Crosslisted with ANTH 258, ANTH 620

Most people’s information about the Past is drawn from coffee table picture books, popular movies, video games, documentaries about discoveries of “ancient, mysterious, and lost” civilizations, and tours often lead by guides of limited or even dubious credentials. How are these ideas presented, formed, and circulated? Who creates and selects the information presented in this diverse media? Are these presentations accurate? Do they promote or hurt scientific explanations?  Can the artistic, aesthetic, and scientific realms be bridged to effectively promote and interpret the past? How can modern technologies be applied to do a better job at presenting what is difficult to experience firsthand? This class will focus on case studies, critiques, and methods of how archaeology and the past are created, presented and used in movies, museums, games, the internet, and art.

Each year, the studio-seminar focuses on a project. In addition to exploring general concepts of archaeology and the media, students will work in teams to produce an interactive, digital media exhibit using the latest modeling visualization programs for presenting the sacred landscape of the Inca capital of Cuzco, Peru. Cuzco is one of the most important UNESCO World Heritage sites and visited by nearly a million tourists a year. Potential class projects include fly-throughs of architectural and landscape renderings, simulations of astronomy and cosmology, modeling of human behavior within architectural and landscape settings, and study artifacts in the Penn Museum.

Not offered in 2012-2013.

Introduction to Computer Programming is the first course in our series introducing students to computer science. In this class you will learn the fundamentals of computer programming in Java, with emphasis on applications in science and engineering. You will also learn about the broader field of computer science and algorithmic thinking, the fundamental approach that computer scientists take to solving problems.

Offered Fall 2012, Spring 2013, and Summer 2013.

Prerequisite(s): Some previous programming experience

A fast-paced introduction to the fundamental concepts of programming and software design.  This course assumes some previous programming experience, at the level of a high school computer science class or CIS110.  (If you got at least 4 in the AP Computer Science A or AB exam, you will do great.)  No specific programming language background is assumed: basic experience with any language (for instance Java, C, C++, VB, Python, Perl, or Scheme) is fine.  If you have never programmed before, you should take CIS 110 first.

Offered Fall 2012 and Spring 2013.

Prerequisite(s): CIS 120, CIS 160

This is a course about Algorithms and Data Structures using the JAVA programming language. We introduce the basic concepts about complexity of an algorithm and methods on how to compute the running time of algorithms. Then, we describe data structures like stacks, queues, maps, trees, and graphs, and we construct efficient algorithms based on these representations. The course builds upon existing implementations of basic data structures in JAVA and extends them for the structures like trees, studying the performance of operations on such structures, and their efficiency when used in real-world applications. A large project introducing students to the challenges of software engineering concludes the course.

Offered Fall 2012 and Spring 2013.

Have you ever wondered why sharing music and video generates such political and legal controversies?  Is information on your PC safe and should law enforcement be able to access information you enter on the Web?  Will new devices allow tracking of your every move and every purchase?

CIS 125 is focused on developing an understanding of existing and emerging technologies, along with the political, societal and economic impacts of those technologies.  The technologies are spread across a number of engineering areas and each of them raise issues that are of current concern or are likely to be a future issue.

Offered Fall 2012. May not be counted in the Engineering category.

Prerequisite(s): CIS 240

This course will provide an introduction to programming in C++ and is intended for students who already have some exposure to programming in another language such as Java. C++ provides the programmer with a greater level of control over machine resources and are commonly used in situations where low level access or performance are important. This course will illuminate the issues associated with programming at this level and will cover issues such as explicit memory management, pointers, the compilation process and debugging. The course will involve several programming projects which will provide students with the experience they need to program effectively in these languages. This course assumes programming experience equivalent to CIS 110, CIS 120 or ESE 112 as a prerequisite.

Offered Fall 2012.

Prerequisite(s): CIS 110or equivalent

Unix, in its many forms, runs much of the world's computer infrastructure, from cable modems and cellphones to the giant clusters that power Google and Amazon. This half-credit course provides a thorough introduction to Unix and Linux. Topics will range from critical basic skills such as examining and editing files, compiling programs and writing shell scripts, to higher level topics such as the architecture of Unix and its programming model.  The material learned is applicable to many classes, including CIS 240, CIS 331, CIS 341, CIS 371/372, and CIS 380. Prerequisite(s):  CIS 110

Offered Fall 2012.

Prerequisite(s): CIS 110

C# is the premier programming language for the .NET framework.  Over the last decade, the language has evolved to meet the needs of a variety of programming styles while supporting the ever-growing capabilities of the .NET runtime and libraries.  This course provides a thorough introduction to the C# language and the .NET framework, building on the skills gained in the introductory programming courses (CIS 110, CIS 120, or ESE 112).  In addition to providing the student with a solid background in C#, this course also explores topics that the .NET platform exposes such as object-oriented design, .NET runtime internals, and others based on class interest.  A series of short, weekly homework assignments reinforces the concepts introduced in class and a group-based final project of the students' design allows them to apply their C# knowledge toward a substantial problem.

Offered Spring 2013.

Haskell is a high-level, purely functional programming language with a strong static type system and elegant mathematical underpinnings, and is being increasingly used in industry by organizations such as Facebook, AT&T, and NASA.  In the first half of the course we will explore the joys of functional programming, using Haskell as a vehicle.  Warning: euphoric, mind-bending epiphanies may result!  The second half of the course will consist of case studies in fun and interesting applications of Haskell. Potential case study topics include automated randomized testing, concurrency, parallelism, software transactional memory, embedded real-time systems, and others as time and interest allow.  Evaluation will be based on regular homework assignments and class participation.

Offered Spring 2013.

Prerequisites: CIS 120 and CIS 240.  Students should come with a strong understanding of the fundamentals of programming, especially the C language and memory management.

This project-oriented course is centered around application development on the iOS platform, Apple’s mobile operating system developed for the iPhone and other Apple mobile devices. The first half of the course will involve fundamentals of iPhone development, where students learn the Objective-C programming language for iOS, an object-oriented C dialect with Smalltalk-style messaging, as well as efficient memory management and event-based programming on the iOS platform.  In the second half of the course, students work in teams to conceptualize and develop a significant iPhone application. Creativity and originality are highly encouraged!

Offered Fall 2012.

Prerequisites: CIS 120.

This course will teach the fundamentals of developing web applications using Ruby on Rails, a rapid-development web framework developed by 37signals. The topics covered will start with Ruby, the language that powers Rails, and include all topics required to develop and deploy production-ready web applications with Rails. During the entire course, students will be working on a project of their own choosing which will develop as they learn additional concepts. Upon completion of the course this application will be deployed and accessible to the public. Students will be encouraged to continue building their applications even after the course given support from the Philadelphia Ruby community.

Offered Fall 2012.

Prerequisite(s): CIS 120

This course is focused on programming the essential geometric and mathematical concepts underlying modern computer graphics. Using 2D and 3D implementations, it covers fundamental topics on scene graphs, computational geometry, graphics algorithms, and user interface design. Programming languages introduced include C++, OpenGL, and Qt.

Offered Spring 2013.

Prerequisite(s): CIS 110, CIS 120, CIS 121, CIS 277

This course will teach the fundamentals of Human-Computer Interaction (theory, design, implementation, experimentation, evaluation) in the context of current web interaction mechanisms, technologies, and applications. The course content will emphasize and leverage open source technologies to design, prototype, implement, and test user-interfaces and functionality in the context of today's most intriguing web trend, social networking.

Not offered 2012-2013 .

Prerequisite(s): CIS 240

This is the second computer organization course and focuses on computer hardware design. Topics covered are: (1) basic digital system design including finite state machines, (2) instruction set design and simple RISC assembly programming, (3) quantitative evaluation of computer performance, (4) circuits for integer and floating-point arithmetic, (5) datapath and control, (6) micro-programming, (7) pipelining, (8) storage hierarchy and virtual memory, (9) input/output, (10) different forms of parallelism including instruction level parallelism, data-level parallelism using both vectors and message-passing multi-processors, and thread-level parallelism using shared memory multiprocessors. Basic cache coherence and synchronization.

Offered Spring 2013.

Prerequisite(s): CIS 160, CIS 262, and Math 240.

The purpose of this course is to introduce undergraduate students in computer science and engineering to quantum computers (QC) and quantum information science (QIS). This course is meant primarily for juniors and seniors in CIS. No prior knowledge of quantum mechanics (QM) is assumed.

Offered Spring 2013.

Prerequisites: CIS 120 (CIS 121 corequisite), CIS 160

What is the “cloud”?  How do we build software systems and components that scale to millions of users and petabytes of data, and are “always available”?

In the modern Internet, virtually all large Web services run atop multiple geographically distributed data centers:  Google, Yahoo, Facebook, iTunes, Amazon, EBAY, Bing, etc.  Services must scale across thousands of machines, tolerate failures, and support thousands of concurrent requests.  Increasingly, the major providers (including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, HP, and IBM) are looking at “hosting” third-party applications in their data centers – forming so-called “cloud computing” services.

This course, aimed at a sophomore with exposure to basic programming within the context of a single machine, focuses on the issues and programming models related to such cloud and distributed data processing technologies:  how to think about dividing both data and work across large clusters of machines, both within and across data centers, how to design algorithms that do this parallel computation, and how to implement the algorithms in new frameworks such as MapReduce.

Offered:  Fall 2012.

CIS 430 - Intro to Human Language Technology

Prerequisite(s): CIS 121

This course is an automatic summarization that can help alleviate the information overload problem caused by the unprecedented amount of online textual information. The building of a summarization system requires good understanding of the properties of human language and the use of various natural language tools. In this course we will build several summarization systems of increasing complexity and sophistication. In the process we will learn about various natural language processing tools and resources such as part of speech tagging, chunking, parsing, Wordnet, and machine learning toolkits. We will also cover probability and statistics concepts used in summarization, but also applicable to a wide range of other language-related tasks.

Offered Fall 2012.

The goal of this course is to give students greater design and implementation experience in
embedded software development and to teach them how to model, design, verify, and validate safety critical systems
in a principled manner. Stdents will learn the principles, methods, and techniques for building life-critical embedded
systems, ranging from requirements and models to design, analysis, optimization, implementation, and validation.
Topics will include modeling and analysis methods and tools, real-time programming paradigms and languages,
distributed real-time systems, global time, time-triggered communications, assurance case, software architecture,
evidence-based certification, testing, verification, and validation. The course will include a series of projects that
implements life-critical embedded systems (e.g., pacemaker, infusion pumps, closed-loop medical devices).

Offered Fall 2012.

Prerequisite(s): CIS 120 and 121, and preferably CIS 277.

A thorough introduction to computer graphics techniques, covering primarily 3D modeling and image synthesis. Topics cover: geometric transformations, geometric algorithms, software systems (OpenGL), 3D object models (surface and volume), visible surface algorithms, image synthesis, shading and mapping, ray tracing, radiosity, global illumination, photon mapping, anti-aliasing and compositing.

Offered Fall 2012.

CIS 462 - Computer Animation

Prerequisite(s): Previous exposure to major concepts in linear algebra (i.e. vector matrix math), curves and surfaces, dynamical systems (e.g. 2nd order mass-spring-damper systems) and 3D computer graphics has also been assumed in the preparation of the course materials.  

This course covers core subject matter common to the fields of robotics, character animation and embodied intelligent agents. The intent of the course is to provide the student with a solid technical foundation for developing, animating and controlling articulated systems used in interactive computer games, virtual reality simulations and high-end animation applications. The course balances theory with practice by "looking under the hood" of current animation systems and authoring tools and exams the technologies and techniques used from both a computer science and engineering perspective. Topics covered include: geometric coordinate systems and transformations; quaternions; parametric curves and surfaces; forward and inverse kinematics; dynamic systems and control; computer simulation; keyframe, motion capture and procedural animation; behavior-based animation and control; facial animation; smart characters and intelligent agents.

Offered Fall 2012.

Prerequisite(s): CIS 380, some network programming experience is desirable.

Ever increasing availability of inexpensive processors connected by a communication network has motivated the development of numerous concepts and paradigms for distributed real-time embedded systems. The primary objectives of this course are to study the principles and concepts of real-time embedded computing and to provide students hands-on experience in developing embedded applications. This course covers the concepts and theory necessary to understand and program embedded real-time systems. This includes concepts and theory for real-time system design, analysis, and certification; programming and operating systems for embedded systems; and concepts, technologies, and protocols for distributed embedded real-time systems.

The course will cover a variety of existing systems and technologies, e.g., real-time kernels, virtual machines, architectural description language, formal method tools, synchronous and logical-time programming paradigms, and certification methods.  The course requires active student participation in-group projects.  Each group will be responsible for the design and implementation of a life-critical embedded system such as a pacemaker. The group projects are intended to complement the learning of principles and concepts through the application of theory in practice and the development of experimental skills in building embedded applications.

Not offered 2012-2013.

Prerequisite(s): Senior standing or permission of instructor.

The goal of this course is to provide an opportunity for seniors to define, design, and execute a project of your own choosing that demonstrates the technical skills and abilities that you have acquired during your 4 years as undergraduates. Evaluation is based on selecting an interesting topic, completing appropriate research on the state of the art in that area, communicating your objectives in writing and in presentations, accurately estimating what resources will be required to complete your chosen task, coding necessary functionality, and executing your plan.

Offered Fall 2012 and Spring 2013.

Prerequisite(s): CIS 121, 160, and 262 (or equivalents), plus substantial mathematical maturity (at least two additional undergraduate courses in math or theoretical CS).  Undergraduate-level coursework in programming languages, compilers, functional programming, or logic is helpful but not required.

This course introduces basic concepts and techniques in the foundational study of programming languages. The central theme is the view of programs and programming languages as mathematical objects for which precise claims may be made and proved. Particular topics include operational techniques for formal definition of language features, type systems and type safety properties, polymorphism, constructive logic, and the Coq proof assistant.  This course is appropriate as an upper-level undergraduate CIS elective. Undergraduates who have satisfied the prerequisites are welcome to enroll. No permission from the instructor is needed.

Prerequisite: Knowledge of computer organization and basic programming skills.

This course is an introductory graduate course on computer architecture with an emphasis on a quantitative approach to cost/performance design tradeoffs. The course covers the fundamentals of classical and modern uniprocessor design: performance and cost issues, instruction sets, pipelining, superscalar, out-of-order, and speculative execution mechanisms, caches, physical memory, virtual memory, and I/O. Other topics include: static scheduling, VLIW and EPIC, software speculation, long (SIMD) and short (multimedia) vector execution, multithreading, and an introduction to shared memory multiprocessors.

An investigation of paradigms for design and analysis of algorithms. The course will include dynamic programming, flows and combinatorial optimization algorithms, linear programming, randomization and a brief introduction to intractability and approximation algorithms.  The course will include other advanced topics, time permitting.

Prerequisite: Undergraduate-level knowledge of Operating Systems and Networking, programming experience (CIT 594 or equivalent).
This course provides an introduction to fundamental concepts of distributed systems, and the design principles for building large scale
computational systems. Topics covered include communication, concurrency, programming paradigms, naming, managing shared state, caching, synchronization, reaching agreement, fault tolerance, security, middleware, and distributed applications.

This course is appropriate as an upper-level undergraduate CIS elective. Undergraduates who have satisfied the prerequisites are welcome to enroll. No permission from the instructor is needed.

Prerequisite(s): Discrete Mathematics, Automata theory or Algorithms at the undergraduate level.

Review of regular and context-free languages and machine models. Turing machines and RAM models, Decidability, Halting problem, Reductions, Recursively enumerable sets, Universal TMs, Church/Turing thesis. Time and space complexity, hierarchy theorems, the complexity classes P, NP, PSPACE, L, NL, and co-NL. Reductions revisited, Cook-Levin Theorem, completeness, NL = co-NL. Advanced topics as time permits: Circuit complexity and parallel computation, randomized complexity, approximability, interaction and cryptography.

This course provides firm foundations in linear algebra and basic optimization techniques. Emphasis is placed on teaching methods and tools that are widely used in various areas of computer science. Both theoretical and algorithmic aspects will be discussed.

Prerequisite(s): Elementary probability, calculus, and linear algebra.  Basic programming experience.

This course covers the foundations of statistical machine learning. The focus is on probabilistic and statistical methods for prediction and clustering in high dimensions. Topics covered include SVMs and logistic regression, PCA and dimensionality reduction, and EM and Hidden Markov Models.

Prerequisites: Students are expected to have the following background: Basic algorithms, data structures and complexity (dynamic programming, queues, stacks, graphs, big-O, P/NP) ; Basic probability and statistics (random variables, standard distributions, simple regression); Basic linear algebra (matrices, vectors, norms, inverses); Reasonable programming skills.

Modern AI uses a collection of techniques from a number of fields in the design of intelligent systems:probability, statistics, logic, operations research, optimal control and economics, to name a few. This course covers basic modeling and algorithmic tools from these fields underlying current research and highlights their applications in computer vision, robotics, and natural language processing.

Prerequisites: CIS 371 or CIS 501, and significant programming  experience.

This course is a pragmatic examination of multicore programming and the hardware architecture of modern multicore processors. Unlike the sequential single-core processors of the past, utilizing a multicore processor requires programmers to identify parallelism and write explicitly parallel code. Topics covered include: the relevant architectural trends and aspects of multicores, approaches for writing multicore software by extracting data parallelism (vectors and SIMD), thread-level parallelism, and task-based parallelism, efficient synchronization, and program profiling and performance tuning. The course focuses primarily on mainstream shared-memory multicores with some coverage of graphics processing units (GPUs). Cluster-based supercomputing is not a focus of this course. Several programming assignments and a course project will provide students first-hand experience with programming, experimentally analyzing, and tuning multicore software. Students are expected to have a solid understanding of computer architecture and strong programming skills (including experience with C/C++).

The course covers methods used in computational biology, including the  statistical models and algorithms used and the biological problems  which they address. Students will learn how tools such as BLAST work,  and will use them to address real problems. The course will focus on  sequence analysis problems such as exon, motif and gene finding, and on comparative methods but will also cover gene expression and proteomics.

Prerequisites: This course assumes mathematical maturity, commensurate with either ESE 210 (Introduction to Dynamical Systems), or CIS 262 (Introduction to Theory of Computation). It is suitable for students who have an undergraduate degree in computer science, or computer engineering, or electrical engineering. It is also suitable for Penn undergraduates in CIS or CE as an upper-level elective.
This course is focused on principles underlying design and analysis of computational elements that interact with the physical environment. Increasingly, such embedded computers are everywhere, from smart cameras to medical devices to automobiles. While the classical theory of computation focuses on the function that a program computes, to understand embedded computation, we need to focus on the reactive nature of the interaction of a component with its environment via inputs and outputs, the continuous dynamics of the physical world, different ways of communication among components, and requirements concerning safety, timeliness, stability, and performance. Developing tools for approaching design, analysis, and implementation of embedded systems in a principled manner is an active research area. This course will attempt to give students a coherent introduction to this emerging area.

This course is appropriate as an upper-level undergraduate CIS elective. Undergraduates who have satisfied the prerequisites are welcome to enroll. No permission from the instructor is needed.

Prerequisite: CIS 240 Introduction to Computer Architecture or equivalent; ESE 350 Embedded Systems recommended

This course is focused on cyber physical systems with emphasis on real-time issues. Cyber phsyical systems are integrations of computation and communication with physical processes. Embedded computers monitor and control physical processes in real-time. As these embedded computers are increasingly networked, it is believed that there will be a revolutionary transformation. Just as personal computers have transformed from word processors to global communications devices for information gathering and sharing, embedded computers will change from small self-contained systems to cyber-physical systems by sensing, monitoring, controlling our physical environment.

The course is to study priciples, methods, and techiques for building high-assurance cyber-physical systems. Topics will include requirements capture and modeling, mental models, assurance cases, hazard analysis, real-time programming and communication, real-time scheduling and virtual machines, feedback control in computer systems, vertification and validation, and evidence-based certification. The course will include a series of projects that will implement safety-critical embedded systems (e.g., pacemaker, infusion pump).

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Prerequisites: CIS120 and CIS121, or equivalent; one of CIS 371, CIS 501, CIT 593, or equivalent; proficiency in both Java and C.

In this project-based course, students will explore techniques for creating applications for embedded and mobile systems, including model-driven development, testing and verification, software design, networking, and low-level performance tuning and analysis. This course incorporates topics from the domains of software engineering, compilers, operating systems, and computer architecture, and provides students with the foundation they will need for addressing the concerns of developing real-world embedded systems software.

Prerequisite: Four courses involving significant programming and a discrete mathematics or modern algebra course. Enrollment by permission of the instructor only.

The goals of this course are twofold: (1) to take good programmers and turn them into excellent ones, and (2) to introduce them to a range of modern software engineering practices, in particular those embodied in advanced functional programming languages.

Prerequisites; CIS 121 (Programming Languages and Techniques II), or equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

This course provides an introduction to fundamental concepts in the design and implementation of networked systems, their protocols, and applications.
Topics to be covered include: Internet architecture, network applications, addressing, routing, transport protocols, network security, and peer-to-peer networks. The course will involve written assignments, examinations, and programming assignments.. Students will work in teams to design and implement networked systems in layers, from routing protocols, transport protocols, to peer-to-peer networks.

Prerequisites; CIS 121 or CIT 594 or equivalent.

Achieving mastery in a new programming language requires more than just learning a new syntax; rather, different languages support different ways to think about solving problems. Not all programming languages are inherently procedural or object-oriented. The intent of this course is to provide a basic understanding of a wide variety of programming paradigms, such as logic programming, functional programming, concurrent programming, rule-based programming, and others.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with threads and concurrency; strong Java programming skills.

This course focuses on the challenges encountered in building Internet and web systems: scalability, interoperability (of data and code), security and fault tolerance, consistency models, and location of resources, services, and data. We will examine how XML standards enable information exchange; how web services support cross-platform interoperability (and what their limitations are); how to build high-performance application servers; how "cloud computing" services work; how to perform Akamai-like content distribution; and how to provide transaction support in distributed environments. We will study techniques for locating machines, resources, and data (including directory systems, information retrieval indexing, ranking, and web search); and we will investigate how different architectures support scalability (and the issues they face). We will also examine ideas that have been proposed for tomorrow's Web, and we will see some of the challenges, research directions, and potential pitfalls. An important goal of the course is not simply to discuss issues and solutions, but to provide hands-on experience with a substantial implementation project. This semester's project will be a peer-to-peer implementation of a Googe-style search engine, including distributed, scalable crawling; indexing with ranking; and even PageRank. As a side-effect of the material of this course, you will learn about some aspects of large-scale software development: assimilating large APIs, thinking about modularity, reading other people's code, managing versions, debugging, etc.

Prerequisite(s): Students should have a good knowledge of object-oriented programming (C++) and basic familiarity with linear algebra and physics. Some background in computer graphics is helpful.
This course introduces students to common physically based simulation techniques for animation of fluids and gases, rigid and deformable solids, cloth, explosions, fire, smoke, virtual characters, and other systems. Physically based simulation techniques allow for creation of extremely realistic special effects for movies, video games and surgical simulation systems.  We will learn state-of-the-art techniques that are commonly used in current special effects and animation studios and in video games community. To gain hands-on experience, students will implement basic simulators for several systems. The topics will include: Particle Systems, Mass spring systems, Deformable Solids & Fracture, Cloth, Explosions & Fire, Smoke, Fluids, Deformable active characters, Simulation and control of rigid bodies, Rigid body dynamics, Collision detection and handling, Simulation of articulated characters, Simulated characters in games. The course is appropriate for both upper level undergraduate and graduate students.

Prerequisite: CIS 460 or CIS 560, and familiarity with computer hardware/systems. The hardware/systems requirement may be met by CIS 501; or CIT 593 and 595; or CIS 240 (with CIS 371 recommended); or equivalent coursework.

This course examines the architecture and capabilities of modern GPUs. The graphics processing unit (GPU) has grown in power over recent years, to the point where many computations can be performed faster on the GPU than on a traditional CPU. GPUs have also become programmable, allowing them to be used for a diverse set of applications far removed from traditional graphics settings. Topics covered include architectural aspects of modern GPUs, with a special focus on their streaming parallel nature, writing programs on the GPU using high level languages like Cg and BrookGPU, and using the GPU for graphics and general purpose applications in the area of geometry modeling, physical simulation, scientific computing and games. Students are expected to have a basic understanding of computer architecture and graphics, and should be proficient in OpenGL and C/C++.

This course is appropriate as an upper-level undergraduate CIS elective. Undergraduates who have satisfied the prerequisites are welcome to enroll. No permission from the instructor is needed.

Prerequisites: CIS462/562: Computer Animation, CIS277 or CIS460/560: Computer Graphics

Co-requisites: CIS564: Computer Game Design and Development

The objective of the game design practicum is to provide students with hands on experience designing and developing 3D computer games. Working in teams of three or four, students will brainstorm an original game concept, write a formal game design document then develop a fully functional prototype consisting of a playable level of the game.  In addition to creation of original art and animation assets for the game, technical features to be designed and implemented include a novel game mechanic and/or user interaction model, game physics (i.e. particle systems and rigid body dynamics), character animation,  game AI (i.e. movement control, path planning, decision making, etc.), sound effects and background music, 2D graphical user interface (GUI) design and optional multiplayer networking capabilities.  Consistent with standard industry practices, game code and logic will be written using C++ and popular scripting languages such as Python and Lua.  State-of-the-art game and physics engine middleware also will be used to expose students to commercial-grade software, production methodologies and art asset pipelines.  As a result of their game development efforts, students will learn first hand about the creative process, design documentation, object-oriented software design and engineering, project management (including effective team collaboration and communication techniques),  design iteration through user feedback and play-testing, and most importantly, what makes a game fun to play. 

Prerequisites: CIT 591 and 593, or CIS 120, 121, and 240, or equivalent; proficiency in Java.

Writing a “program” is easy. Developing a “software product”, however, introduces numerous challenges that make it a much more difficult task. This course will look at how professional software engineers address those challenges, by investigating best practices from industry and emerging trends in software engineering research. Topics will focus on software maintenance issues, including: test case generation and test suite adequacy; code analysis; verification and model checking; debugging and fault localization; refactoring and regression testing; and software design and quality.

Prerequisite: A solid grasp of the fundamentals of linear algebra. Some knowledge of programming in C and/or Matlab.
An introduction to the problems of computer vision and other forms of machine perception that can be solved using geometrical approaches rather than statistical methods. Emphasis will be placed on both analytical and computational techniques. This course is designed to provide students with an exposure to the fundamental mathematical and algorithmic techniques that are used to tackle challenging image based modeling problems. The subject matter of this course finds application in the fields of Computer Vision, Computer Graphics and Robotics. Some of the topics to be covered include: Projective Geometry, Camera Calibration, Image Formation, Projective, Affine and Euclidean Transformations, Computational Stereopsis, and the recovery of 3D structure from multiple 2D images. This course will also explore various approaches to object recognition that make use of geometric techniques, these would include alignment based methods and techniques that exploit geometric invariants. In the assignments for this course, students will be able to apply the techniques to actual computer vision problems.

This course is appropriate as an upper-level undergraduate CIS elective. Undergraduates who have satisfied the prerequisites are welcome to enroll. No permission from the instructor is needed.

For students working on an advanced research leading to the completion of a master's thesis.

For master's students studying a specific advanced subject area in computer and information science. Involves coursework and class presentations. A CIS 599 course unit will invariably include formally gradable work comparable to that in a CIS 500-level course. Students should discuss with the faculty supervisor the scope of the Independent Study, expectations, work involved, etc. 

Prerequisite: CIS 500.
The details of this course change from year to year, but its purpose is to cover theoretical topics related to programming languages. Some central topics include: denotational vs operational semantics, domain theory and category theory, the lambda calculus, type theory (including recursive types, generics, type inference, and modules), logics of programs and associated completeness and decidability problems, specification languages, and models of concurrency. The course requires a degree of mathematical sophistication.

One-time course offerings of special interest.

Equivalent to a CIS 5XX-level course.

One-time course offerings of special interest.

Equivalent to a CIS seminar course. 

For doctoral students studying a specific advanced subject area in computer and information science. The Independent Study may involves coursework, presentations, and formally gradable work comparable to that in a CIS 500 or 600 level course. The Independent Study may also be used by doctoral students to explore research options with faculty, prior to determining a thesis topic. Students should discuss with the faculty supervisor the scope of the Independent Study, expectations, work involved, etc.   The Independent Study should not be used for ongoing research towards a thesis, for which the CIS 999 designation should be used.

For students pursuing advanced research to fulfil PhD dissertation requirements.

Prerequisite: none

Introduction to fundamental concepts of programming and computer science for students who have little or no experience in these areas. Principles of modern object-oriented programming languages: abstraction, types, polymorphism, encapsulation, and inheritance. Basic algorithmic techniques and informal complexity analysis. Graphical user interfaces. Substantial programming assignments.   This course is for students who do not have an academic background in computer science and who are not pursuing the Master's in Computer Information Technology and who are not graduate students in the CIS Department.  Students in SEAS graduate programs such as EE, TCOM, BIOT, MEAM, & MSE, as well as students outside SEAS, such as those in Cell & Molecular Biology (CAMB) and Genomics & Computational Biology (GCB) in the Medical School, as well as graduate students from other disciplines in the University will find this course useful.

This course provides an introduction to fundamental concepts of computer systems and computer architecture. You will learn the C programming language and an instruction set (machine language) as a basis for understanding how computers represent data, process information, and execute programs. The course also focuses on the Unix environment and includes a weekly hands-on lab session.

This course explores various topics in modern operating systems and computer architecture, including multithreading and synchronization, interprocess communication, memory management (caching, virtual memory, etc.), I/O, and security. We also look at techniques that are used to enhance processor performance at the hardware and software level. You will learn a variety of C and C++ programming techniques that will make you a better IT professional, and will get an understanding of what's happening “under the covers” in modern computer systems.

CIT 591 or equivalent and CIT 594 or equivalent. No prior experience with C# or .NET required.

Advanced object-oriented programming for Linux and Windows web servers, taught hands-on in a lab. Java and/or C# topics may include serialization, synchronization, reflection, advanced I/O, servlets and generic handlers, dependency injection, protecting against SQL injection, XML, Javascript, SOAP and REST web services, database access for web pages, and others. Substantial programming assignments. May be taken by MCIT and CIS graduate students.