Computer Science

This course provides an introduction to modern cryptography with a mathematical focus. It covers the basics of abstract algebra and number theory, and introduces cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, BlockChain, and FinTech. Topics include data security, stream ciphers, Data Encryption Standard (DES) and alternatives, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), block ciphers, public-key cryptography, RSA Cryptosystem, elliptic curve cryptosystems, digital signatures, hash functions, Message Authentication Codes (MACs), and key establishment.

This course covers the basics of programming with Python. The course uses Python to create some basic applications for Data Science use cases. The focus of this course is to learn how to program with Python. Hence, the course focuses the basics of the python programming language as well as ways to structure code or application repositories, debug implementations, and test the functionality of code and programs.

The undergraduate research program places students in research opportunites to conduct indpendent research under the supervision of a Chinese University of Hong Kong faculty. Students are expected to spend approximately 15 to 20 hours per week in independent research as well as attend lectures and labs.

This course teaches about bio-inspired algorithms for optimization and search problems. The algorithms are based on simulated evolution (including Genetic algorithms and Genetic programming), particle swarm optimization, ant colony optimization as well as systems made of membranes or biochemical reactions among molecules. These techniques are useful for searching very large spaces. For example, they can be used to search large parameter spaces in engineering design and spaces of possible schedules in scheduling. However, they can also be used to search for rules and rule sets, for data mining, for good feed-forward, or recurrent neural nets and so on. The idea of evolving, rather than designing, algorithms and controllers is especially appealing in AI. In a similar way it is tempting to use the intrinsic dynamics of real systems consisting e.g. of quadrillions of molecules to perform computations for us. The course includes technical discussions about the applicability and a number of practical applications of the algorithms.