mediation, creativity techniques, target groups and target group analysis, presentation techniques, communication through text and public relations. Students learn about typical social decision-making situations in which the environmental assessment of projects and plans plays a key role. A constellation for a project or a plan is dealt with in more detail on the basis of a case study, which is usually heavily influenced by social discourse (previously, for example, a Brandenburg wind farm in the forest or the Elbe pit to the Port of Hamburg).With the methodical approach of the constellation analysis the case studies are analyzed according to: the participating actors and actor constellations; the legal or societal, economic regulations, norms, framework conditions, which play a direct or indirect role; the scope for decision-making resulting from the respective technological or project/plan-immanent approach; the respective implications of the environmental situation. Subsequently, the meaning of the respective elements in the planning processes as well as their relation to each other are analyzed. It is determined which of the aspects promotes or inhibits the environmental friendliness and social compatibility of decision-making processes. This addresses constellations of actors, norms and discourses, political decisions, social developments, technical and economic developments as well as anthropogenic changes of natural systems to assess the significance of these influences in the context of environmental planning and environmental auditing and to analyze their implications. Overall, the students realize that action in the context of planning, environmental testing and nature conservation can not only be based on a scientific-ecological basis, but that social and political aspects must also be taken into account.

This course offers an introduction to electrical engineering specifically for Electrical Engineering majors. Topics covered include: electrostatic field, charge, field, potential, voltage, polarization, capacity; stationary electric flow field, current, Ohm's law, resistance, power; stationary magnetic field: flow rate, inductance, permeability, magnetic circuits; induction, Inductance, Energy, Motion Induction, Resting Induction; simple networks: current and voltage sources, Kirchhoff sets, resistor networks; mathematical basics. vector calculus, integral calculus, orthogonal coordinate systems.

This course covers the climate system and the components of the climate system, the basics of climate dynamics, circulation in the atmosphere, climate classification and zones, hurricanes and tornadoes, city climate, paleo climate, climate induced natural disasters by orders of magnitude, urban habitats and their effect on climate, climate and its effect on urban habitats, evidence of climate change, and climate change in the past and the future.