New course proposals

The following new course proposals have been submitted to the Faculty Senate Office for review and approval and are listed here for faculty review and comment. Comments on any new course proposal should be submitted to Ernest May, secretary of the Faculty Senate, at senate@senate.umass.edu.

CMPSCI 630, “Systems,” 3 credits; Instructor: Emery Berger; This class is an in-depth introduction to systems, focusing on principles of system design that cross-cut numerous systems artifacts, including operating systems, databases, runtime systems, and architecture. We will cover all levels of the “system stack.” Prerequisites: None.

CMPSCI 650, “Applied Information Theory,” 3 credits; Instructor: Erik Learned-Miller; This course will introduce the basic concepts of Information Theory: entropy, relative entropy, mutual information, channel capacity, and rate distortion. Applications, rather than proofs, will be emphasized. Prerequisites: None.

CMPSCI 670, “Computer Vision,” 3 credits; Instructor: Erik Learned-Miller; In this graduate course, students will develop applications like object recognition, tracking, and face detection. Key concepts include probabilistic decision making, image representation, and the relationship to biological vision. Prerequisites include an undergraduate background in computer science, a college-level probability course (Stats 515) and Linear Algebra (M235), or the permission of the instructor.