National University of Singapore

This course offers a thematic overview of the frontiers of physics, with a central focus on light due to its ubiquitous presence in the development of modern physics. It covers the classical wave description of light, from the history of its discovery to the basic mathematical notions, the speed of light and special relativity, as well as light's impact on the development of quantum theory, highlighting some fundamental quantum processes involving one or two photons. It also explores light-based technologies and considers the historical and philosophical context of these scientific concepts, laying a solid foundation for further study in physics.

This course explores how games such as Ghost of Tsushima and Rise of the Rōnin have become one of the key vehicles through which people in Japan and across the world encounter the samurai and compares these depictions to historical realities. Students investigate how and why the samurai emerged as a distinct group, how they changed across Japan’s long history and the evolving and selective nature of samurai representations. As a final project, students collaborate to design their own samurai-themed video games.

This course aims to further develop students' communication skills on daily topics of general interests. It enhances students' socio-cultural awareness and enables them to communicate meaningfully in appropriate manner using more complex grammar structures including passive forms, embedded questions, and a limited set of polite expressions. Approximately 150 kanji will be introduced, and students will be able to write short coherent texts and understand various types of texts including some formal ones.

This course examines works of fiction that explain or dismiss the supernatural. Topics include David Hume’s infamous and controversial take on miracles, Sigmund Freud’s “uncanny,” Tzvetan Todorov’s “fantastic,” Alejo Carpentier’s idea of the “marvelous real,” etc. The course focuses on the historical ways of thinking about certain texts and a terminology for doing so, exploring the tension between what is real and unreal, what is natural and supernatural, in a variety of ways: for the readerly pleasures of terror and suspense; as allegories of personal or political or social trauma; as problematic racist and misogynistic symbols of feared “otherness”; and also as a site from which oppressed and marginalized communities can resist.

This course introduces students to political sociology which is broadly concerned with understanding such phenomena as power, state and society relations, and the nature and consequences of social conflict. The main topics are issues pertaining to modern society and capitalist development, referring to diverse cases from Western Europe to Southeast Asia. Students also examine the state, civil society and societal movements, including that of labor, and such contentious contemporary issues as economic globalization, US global hegemony, and terrorism.

This course builds on Stochastic Processes I and introduces an array of stochastic models with biomedical and other real world applications. Topics include Poisson process, compound Poisson process, marked Poisson process, point process, epidemic models, continuous time Markov chain, birth and death processes, martingale. The course requires students to take prerequisites.

This course addresses the design and performance tuning of database applications, focusing on relational database applications implemented with relational database management systems. Topics covered include normalization theory (functional, multi-valued and join dependency, normal forms, decomposition and synthesis methods), entity relationship approach and SQL tuning (performance evaluation, execution plan verification, indexing, de-normalization, code level and transactions tuning). Additional selected topics include the technologies, design and performance tuning of non-relational database applications (for instance, network and hierarchical models and nested relational model for an historical perspective, as well as XML and NoSQL systems for a modern perspective). The course requires students to take prerequisites.

This course equips students with the basic knowledge of contemporary economic thinking. It adheres closely to mainstream economics thinking, with particular attention to business applications. Students examine market equilibrium, competition, monopoly, price and non-price business strategies and the teaching methodology takes a fundamentally problem-solving approach. Models and analytical skills are introduced to solve business problems systematically and how information technology and the internet have made many changes in the way businesses are run.

Through exploring different areas within the Chinese language and cultural domain, including Chinese media, content creation, book publishing, and Chinese teaching, the course familiarizes students with today's volatile society and market, equipping them with the necessary skills to comprehend the dynamics of these industries within current political, social, cultural and linguistic contexts. Students gain a deeper understanding of the professional landscape and learn to combine their knowledge of Chinese language and culture with design thinking approaches for addressing opportunities and challenges they encounter in their future career. The course requires students to take prerequisites.