University of Edinburgh

This course introduces the discipline of Bioinformatics to students from both physical science and life science backgrounds. It introduces key biological concepts including the main types of molecules (DNA, RNA, and protein) as well as the cell biological processes involved in their regulation and function in biological systems. Students learn to work with and analyze biological sequences through biological sequence databases, process automation, algorithms, and tools to allow pairwise and multiple sequence alignment, as well as approaches using high-throughput next-generation sequence data.

This course provides students with the conceptual knowledge and practical skills to understand comparative politics in a globalized world. It introduces the comparative method, and applies that method to core questions and issues of comparative and international politics. These questions cover political regimes, state formation and institutions, political and economic development, democracy, order and violence. By the end of the course students are able to: Recognize the diversity of political systems around the world and their key components (including institutions, actors, and culture); Explain why political systems differ, and how those differences shape domestic and global politics; Understand the logic of the comparative method and be able to apply it to real world events and outcomes; Assess the value of comparative political science for understanding current events and global relations; Effectively communicate comparative political analysis in written and oral forms.

This innovative course introduces students to important and emerging issues in urban cultures and societies in the opening decades of the 21st century. At its core, it explores the interaction between culture, space, and people.  To do so, the course explores developments in three important global cities: Seoul, Shanghai, and Edinburgh. Students engage with both textual and non-textual materials, including films, TV shows, music, webtoons, and design. Although the course is built round the cases of Seoul, Shanghai, and Edinburgh students learn how to situate the cases in a broader comparative perspective, within Asia and in Europe. This course draws on conceptual and analytical tools from the humanities and social sciences. The course introduces students to key concepts in urban studies. Next, it familiarizes them with a select number of contemporary developments in Seoul, Shanghai, and Edinburgh. The later part of the course is more practice-oriented, as students carry out a small research project in the city of Edinburgh, before reflecting on the possible links with the other cities.

A mobile robot is a machine controlled by software that uses sensors and other technology to identify its surroundings and move around its environment. This course provides a general understanding of mobile robotics and related concepts, covering topics such as sensing, computer vision (i.e., visual perception), state estimation (e.g., localization and mapping), and motion planning. The emphasis is on algorithms, probabilistic reasoning, optimization, inference mechanisms, and behavior strategies, as opposed to electromechanical systems design. Practically useful tools and simulators for developing real robotic systems are also covered in this course.