Singapore

This course is a connected and comparative history of Asia before 1750 that introduces the region’s major political, economic, and intellectual contours prior to British colonization. The course focuses on tracing the history of premodern Asia through three types of transregional cultural formation: large empires, trading zones, and religious ecumene. The course explores and discusses how these formations unfolded across Central and Eastern Asia and South and Southeast Asia and uses them as a lens for thinking critically about the scope of Asia as a geographical, political, economic, and cultural category in premodern history.

This course introduces students to contemporary plant biology. It focuses on the flowering plants (angiosperms), one of the most successful plant groups that sustains all life on earth, and examines how they are organized, grow, and respond to the environment. A major theme the course highlights is that plant growth is highly dynamic – plants control growth and development through integrating intrinsic and external signals to best adapt to the changing surroundings. The concepts and techniques of gene manipulation for studying plants, as well as their applications in plant biotechnology, are also discussed.

The course introduces the basic concepts in search and knowledge representation as well as several sub-areas of artificial intelligence. It focuses on covering the essential concepts in AI. The course covers Turing test, blind search, iterative deepening, production systems, heuristic search, A* algorithm, minimax and alpha-beta procedures, predicate and first-order logic, resolution refutation, non-monotonic reasoning, assumption-based truth maintenance systems, inheritance hierarchies, the frame problem, certainly factors, Bayes' rule, frames and semantic nets, planning, learning, natural language, vision, and expert systems and LISP.

This course introduces the language and culture of the Hispanic world. This course is designed to help students develop the four linguistic skills in Spanish as well as to expand their cultural competency. The course focuses on the acquisition of basic structures in present tense, which is developed and reinforced in subsequent courses. This course is meant for students with no prior knowledge of the target language.

This course introduces the science of ecology and its role in understanding environmental processes. The course covers both the major concepts and their real-world applications. Topics include models in ecology, organisms in their environment, evolution and extinction, life history strategies, population biology, ecological interactions, community ecology, ecological energetics, nutrient cycling, and landscape ecology.

This course introduces information technologies (IT) in organizations and the interplay between IT, work, management, and organizations. The course examines the impacts of modern IT and the related artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on knowledge workers, teamwork, work design, management practices, and the organization. The course discusses the multifaceted roles IT can play to support communication, collaboration, and organizational improvements in operations, planning, and decision making. Students learn to apply strategic thinking to identify opportunities for IT-enabled innovations and issues involving information systems (IS) adoption and deployment.

This course explores how our brain can affect our behavior. It introduces how classical and modern neuroscience research tools are used to investigate the workings of the brain. The course examines the ethical and social issues raised by recent developments in neuroscience research. In addition, this module is expected to enable students to develop critical skills in analyzing and writing about controversial issues concerning neuroscience and society.

This course explores key contemporary complexities and future urban issues faced by evolving cities. By drawing on the expertise of leading urban professionals, academics, and researchers, students learn to critically analyze and discuss specific topics relating to current urban issues, debates, and technologies. Each run of the course focuses on a topical study or thematic analysis of specific urban issues to provide greater insights and highlight current cutting-edge research and technologies in the field. Students learn, interact, and collaborate with these leading professionals to stay abreast of the latest trends, practices, and challenges to remain informed and adaptable in the ever-changing environment of cities.

This course explores the ways in which Singapore films constitute a national cinema by considering the history and development of local film production as well as closely examining how individual films perform and engage the notion of a Singapore identity. Through a group creative project, students are challenged to make their own Singapore film that involves the practical application of critical ideas and enables students to participate in the ways that a national cinema performs and functions. The films studied may involve mature content and have varied film ratings.

Businesses have been revolutionized with the introduction of new information technologies (IT) and artificial intelligence (AI). This course provides an understanding of the key economic concepts to operate and be a successful IT-enabled and/or AI-driven business and to impart an appreciation of the economic impacts of IT and AI at the firm, market, and societal levels. The course discusses competitive market analysis, IT-related economic issues of pricing and bundling, information asymmetry and uncertainty, as well as AI-related topics of automated decision, and economic impacts of AI technologies.