University of Copenhagen

This course offers a study of the classification and morphology of marine, freshwater, and terrestrial animals, and consists of lectures and laboratory practicals. Students dissect and demonstrate representatives from most animal phyla with emphasis on their morphology, development, and general biology. During the laboratory practicals, students utilize modern morphological instruments and interpret results from videos of live animals and from electron and confocal microcopy. The lectures review topics including embryology, larval development, life cycles, body skeletons, motility, reproduction, and managing of body functions in general. The course utilizes specimens in the Natural History Museum collections. This course requires a strong background in biology, zoology, or a relevant field as a prerequisite.

This course focuses on the use of microorganisms in biotechnological processes. This includes prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms as factories of industrial enzymes, bioenergy, and pharmaceuticals, as well as the use of microorganisms to improve food and to remove contaminants from water and soil. It introduces the methods used to improve microbial strains, products, and processes in biotechnology. The course gives students insight into and understanding of areas of biotechnology research and provides background information on the molecular biological methods. In addition, students develop and pitch their own idea relevant to microbial biotechnology.

This course is a study of countryside planning and the contemporary issues, functions, and conflicts of different landscapes, ranging from traditional rural to peri-urban settings. The course examines cultural landscapes, local, national and international policy, planning processes, governance, actor analysis, EU physical planning approaches, landscape analysis and multifunctional landscapes, nature and water management, recreation, cultural heritage, national parks, rural development programs, agricultural diversification and social farming, peri-urban agriculture, counter-urbanization, and rural-urban relationships.

This course interrogates the intersection of environmental studies with ethical and political theories of justice. It engages with issues of environmental justice and injustice on a global scale and provides special consideration to the intersecting dimensions of race, ethnicity, class, and gender as well as global economic inequality and settler colonialism. An important dimension of the course is learning about the understandings of environment and claims to justice mobilized by social movements seeking to address environmental injustice. Beginning with an introduction to theories of environment, justice, and scientific knowledge production and continuing with an investigation of themes in environmental in/justice, the course considers how capital flows and the distribution of power shape who has access to the necessities of life and to clean environments and who does not, and how the world itself is being radically altered by human action. Finally, it considers what ethical and political obligations humans may have to more-than-human beings, and how the struggle to protect these beings is often tied up with the social justice struggles of marginalized human groups. The course continually returns to the question of how plural understandings of justice and the environment underwrite or challenge environmental destruction and socio-economic inequality and examines the social movements locally and globally that are challenging and, in some cases, transforming such inequality. Through readings, in-class discussions, guest lectures, selected films and documentaries, and a final project, students reflect critically on the root causes of the uneven distribution of the basic resources necessary for life.

This course introduces the fundamental principles behind methods in pharmaceutical modeling and provides hands-on experience with methods used in academia and industry. It focuses on mathematical models and computer programming for a quantitative understanding of diverse pharmaceutically relevant problems. This includes models at different scales, both for molecular and particle level properties, interactions between molecules and particles, and their interactions with the organism. The course uses practical examples to provide the theory behind methods used for pharmaceutical modeling and simulation of system behavior. It begins with a introduction and refresher of fundamental mathematical tools, then applies and modifies computer scripts that model the pharmaceutical systems, and discusses these models in relation to the literature.

This course presents an understanding of how the complexity of matter has evolved from its simplest forms during Big Bang to the rise of intelligent life that is capable of understanding its own place in this fabulous development. Topics include the formation of the elements during Big Bang, supernovae, and red giants; dust formation, stellar winds, and the re-circulation of cosmic material; the formation of the solar system; planets around other stars; the physical-chemical basis for life; the rise and development of life on the Earth; conditions for finding life beyond Earth; and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.