Advanced Topics in Contemporary Computer Science, 3 credits

Course content

The aim of this course is to provide all doctoral students with a common layer of knowledge and understanding about the fundamental concepts, principles and methods of contemporary computer science. The course is meant to be complementary to the course “Topics in Contemporary Computer Science”, 50DT056, 4.5 credits. It provides students who have completed that course with additional knowledge about the main principles of computer science, as well as its social and ethical dimensions.

The course is organized in self-studies about a selection of specific advanced topics; presentation of the self-studies in front of the entire classroom; and joint discussion of the topics with the active participation of all students. Students will be assigned three topics for their self-study, taken from the following set (which may be extended based on the students’ interests):

• The concept of “problem reduction” in computer science
• The concept of “information” in computer science
• The concept of “uncertainty” in computer science
• Safety and security in computer systems
• Relations between computer science and system theory
• Distributed systems and distributed computation
• Non-classical models of computation
• Classical and modern computer architectures
• Human-computer interfaces
• Ethical issues in computer science
• The gender dimension in the history of computer science
• The geographic dimension in the history of computer science
• Computer science and creativity