Computer Systems

This AoF is proposed for the reason that “regardless of whether code is written by humans or AI, it’s gotta run on something.” This AoF is also the context in which we hope to eventually focus on cyber-security. Here are the relevant courses as well as the prerequisite relations among them; those in blue are required, those in yellow are for electives for deeper experience.

• Principles of Structured Data: This course starts with an in-depth coverage of Google Sheets followed by a brief introduction to relational databases. Daily and weekly projects are based on real-world datasets.
• Discrete Structures: This course covers the mathematical topics needed by Computer Science students. Topics include logic, sets, functions, relations, combinatorics, and discrete probability. Lab work is conducted with Google Sheets.
• Principles of Computer Science I: [Python-based] This course is an introduction to solving problems by writing code. Students will become competent introductory python programmers, knowing how to design, develop, test, and analyze python code. They will be comfortable with the basic coding structures that are present across many programming languages, such as if statements, loops, and functions.
• Principles of Computer Science II: [Python-based] This course reinforces and strengthens the concepts learned in "Computer Science I". It introduces object-oriented programming, functional programming, and basic algorithmic analysis. End-of-semester projects make use of APIs and libraries to access real-world data-sets and explore how programs can be useful to other disciplines or areas of interest.
• Computer Systems I: [C-based] This course explores how computers work at the lowest level. It starts with the language C to understand how programs can talk to the operating system (e.g., Windows, Mac OS, Linux) and then looks at how programs are actually run on a computer's processor. This knowledge is essential for all developers since every program ultimately runs at this level. This is the first course to demystify the operation of a modern computer.
• Data Structures: [Java-based] This course covers foundational data structures and memory organization such as arrays, linked-lists, trees, and hash tables, as well as abstract data types such as lists, stacks, queues, and maps. Students engage in the scientific process to study the performance of these different data structures from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.
• Computer Systems II: [C-based] This course is a continuation of "Computer Systems I" providing in-depth investigations of the major concepts, algorithms, and implementation principles of computer systems. In particular, computers of all types (including networks and mobile devices) run many apps at the same time, called "concurrent programming". It is very challenging to write apps that run concurrently, and this course explores techniques to do this on computers and networks. Concepts include concurrent apps (processes), threads, networked apps and parallel processes.
• Algorithm Design: [Java-based] This course is a continuation of "Introduction to Data Structures". It covers the three fundamental algorithm design techniques of "greedy", "divide and conquer", and "dynamic programming". It also covers the data structures needed by the featured algorithms: binary heaps, disjoint sets, directed/undirected adjacency matrices, and directed/undirected adjacency lists.
• Computer Networks: This course covers the concepts of computer networks and data communications. The major topics include application layer protocols, transport layer protocols, routing, software defined networks, local area networks (including wifi), network security. The course has numerous lab components based on network-programming and packet tracing.
• Topics in Computer Systems: Many security breaches in computer systems stem from vulnerabilities at the operating system and networking level. This course examines an array of system vulnerabilities such as buffer overflow attacks, environmental variable vulnerabilities, shellsock attacks, race condition vulnerabilities, and format string vulnerabilities. Because of the low level nature of these vulnerabilities, experience in assembly langage and shell creation is necessary.