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CPSC 4820 Special Topics

CPSC 4820/6820 Courses

Fall 2024

Title: Introduction to Quantum Computing
Instructor: Rong Ge
Offered: Clemson Main Campus

Description: The course is designed to demystify the complex world of quantum information and computing and offer a foundational understanding of its principles and applications. The course workload is project-based. Students will form a team of two students and gain hands-on experience with quantum computing platforms, software, and tools and explore real-world applications, including quantum machine learning, that are set to revolutionize industries.

Desirables include familiarity with Python programming, circuits and gates, linear algebra, eigenvalues and states, complex numbers, and trigonometry.


Title: Game Design
Instructor: Guo Freeman
Offered: Clemson Main Campus

Description: The gaming industry has come a long way since its humble beginnings more than thirty years ago. From a time when people were thrilled to see a square white block and two rectangular paddles on the screen to today, where gamers explore realistic three-dimensional worlds in high resolution with surround sound, the experience of being a gamer has changed radically. The experience of being a game designer has changed even more. In this introductory course, students learn principles of game design and social impacts of games through play assignments, in-class teamwork, and group game design exercises. Students are introduced to psychology and design theories as they relate to game design, and finish the semester by writing a design document for a game and using digital prototype tools to demo the game.

Students will form small teams (3 to 4 people per team) early in the semester, collectively pitch a game idea to the instructor and to the class and design the game as a team-based semester-long project. Classes will include a mix of lectures, readings, in-class teamwork, and student presentations/demos of their projects.

Prerequisite:CPSC 2150 and junior standing


Spring 2024

Title: Embedded Systems
Instructor: Jacob M Sorber
Offered: Main Campus

Description: 

Prerequisite: None


Title: Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction
Instructor: Brygg Ullmer
Offered: Main Campus

Description: Design and implementation of software and hardware systems toward realization of tangible and embodied interfaces. Discusses techniques for mixed physical and virtual representation and control of computationally-mediated systems. Includes hands-on projects designing and realizing tracked physical tokens, multitouch systems, embedded electronics, physical fabrication, and architectural installations.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120 and CPSC 2150


Title: Cryptography
Instructor: Zhenkai Zhang
Offered: Main Campus

Description: Topics are outlined as following: Classical cryptography, Number theory, Symmetric block ciphers, Modes of operation, Modern stream ciphers, Asymmetric cryptography, Cryptographically secure hash functions, Message authentication code, Digital signature, and, Key management and distribution.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120


Fall 2023

Title: Human Centered AI
Instructor: Carlos Toxtli Hernandez
Offered: Main Campus

Description: Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence is an interdisciplinary course designed to provide an overview of the various topics and issues at the intersection of AI and human-centric computing. Students will explore methods of designing AI systems that respect and prioritize human values and needs, discuss the implications of AI technology in various societal contexts, and gain experience with deploying AI solutions in real-world scenarios.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120


Title: Game Design
Instructor: Guo Freeman
Offered: Main Campus

Description: The gaming industry has come a long way since its humble beginnings more than thirty years ago. From a time when people were thrilled to see a square white block and two rectangular paddles on the screen to today, where gamers explore realistic three-dimensional worlds in high resolution with surround sound, the experience of being a gamer has changed radically. The experience of being a game designer has changed even more. In this introductory course, students learn principles of game design and social impacts of games through play assignments, in-class teamwork, and group game design exercises. Students are introduced to psychology and design theories as they relate to game design, and finish the semester by writing a design document for a game and using digital prototype tools to demo the game.

Students will form small teams (3 to 4 people per team) early in the semester, collectively pitch a game idea to the instructor and to the class and design the game as a team-based semester-long project. Classes will include a mix of lectures, readings, in-class teamwork, and student presentations/demos of their projects

Prerequisite: CPSC 2150 and junior standing


Spring 2023

Title: AI Autonomous Vehicles
Instructor: Abolfazl Razi
Offered: Main Campus

Description: This course reviews different aspects of Autonomous Vehicles (AV) Technology in the intersection of perception, autonomous control, and networking. Specific potential topics include introduction to unmanned ground and aerial vehicles, principles of autonomy, computer vision for autonomous vehicles, video stabilization, perspective projection, video-based object detection and tracking, Lidars and distance sensors, point clouds, search-based and learning-based path planning, basics of v2v and v2x communications, driving safety, traffic flow, and mobile edge computing.

This course is particularly suitable for senior-level undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in or involved with research in unmanned aerial and ground vehicles (UAV/UGV) or closely related areas. It is well suited for students who have reasonably solid backgrounds on machine learning, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, and are familiar with the basics of networking and unmanned vehicles. However, we will review necessary material in the beginning of each topic, to make the course usable by students from different disciplines such as CS, EE, CE, ME.

In addition to class-based lectures and regular assignments, part of the class will be devoted to literature review and presentation, in-class discussions and working with simulators and tools useful for AVs. The assignments will be the combination of conceptual questions, problem-solving, and programming assignments.

Prerequisite: CPSC 1020 or CPSC 1070 or ECE 2220; and MATH 3020 or STAT 3090 or STAT 3300


Title: Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction
Instructor: Brygg Ullmer
Offered: Main Campus

Description: Design and implementation of software and hardware systems toward realization of tangible and embodied interfaces. Discusses techniques for mixed physical and virtual representation and control of computationally mediated systems. Includes hands-on projects designing and realizing tracked physical tokens, multitouch systems, embedded electronics, physical fabrication, and architectural installations.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120 and CPSC 2150


Title: Web-Accessibility & Inclusive User Interfaces
Instructor: Emma Dixon
Offered: Main Campus

Description: This 3-credit course is an introduction to designing, prototyping, and evaluating inclusive user interfaces that meet the needs of a diverse range of users—such as users with visual, cognitive or motor impairments, users who are Deaf/deaf or hard of hearing, and older adults. Building on basic concepts in human-centered design, you will learn about design exclusion and barriers to use, and methods by which these can be overcome. Topics will cover current technologies and practical considerations (e.g., web accessibility requirements), as well as research developments and design of the next generation of accessible technologies. You will interact with the material through readings, discussion, individual and group assignments, and an online Web accessibility certification course.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120


Spring 2022

Title: Tangible and Embodied Interaction
Instructor: Brygg Ullmer
Offered: Main Campus

Description: Design and implementation of software and hardware systems toward realization of tangible and embodied interfaces.  Discusses techniques for mixed physical and virtual representation and control of computationally-mediated systems.  Includes hands-on projects designing and realizing tracked physical tokens, multitouch systems, embedded electronics, physical fabrication, and architectural installations.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120 and CPSC 2150


Title: Computer Vision for Computer Science
Instructor:  Andrew Duchowski
Offered: Main Campus
Note: This class will only run with sufficient enrollment

Description: Students are introduced to computer vision techniques starting with basic digital image processing.  Concepts covered will include image convolution, edge detection, and the Fourier and Wavelet transforms.  The course will also introduce students to video processing, including camera calibration and concepts related to Augmented Reality, including marker detection and camera homography.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120


Title: Explainability and Fairness in AI
Instructor:  Nina Hubig
Offered: Zucker Family Graduate Education Center in Charleston and Clemson Main Campus
Note: Instructor is based in Charleston and course is streamed to the Main Campus

Description: As machine learning models are increasingly being employed to aid decision makers in high-stakes settings such as healthcare and criminal justice, it is important to ensure that the decision makers (end users) correctly understand and consequent trust the functionality of these models. This course aims to familiarize students with the recent advances in the emerging field of explainable ML. In this course, we will review seminal position papers of the field, understand the notion of model interpretability from the perspective of decision makers (end users), discuss in detail different classes of interpretable models (e.g., prototype based approaches, sparse linear models, rule-based techniques, saliency maps, generalized additive models, and counterfactual explanations), and explore the connections between model interpretability and causality, debugging, and fairness. The course will also emphasize on various applications which can immensely benefit from model interpretability including criminal justice and healthcare.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120 and review of homework which shows students what is needed as basic knowledge for enrolling in this class (homework sourced from Harvard University).


Title: AI Unmanned Vehicles
Instructor: Abolfazl Razi
Offered: Clemson Main Campus and One Research Drive in Greenville

Description: This course will review AI concepts applied to autonomous ground and aerial vehicles. Topics like computer vision for traffic image and video analysis, classification, object recognition and tracking, data fusion, reinforcement learning for autonomous control, AI-based path planning, connected vehicles, and basics of AI-based networking will be covered. The class will be the combination of lectures, student presentations, and project sessions. Python programming and virtual environments will be used for team projects.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120


Spring 2020

Title: Tangible and Embodied Interaction
Instructor: Brygg Ullmer
Offered: Clemson Main Campus

Description: Design and implementation of software and hardware systems toward realization of tangible and embodied interfaces.  Discusses techniques for mixed physical and virtual representation and control of computationally-mediated systems.  Includes hands-on projects designing and realizing tracked physical tokens, multitouch systems, embedded electronics, physical fabrication, and architectural installations.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120 and CPSC 2150


Title: Hands on Machine Learning
Instructor:  Larry Hodges
Offered: Clemson Main Campus

Description: This course is an introduction to writing programs that automatically learn to make useful inferences from patterns in data.  Topics covered will include neural nets, regression, k-nearest neighbor, clustering, supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and performance evaluation metrics. Emphasis will be on writing code for different machine learning algorithms from scratch in Python. Students are expected to have completed coursework in data structures and at least four credit hours of calculus or statistics.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120 and {MATH 1060 or MATH 1040}.


Title: Computer Vision for Computer Science
Instructor:  Andrew Duchowski
Offered: Clemson Main Campus

Description: Students are introduced to computer vision techniques starting with basic digital image processing.  Concepts covered will include image convolution, edge detection, and the Fourier and Wavelet transforms.  The course will also introduce students to video processing, including camera calibration and concepts related to Augmented Reality, including marker detection and camera homography.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120


Title: 3D Game Programming: Algorithms and Techniques
Instructor:  Sophie Joerg
Offered: Clemson Main Campus

Description: This course introduces students to concepts, algorithms, and techniques used in 3D game programming. Topics will include mathematical representations of transformations, game engines, game loops, 3D cameras, animation, motion trees, user interfaces, and behavior. Students are expected to have completed coursework in linear algebra.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120 and MTHS 3110 required and CPSC 4050 strongly encouraged


Title: Introduction to Physical Modeling and Animation
Instructor: Jerry Tessendorf
Offered: Clemson Main Campus

Description: This class is an introductory computer graphics class intended for students with interest in computer simulation for modeling and animation. The course material will cover topics related to physically-based modeling and dynamic simulation techniques as used for the automatic synthesis of motion and geometry for animation and computer graphics. A variety of approaches are explored, with a special emphasis on the use of particle-systems, rigid bodies, cloth and modeling other natural phenomena.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120 and MTHS 3110 required and CPSC 4050 strongly encouraged


Fall 2019

Title:  Web Programming (only offered at 4820 level)
Instructor:  Craig Baker
Offered: Clemson Main Campus

Description: This course covers essential web programming topics including web server technologies, applicable protocols and RFCs, linux web server administration and both client and server side programming languages. This course will utilize cloud services.  Students will have a variety of projects to learn hands on development techniques across a broad swath of web programming areas.

Prerequisite: CPSC 3600 (or a comparable network programming course) and be comfortable using ssh/scp and a linux command line.


Title:  Hands-On Machine Learning
Instructor:  Larry Hodges
Offered: Clemson Main Campus

Description: This course is an introduction to writing programs that automatically learn to make useful inferences from patterns in data.  Topics covered will include neural nets, regression, k-nearest neighbor, clustering, supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and performance evaluation metrics. Emphasis will be on writing code for different machine learning algorithms from scratch in Python. Students are expected to have completed coursework in data structures and at least four credit hours of calculus or statistics.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120 and {MATH 1060 or MATH 1040}.


Title:  Game Design
Instructor:  Dr. Guo Freeman
Offered: Clemson Main Campus

Description:  The gaming industry has come a long way since its humble beginnings more than thirty years ago. From a time when people were thrilled to see a square white block and two rectangular paddles on the screen to today, where gamers explore realistic three-dimensional worlds in high resolution with surround sound, the experience of being a gamer has changed radically. The experience of being a game designer has changed even more. In this introductory course, students learn principles of game design and social impacts of games through play assignments, in-class teamwork, and group game design exercises. Students are introduced to psychology and design theories as they relate to game design, and finish the semester by writing a design document for a game and using digital prototype tools to demo the game.

Students will form small teams (3 to 4 people per team) early in the semester, collectively pitch a game idea to the instructor and to the class, and design the game as a team-based semester-long project. Classes will include a mix of lectures, readings, in-class teamwork, and student presentations/demos of their projects

Prerequisites: CPSC 2150 and junior standing


Title:  Artificial Intelligence
Instructor:  Ioannis Karamouzas
Offered: Clemson Main Campus

Description: To be announced.

Prerequisite: To be announced.


Spring 2018

Title:  Cloud Computing Architecture
Instructor:  Amy Apon
Offered: Clemson Main Campus

Description: This course covers the history and background of cloud computing, the essential technical knowledge needed to build applications in the cloud, and the hardware and software systems for architecting a cloud application environment.  The course will utilize cloud services.  Students will learn cloud computing skills and use these skills in a project based on a real-world problem.

Prerequisite: CPSC 3600 (or a comparable network programming course) and be comfortable reading/writing scripts using common scripting languages (e.g., Bash, Python, Java).  It is recommended that students have background in some or all of the following: cluster and distributed systems concepts (e.g., CPSC 3620), installation and management of Windows and Linux operating systems and packaged deployments (e.g., RPM, Deb, Yum), file systems and storage, access control and identity management, cryptography algorithms and how they are applied (e.g., asymmetric, symmetric, message digest, hash), database technologies, and version control solutions.


Title:  Tangible and Embodied Interaction
Instructor:  Brygg Ullmer
Offered: Clemson Main Campus

Description: Design and implementation of software and hardware systems toward realization of tangible and embodied interfaces.  Discusses techniques for mixed physical and virtual representation and control of computationally-mediated systems.  Includes hands-on projects designing and realizing tracked physical tokens, multitouch systems, embedded electronics, physical fabrication, and architectural installations.

Prerequisite: CPSC 2120 and CPSC 2150