Computer Science

This course presents a conceptual and practical introduction to object-oriented programming and software engineering practices, exemplified by Java. As well as providing a grounding in the use of Java, the course will cover general principles of programming in imperative and object-oriented frameworks. Students learn to develop programs that support experimentation, simulation, and exploration in other parts of the Informatics curriculum (e.g. the capacity to implement, test, and observe a particular algorithm).

This course provides fundamental concepts in 3D modeling and animation. This course covers building or working with digital models, manipulating the models by means of computer deformation and animation, and using lighting and rendering techniques to create appealing scenes. Topics include coordinate spaces, transforms, 3D model representations, hierarchical structures, deformation, procedural modelling, particle systems, character animation, shading networks, lighting, and scripting concepts.

This course is an introduction to cognitive science. It provide a selective but representative overview of the subject, suitable for all interested students, including students on the cognitive science degrees and external students. The lecturing team presents a unified view of the field, based on a computational approach to analyzing cognition. The material is organized by cognitive function (e.g., language, vision), rather than by subdiscipline (e.g., psychology, neuroscience). The course covers language, vision, memory, control and action, and reasoning and generalization. All topics are presented from a computational point of view, and this perspective is reinforced by lab sessions in which students implement simple cognitive models.

This practical course offers an advanced study of programming skills and knowledge. It focuses on structured programming (with C) and object-oriented programming (with Java and Python). Assessment is based on developing two games: one in Java and the other in Python.

The course gives basic theoretical and practical knowledge about database systems and their organization. The emphasis is on relational databases. Topics include an introduction to database systems, basics of the relational model and the query language SQL, methods for data modelling and database design, E/R diagrams, and UML diagrams. Theory for the relational model: functional dependencies, normalization, relational algebra, stored procedures and triggers, and program and web interfaces to databases.  Previous knowledge with programming and Java  required.