National University of Singapore

This course provides an appreciation of the use of drugs in relation to the cultural and social environment of societies past and present. How drugs are employed today, watershed "drug" discoveries and their impact on society (for example contraceptives, antibiotics, vaccines, psychopharmacological agents), the issue of drug use in sports, "social" drugs and the "pill for every ill" syndrome will be discussed. Particular attention is paid to “controversial” drug-related societal issues within each topic. For example, the role of pharmaceutical industry will be examined to determine if the tendency to “bash” big Pharma is justified or if decriminalization of drug use will be a more effective means of curtailing drug abuse.

Few things are more dramatic than the collapse of a political system, whether through violent conflict or peaceful negotiations. Explaining why regimes break down and why new ones emerge are among the most important questions in political science. This course looks at the conditions under which regimes unravel, focusing on the breakdown of democratic institutions, the rise of populism, and conversely, transitions away from various types of authoritarian regime, using case studies from Southeast Asia. 

Due to advances in imaging, genetics, and sequencing over the past 30 years, there has been an explosion in the amount of quantitative biological data. This course introduces mathematical and physical concepts and methods necessary for understanding and analyzing quantitative biological data. It uses systems from across biology, from photosynthesis to human sleep cycles, to demonstrate the power and applicability of these approaches.

This course introduces the making of modern Southeast Asia from the late colonial era through the Cold War through fiction and film. Fiction and films provide a means to access political history in an engaging way and for what they reveal about how outsiders as well as Southeast Asians themselves came to view the region. The course covers Southeast Asia integration into the global capitalist economy, national awakenings, colonial anxieties in the 1930s, World War II and the Japanese occupation, the Cold War and neocolonialism, the Vietnam War, and the promise of modernity.

This course introduces economic analysis of the government sector using microeconomic tools. It covers principles and policies concerning both tax and expenditure and analyzes the effects of fiscal actions on efficiency in resource allocation and on equity. The course also examines analytical tools and policy applications particularly as they relate to budgetary policies in Singapore. 

This course introduces the issues of digital ethics and data privacy faced by individuals and organizations. It covers the ethical principles governing the behaviors and beliefs about how we use technology, and how we collect and process personal information in a manner that aligns with individual and organizational expectations for security and confidentiality. It addresses challenges in balancing technological desirability with social desirability while developing digital products and services, including Professional Ethics, Computing for Social Good, Digital Ethics by Design, Digital Intellectual Property Rights, Automation and Autonomous Systems, and Artificial Intelligence Ethics and Governance.

This course examines the evolving economic linkages between Singapore and India in a post-Cold War setting and attempts to explain the factors that have led to their enhanced economic collaboration. It uses concepts such as economic regionalism, Singapore's regionalization policy, and India's ''Look East'' policies to explain the confluence of national interests that has enhanced bilateral economic ties between both countries. In particular, it examines bilateral collaboration in infrastructure developments such as ports and telecommunications and service industries such as airline and tourism to explain the successes and problems of bilateral economic collaboration. 

This course introduces how games serve as a medium for communicating philosophical ideas. The course answers questions such as what is freedom? Are moral dilemmas possible? and What is reality? Equally, philosophy can shed light on the nature of games. For instance, can games be art? What is skill and luck? What is the nature of artificial intelligence? This course serves to explore some of these issues, using games and philosophical texts in tandem to explore various issues about what it is to be a human, and what it is to be a gamer.

Epidemiology is the study of the patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in defined human populations. It is the cornerstone of public health, and provides evidence that impact on both personal decisions about our lives and public policy for preventing and controlling diseases in the population. This module course covers key concepts in epidemiology, including how we measure disease burden, how we study risk factors for disease, how we evaluate interventions like new vaccines and therapies, and how to critically appraise research evidence to inform public health policy.

This course surveys the history of Indian philosophy both classical and modern. The course begins with lectures on the Rig Veda and the Upanishads, followed by a presentation of the main metaphysical and epistemological doctrines of some of the major schools of classical Indian philosophy such as Vedanta, Samkhya, Nyaya, Jainism, and Buddhism. The course concludes by considering the philosophical contributions of some of the architects of modern India such as Rammohan Ray, Rabindrananth Tagore, and Mohandas Gandhi.