Academic Foundation

University of Toronto, Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering

• CIV100 Mechanics – The principles of statics are applied to composition and resolution of forces, moments and couples. The equilibrium states of structures are examined. Throughout, the free body diagram concept is emphasized. Vector algebra is used where it is most useful, and stress blocks are introduced. Shear force diagrams, bending moment diagrams and stress-strain relationships for materials are discussed. Stress and deformation in axially loaded members and flexural members (beams) are also covered. —foundational for geospatial/physical simulations.
• APS106 Fundamentals of Computer Programming – An introduction to computer systems and software. Topics include the representation of information, algorithms, programming languages, operating systems and software engineering. Emphasis is on the design of algorithms and their implementation in software. Students will develop a competency in the Python programming language. Laboratory exercises will explore the concepts of both Structure-based and Object-Oriented programming using examples drawn from mathematics and engineering applications.
• CHE112 Physical Chemistry – A course in physical chemistry. Topics discussed include systems and their states, stoichiometry, the properties of gases, the laws of chemical thermodynamics (calculations involving internal energy, enthalpy, free energy, and entropy), phase equilibrium, chemical equilibrium, ionic equilibrium, acids and bases, solutions, colligative properties, electrochemistry, and corrosion.
• CHE113 Concepts in Chemical Engineering – Introduces key concepts underpinning the discipline: thermodynamics (driving force); transport phenomena (heat, mass, momentum); reaction kinetics (rates); and unit operations. Topics include the control volume approach; material and energy balances; flux; and reaction yield and conversion, with applications to batch and continuous systems. Introduces bioenergetics, electrochemical reactions, and connections between foundational concepts at various scales.
• MSE120 Materials Engineering, Processing and Application – A design-led approach to materials science. Application areas like stiffness, fracture, and strength-limited design guide investigations into the processing-structure-properties-paradigm. Topics include material property charts, CAD materials selection, crystallography, plasticity, cyclic loading, fatigue, friction, and thermal/electrical/optical properties. —cross-over to computational modeling.
• MAT186 Calculus I – Topics include: limits and continuity; differentiation; applications of the derivative - related rates problems, curve sketching, optimization problems, L'Hopital's rule; definite and indefinite integrals; the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus; applications of integration in geometry, mechanics and other engineering problems.
• MAT187 Calculus II – Topics include: techniques of integration, an introduction to mathematical modeling with differential equations, infinite sequences and series, Taylor series, parametric and polar curves, and application to mechanics and other engineering problems.
• MAT188 Linear Algebra – This course covers systems of linear equations and Gaussian elimination; vectors in Rn, independent sets and spanning sets; linear transformations, matrices, inverses; subspaces in Rn, basis and dimension; determinants; eigenvalues and diagonalization; systems of differential equations; dot products and orthogonal sets in Rn; projections and the Gram-Schmidt process; least squares approximation. —core for ML models like CNNs.
• CIV201 Introduction to Civil Engineering – A three-day field-based course held immediately after Labour Day. Focuses on practical applications and site work. Results are used in computing the Second Year Fall Session average.
• CIV209 Civil Engineering Materials – Deals with the basic principles necessary for the use and selection of materials used in Civil Engineering and points out the significance of these in practice. Fundamentals which provide a common basis for the properties of various materials are stressed.
• CME210 Solid Mechanics I – An introduction to the mechanics of deformable bodies. General biaxial and triaxial stress conditions in continua are studied, as are elastic stress, strain and deformation relations for members subjected to axial load, bending and shear. Covers moment-area theorems, Mohr's circle, and stability.
• CIV214 Structural Analysis I – Reviews the analysis of statically determinate structures, shear/moment diagrams for beams and frames, influence lines, cables and fatigue. Virtual work principles are applied to structural systems. Includes an introduction to indeterminate structures and displacement methods like moment distribution. —ties to system modeling.
• CIV220 Urban Engineering Ecology – Basic concepts of ecology within urban environments. Topics include predator-prey/competition processes, thermodynamic basis for food chains, biogeochemical cycles, industrial ecology, life cycle assessment, urban metabolism, and wastewater treatment impacts.
• CIV235 Civil Engineering Graphics – Fluency in graphical communication using freehand sketching, drafting equipment, and CAD. Topics include descriptive geometry, spatial visualization, orthographic views, sectional views, and dimensioning within the design process.
• CIV250 Hydraulics and Hydrology – Examines precipitation, evapotranspiration, and runoff. Discusses water sustainability, climate change impacts, and hydrologic modeling (unit hydrograph, Rational method). Principles of open channel hydraulics include energy/momentum principles, transitions, and hydraulic jumps.
• CME261 Engineering Mathematics I – Deals with numerical methods (linear/non-linear equations, interpolation, integration) and analytical calculus (multiple integrals, vector analysis). Emphasis is on problem formulation, algorithm design, and the interrelationship between analytical and numerical methods.
• CME262 Engineering Mathematics II – Continues numerical and analytical methods for civil engineering. Focuses on ordinary differential equations, numerical solutions for partial differential equations, and an introduction to optimization.
• CME263 Probability Theory for Civil and Mineral Engineers – Probability theory in engineering systems, including conditional probability and Bayes' theorem. Covers common single/multivariate distributions, mathematical expectation, independence, and parameter estimation.
• CME270 Fluid Mechanics I – Fluid and flow characteristics, statics, and one-dimensional flow (mass, energy, momentum). Includes dimensional analysis, similitude, laminar/turbulent flow, boundary layers, and flow in closed conduits and open channels. —relevant to energy systems optimization.
• CIV280 Management of Construction – Management of construction projects: industry nature, delivery alternatives, legal/ethical considerations, Safety Act, labor relations, contracts, risk distribution, scheduling, estimating, and dispute resolution.
• CIV282 Engineering Communications I – Develops communication skills for foundational civil engineering. Targets oral presentation, logical argument, document development, sentence control, and visual design.
• CIV300 Terrestrial Energy Systems – Explores earth systems for energy transformation, storage and transport (geological, hydrological, biological, oceanographic). Considers solar energy redistribution, atmospheric systems, ocean currents, and fossil fuel accumulation.
• CIV312 Steel and Timber Design – Introduction to structural engineering design including safety, reliability, and performance factors. Covers steel design (tension/compression members, beams, connections) and timber design.
• CIV313 Reinforced Concrete I – Design of reinforced concrete structures, concrete technology, and reinforcing steel. Analysis of members under axial load, flexure, and shear. Includes a major team design project for a structural system (e.g., pedestrian bridge).
• CME321 Geotechnical Engineering I – Introduction to soil behaviour, effective stress, groundwater flow, consolidation, and shear strength. Includes field characterization (SPT/CPT) and slope stability analysis of tailings dams.
• CIV324 Geotechnical Engineering II – Practical applications of soil mechanics, geotechnical structures, classification, compaction, and engineering of water in ground. Covers retaining structures, settlements, and shallow footings.
• CIV331 Transport I - Introduction to Urban Transportation Systems – Fundamentals of transportation planning, public transit, traffic engineering, geometric design, and pavement design. Addresses economic, social, and environmental impacts.
• CIV332 Transport II - Performance – Performance analysis of congested traffic networks. Topics include demand/supply equilibrium, traffic flow theory, shockwaves, highway capacity, queuing analysis, and signal control.
• CIV340 Municipal Engineering – Municipal services for water supply and wastewater disposal. Covers source development, storage, distribution networks, sewer hydraulics, storm water management, and network optimization.
• CIV342 Water and Wastewater Treatment Processes – Principles of design and operation for water and wastewater facilities, including physical, chemical, and biological unit operations and sludge processing.
• CME368 Engineering Economics and Decision Making – Incorporation of economic considerations in decision making. Topics include time value of money, microeconomics, risk/uncertainty, and benefit-cost analysis for social/environmental impacts.
• CIV375 Building Science – Fundamentals of heat transfer, moisture diffusion, and air movement. Principles of sustainable building enclosure design for walls and roofs using case studies and laboratory investigations.
• CIV380 Sustainable Energy Systems – Energy demand and supply scales, major technologies and their quantitative evaluation, economics, and environmental impacts. Focuses on life cycle assessment and energy alternatives in a carbon-constrained economy.
• CME499 Individual Project – An individual research or design project supervised by faculty. Culminates in a final design report or thesis and an oral presentation.
• APS502 Financial Engineering – Focuses on capital budgeting, financial optimization, and project evaluation models (linear, non-linear, integer programming). Relevant for engineering and commercial settings. —basis for ROI frameworks.
• APS510 Innovative Technologies and Organizations in Global Energy Systems – Examines global electricity generation, end use, and infrastructure. Discusses technology deployment, entrepreneurship, and sustainability in developed and rapidly developing economies.
• APS520 Technology, Engineering and Global Development – Role of engineering in global development (energy, ICT, water, healthcare). Covers theories of aid, emerging models (microfinance, social venture capital), and technology diffusion.
• CIV531 Transport Planning – Design and execution of urban transportation planning studies. Covers travel demand modelling, environmental impact analysis, and designing for long-run sustainability.
• CIV576 Sustainable Buildings – Evaluation of thermal envelopes, HVAC, and lighting to reduce net energy consumption. Includes life-cycle assessment, LEED design, natural ventilation, and solar/geothermal energy.

National University of Singapore (NUS), School of Computing (SoC)

• IS5004 Enterprise Architecture – Enterprise architecture is a necessary element in business planning, strategy and execution. It is a conceptual blueprint that defines the IT structure and operation of business. This course provides a broad yet in-depth understanding of enterprise architecture design and implementation. The course covers a comprehensive topics of enterprise architecture, including methods and frameworks, governance, description language, modelling, viewpoints and visualisations, and analysis of architecture. —used in enterprise data architecture.
• CS5421 Database Design & Tuning – This course addresses the design and performance tuning of database applications. The syllabus focuses on relational database applications implemented with relational database management systems. Topics covered include normalisation theory (functional, multi-valued and join dependency, normal forms, decomposition and synthesis methods), entity relationship approach and SQL tuning (performance evaluation, execution plan verification, indexing, de-normalization, code level and transactions tuning). The syllabus optionally includes selected topics in the technologies, design and performance tuning of nonrelational database applications (for instance, network and hierarchical models and nested relational model for an historical perspective, as well as XML and NoSQL systems for a modern perspective). —applied in PostgreSQL compliance layers.
• CS5233 Simulation & Modelling Techniques – This course aims to provide students with a working knowledge of applying simulation techniques to model, simulate and study complex systems. It covers techniques in simulation model design, model execution, and model analysis. Students will have hands-on experience using a simulation package. The course will also introduce concepts of parallel and distributed simulation, and high level architecture.
• CS5224 Cloud Computing – Distributed systems architecture, virtualization, and resource management. Deep dive into MapReduce and Spark programming models.
• CS4226 Internet Architecture – This course covers advanced networking concepts pertaining to the modern Internet architecture and applications. It covers four main topics: (i) network performance modeling and analysis (throughput, delay, Little’s Law and M/M/1 queuing, Jackson networks, and resource allocation); (ii) software defined networking (programmable control and data planes, OpenFlow, P4); (iii) inter-domain routing and policies (AS interconnection, BGP); and (iv) peer-to-peer network architectures and design principles (BitTorrent, DHTs). —informs scalable API designs.
• CS5229 Advanced Computer Networks – This course covers advanced fundamental principles of computer networks and techniques for networking. The goal of this course is to teach these fundamentals/techniques that will remain important and relevant regardless of the hot topics in networks and networking. Briefly, the topics include advanced network architecture and design principles, protocol mechanisms, implementation principles and software engineering practices, network algorithmic, network simulation techniques and tools, performance analysis and measurement, and protocol specification/verification techniques.
• CS5476 IoT Security – With the advent of the Internet-of-Things, the computing paradigm is quickly changing from the traditional cyber domain to cyber-physical domain. This is made possible from devices that are equipped with sensors and actuators that interact with the physical world. In this course, we will investigate how such sensing systems affect the notion of computer security. We will also explore the state-of-the-art research in the areas of sensing systems and how they can provide benefits to the security of the Internet-ofThings. Furthermore, this course will also investigate how an attacker may compromise the sensing information to exploit security vulnerabilities in these systems. —relevant to secure AI workflows.
• CS5228 Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining – This course introduces fundamental principles behind data mining and efficient techniques for mining large databases. It provides an overview of the algorithmic aspect of data mining: its efficiency (high-dimensional database indexing, OLAP, data reduction, compression techniques) and effectiveness (machine learning involving greedy search, branch and bound, stochastic search, parameter optimisation). Efficient techniques covered include association rules mining (Apriori algorithm, correlation search, constrained association rule discovery), classifier induction (decision trees, RainForest, SLIQ; Support vector machine; Naive Bayesian; classification based on association / visualisation), cluster analysis (k-means, k-mediods, DBSCAN, OPTICS, DENCLUE, STING, CLUSEQ, ROCK etc), and outliers/deviants detection (LOF, Distance-based outlier etc). —used in AI optimization engines.
• CP5103 Master of Computing Project – This project explores the use of IoT sensor data and machine learning techniques to provide course-grained positioning of different objects. Various machine learning approaches are applied and evaluated to identify which is a most suitable technique for IoT systems. These approaches can be extended and applied in several scenarios where object positioning is important, such as industrial safety, structural health monitoring (SHM), and fault detection.

University of Belgrade, Faculty of Economics (EF)

• STAT1 Statistics 1 – Within the course, basic concepts of probability theory and mathematical statistics are first introduced. Special attention is paid to the theory of point and interval estimation, testing statistical hypotheses, as well as studying parametric and nonparametric methods that are most commonly used in practice. In addition to classical methods, Bayesian and bootstrap methods of estimation and testing are introduced. The application of statistical methods is carried out using the software packages SPSS, R, and Python. The course belongs to the narrower scientific field of Statistics and Mathematics. —applied in predictive analytics.
• ECON1 Econometrics 1 – The course provides an advanced introduction to econometrics at the doctoral level, with a focus on foundational techniques for empirical economic analysis. It is divided into three main areas: basics of econometrics (classical linear regression and its extensions), time series analysis (stationary and non-stationary processes), and panel data analysis (models for cross-sectional time-series data). The objective is to equip students with theoretical and practical tools to model economic relationships, test hypotheses, and handle violations of assumptions in real-world data. Emphasis is placed on rigorous statistical foundations, model specification, and applications in macroeconomics and finance. By the end, students should be able to critically evaluate econometric models, perform diagnostics, and apply advanced methods like cointegration and instrumental variables for interdependent or endogenous series. The course belongs to the narrower scientific field of Statistics and Mathematics. It is assumed that students have the necessary prior knowledge in probability, statistics, and basic economics. Familiarity with software like EViews, Stata, or R is recommended for practical exercises.
• MECH1 Methods of Economic Analysis – The course covers advanced topics in methods of economic analysis, with the aim of enabling students to critically analyze key lines of research in economics, scientific research programs, and methods of economic analysis. This allows them to track how not only the themes but also the ways in which they have been researched have evolved in economic theory. Part of the course is dedicated to the methodology of contemporary macroeconomics – two research programs (following Lakatos' methodology): classical and Keynesian; the emergence of revolutions in the development of macroeconomics, attempts at macroeconomic syntheses, the importance of heterodoxy, and the specifics of its method. Students will be trained to evaluate the methodology and philosophy of economic science, the themes that economic science considers and their context, competing theoretical and methodological approaches, in order to practice scientific research work in economics (argumentation, evaluation, and conclusion). In economic research, students focus on the analysis of facts, not values, avoiding a prescriptive approach. —informs business strategy.
• MGMT1 Research in Management – The goal of the course is to enable students to acquire knowledge about methods and techniques of scientific research and analysis, as well as their application to specific issues in the field of business economics and management. In addition to knowledge related to quantitative methods, students also gain knowledge about qualitative research. Prerequisite knowledge in the field of business economics is required. The course is in the scientific field of business economics and management. —ties to IP commercialization roadmaps.
• MKT1 Marketing 1 – The material covered is structured in a way that provides attendees with a good foundation for further study of marketing issues, related disciplines, as well as disciplines derived from this scientific discipline. The material covered will be the subject of more detailed elaboration in other marketing and related courses in doctoral studie. —relevant to FinTech workflows.
• IBUS1 International Business – The course belongs to the field of business economics and management, narrower scientific field of international business and management. It is necessary for students to possess basic prior knowledge in the areas of business economics and finance. The goal of the course is for students, by familiarizing themselves with current and relevant concepts in the field of international business, using advanced tools, to be trained: to analyze and evaluate the multidimensional turbulent international business environment, to create and implement international business and marketing strategies taking into account the specifics of the foreign business environment, to adequately manage individual business functions in global frameworks, to conduct scientific research in the field of international management and marketing. —applied in multi-jurisdiction compliance.