Special Topics and Advanced Courses

Spring 2011

The following is a selection of special topics courses and advanced courses to be be offered by the UMBC CSEE Department for the Spring 2011 semester. Some could be cross listed with other departments and programs and some are offered for both undergraduate and graduate credit. Undergraduates can always enroll in a graduate course with the permission of the instructor. For more information on the content, scope or expected workload for any of these courses, please contact the instructor.

491: Computation, Complexity, and Emergence

Instructor: Prof. Marie desJardins, mariedj@cs.umbc.edu

This course will explore the nature and effects of complexity in natural and artificial systems. Complexity arises in these systems from many sources, including self-similarity, parallelism, recursion, and adaptation. Through these mechanisms, simple local behaviors and patterns can produce complex, intricate, and often fascinating emergent global behaviors. These phenomena arise in diverse areas, from biology (ant colonies, fish schools) to economics (stock market bubbles, opinion formation) to physics (galactic clusters, weather patterns). We will use Gary Flake's text, The Computational Beauty of Nature, as a starting point to investigate the sources and dynamic properties of complex systems.

Prerequisites: 341 CMSC Data Structures.

491: Advanced Computer Graphics

Instructor: Dr. Marc Olano, olano@cs.umbc.edu

[This course is a crosslisting of the graduate course, CMSC 635, and is designed for advanced undergraduates who have taken CMSC 435.]

Advanced image synthesis including graphics pipelines, shading, texturing, illumination, anti-aliasing, perception, image accuracy, image-based rendering, and non-photorealistic rendering. Through readings in the text and papers, students will learn classic and new techniques in computer graphics. In-class paper presentations provide practice in technical presentation. Assigned programming projects will help students gain graphics development experience. Unlike many classes, where there is one right way to solve each problem, students will have to make an individual choice among the several valid approaches covered in class for each programming assignment.

View Special Topics Courses from previous semesters.