In preparation for a fluid and evolving contemporary design practice, this course introduces physical prototyping and computational design strategies for an era of environmental transformation and climate crisis. Across platforms and instruments, exercises and readings emphasize process development as a core competency in architecture. A lecture component provides a technological overview, situated in a long-term cultural perspective and a theoretical framework. Focused lab modules provides exposure to a range of prototyping and fabrication resources at SOA, where students gain hands on experience.

From the ubiquitous water bottle to food packaging to Barbie, we live in a plastic world. While plastics provide benefits from safe food delivery to sterile healthcare products, only a small percentage is recycled. This course addresses the historical development of plastics and their impacts. We'll discuss the science of plastics and their lifecycle from sourcing through manufacturing, use, and end-of-life. Topics will include microplastics, plastics in the ocean, and the impacts of additives (e.g. BPA). Finally, we'll examine solutions including recycling and bio-based plastics from scientific, behavioral, and economic perspectives.

An introductory course with several demonstration and hands-on components of fabrication with autonomous and robotic systems. Covers formal methods of fabrication and programming of moderately complex elements, including related fabrication platforms, extrusion platforms, various designs of material, structure, and programming of toolpath. The course is centered around lectures with laboratory/virtual studio individual and team-based assignments involving computer-controlled additive manufacturing and robotic systems, student reading, and peer-reviewed presentation and reporting assignments.

Which human activities are changing our climate, and does climate change constitute a major problem? We will investigate these questions through an introduction to climate processes and an exploration of climate from the distant past to today. We will also consider the impact of past and ongoing climate changes on the global environment and on humanity. Finally, we will draw on climate science to identify and evaluate possible courses of action. Intended to be accessible to students not concentrating in science or engineering, while providing a comprehensive overview appropriate for all students.

Which human activities are changing our climate, and does climate change constitute a major problem? We will investigate these questions through an introduction to climate processes and an exploration of climate from the distant past to today. We will also consider the impact of past and ongoing climate changes on the global environment and on humanity. Finally, we will draw on climate science to identify and evaluate possible courses of action. Intended to be accessible to students not concentrating in science or engineering, while providing a comprehensive overview appropriate for all students.

Within a broad context of historical, social, and ethical concerns, a survey of normal childhood development and selected disorders from the perspectives of the physician, the biologist, and the bioethicist. There is an emphasis on the complex relationship between genetic and acquired causes of disease, the environment, medical practice, social conditions, and cultural values. The course features visits from children with some of the conditions discussed, site visits, and readings from the original medical, scientific, and bioethical literature.

What do informed citizens and future leaders of our society need to know about physics and technology? This course is designed for non-scientists who will someday become our informed citizens and decision-makers. Whatever the field of endeavor, they will be faced with crucial decisions in which physics and technology play an important role. This course will present the key principles and the basic physical reasoning needed to interpret scientific and technical information to make the best decisions. Topics include energy and power, atomic and subatomic matter, wave-like phenomena and light, and technologies based on advances in physics.

What do informed citizens and future leaders of our society need to know about physics and technology? This course is designed for non-scientists who will someday become our informed citizens and decision-makers. Whatever the field of endeavor, they will be faced with crucial decisions in which physics and technology play an important role. This course will present the key principles and the basic physical reasoning needed to interpret scientific and technical information to make the best decisions. Topics include energy and power, atomic and subatomic matter, wave-like phenomena and light, and technologies based on advances in physics.

Musical instruments reside at the intersection of varied topics: sound, perception, embodiment, music theory, social values, and more; how has their design influenced the development of music and how might they be reinvented to spur new ideas? We will explore these questions through readings, listening, analysis, labs, and composition. Specific topics include: harmony and the keyboard; tuning and temperament; preparing the piano, digital and analog. More generally, we will consider the productive tension between qualitative and quantitative understandings of musical concepts.

Baseball is somewhere in the middle of a data revolution. From high-speed video and structure from motion, to doppler radar and wearable global positioning systems, observational data are becoming ubiquitous, both on the TV, and on the practice field. However, little is known about the precision and accuracy of the various devices scattered around stadiums, and less is known about how to distill actionable information from the overwhelming quantity of data. In this course, you will design experiments, collect data, write computer code, and communicate results, with the aim of informing new strategies for training, scouting, and competing.

This course will teach STEM & non-STEM majors how to write about research in STEM fields with clarity and a bit of flair. Goal will be to learn to convey technical topics to non-experts in a compelling, enjoyable way while staying true to the underlying facts, context and concepts. We'll do this through readings, class discussion, encounters with professional writers and journalists of all sorts, across several different media. Most important of all, students will practice what they learn in frequent writing assignments that will be critiqued extensively by an experienced science journalist.

This cross-genre, interdisciplinary, and creative project based course explores digital imagery combined with human movement. Students work with technologies including projectors, projection mapping software, modular coding, Unreal engine, and mocap suits, to create works of art and shareable experiences incorporating images, space, and the human body. They will learn of the body as a robust technology through embodiment, movement, and motion capture. Discover how to get beyond the screen: how working with multimedia can involve movement in space, and how images can escape from your screen to become part of the three dimensional world.

This course will explore the crossover collaborative of bioengineering and art, presenting the notion of bioengineering as an artistic practice. A creative portrayal has the potential to humanize this highly technical field. Advancements in the field of biotechnology will be examined as potential tools to not only improve health care, but also as an art medium. The course material will expose students to organisms manipulated in an imaginative context and consider how these artistic ventures may affect public perception of emerging biomedical technologies.

This seminar explores the process of scientific inquiry by investigating the many ways in which field biologists observe and study organisms in the lab and field. Through hands-on learning experiences in the lab and field, we will combine technology, problem-solving skills, and creativity to collect and interpret behavioral, morphological, physiological, and sensory data in living and non-living organisms. This course will include coordinated trips during class time to local sites in the Princeton area, and also offers an optional 3-week field experience at Mpala Research Centre located in Laikipia, Kenya during January 2025.

For as long as we have been human, we have been looking up. In this course, we will explore the connection between past and present: what tools did ancient civilizations use to study astronomical phenomena, how did they then explain said phenomena, and how does what they learned compare to what we know now? In addition to readings and discussions, we will collaborate on the creation of "artifacts," conduct research, and visit museums to view artifacts associated with the history of astronomy. This course will combine the creative and the scientific. Fall break will be spent in Cusco, Peru, where we will tour Incan astronomical sites.

The world has become datafied (measured, classified, digitized, sold, amassed as data), and visualizations are a potent public medium. They drive critical concerns like global warming and inequality, and can be used with many other disciplinary issues. We connect data vis to our challenges to intelligibly represent the complex relationships, forces, and multiple scales embedded in ethnographic settings and theories. If data vis gives us a grip on these imperceptible factors, and the datafied world, what gets filtered out of data or optics? We will critically use data vis tools alongside other modalities to enrich our anthropological vision.

Roman history courses usually cover grand narratives based on literary evidence and usually no room for discussing how knowledge is created and the different methods for studying ancient history. This course instead looks at different questions to shed light in fruitful collaborations between scholars from different fields. Students will engage with STEM and digital humanities methods as they consider historical questions. Through different case studies and hands-on activities, students will learn how different scientific, technological, and computational methods help us employ a multi-disciplinary approach to learning about the ancient past.

Artificial intelligence existed in fiction well before the first computer was built. In fact, storytelling and AI appear to be inseparable: apart from countless science-fiction works, stories ranging from mass unemployment to doomsday scenarios have become entangled with real-world AI and its development. This class studies some iconic representations of AI in the arts alongside non-fiction texts that shed some light on how AI works, its potentialities, limits, and biases. In so doing, we will make sense of the stories that we read about AI, and reflect on whether the former can teach us anything about the latter.

This lecture and lab course will acquaint non-biology majors with modern molecular biology focusing on topics of current interest to society. The course covers fundamental topics such as information storage and readout by DNA, RNA and proteins. The course addresses how recent scientific advances influence issues relevant to humanity including stem cells and CRISPR; the human microbiome and bacterial pathogens; vaccines and the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic; how a single cell contains all the necessary instructions to build a complex multicellular organism; and how the human genome can be used to understand the evolution of modern humans.

When something seems to defy our understanding of how the world works, we would call it magical. Throughout human history, development of new materials was associated with magic because it made things that were formerly impossible or incomprehensible possible. The durability of a steel tool must have seemed magical for the bronze age worker. The Internet, instant access to all information of humankind at the touch of a button would have been incomprehensible a hundred years ago. This class will talk about the magic materials people encountered throughout history, what equates to magic materials today and how might they shape our future.

STC 209 examines 'transformations' within and between visuals, sound, structure and movement as art and engineering forms. The course explores generative art and design that leverages parallels and interplay between design processes in engineering and the arts. Students will learn to work as artist-engineers, and will create ambitious open-ended design projects exploring these themes. Taught by faculty from CST, COS, MUS, CEE along with visiting artists, and guest faculty from the Lewis Center for the Arts.

STC 209 examines 'transformations' within and between visuals, sound, structure and movement as art and engineering forms. The course explores generative art and design that leverages parallels and interplay between design processes in engineering and the arts. Students will learn to work as artist-engineers, and will create ambitious open-ended design projects exploring these themes. Taught by faculty from CST, COS, MUS, CEE along with visiting artists, and guest faculty from the Lewis Center for the Arts.

Glass is so ubiquitous in our daily lives that we barely notice it anymore. Yet, our modern lives would have been very different (or nearly impossible) without it. Although one may associate glass with only windows or containers, glass, as a class of material, has far-reaching applications in global communications, biomedical, and energy industries! In fact, glass has enabled so many technologies in the past 50 years, some may argue that we now live in the "Glass Age". This interdisciplinary seminar will take a deep dive into the science of glass, with discussions of history, art, and societal impact.

This course is a collaboration between science and creative expression. Students will develop an understanding of the fundamental role that microbes (viruses, bacteria, and other microorganisms) have played in environmental stability and human evolution. We will then explore the impact of microbes on climate change and discuss innovation and solutions. Concurrently, we will be exploring various forms of creative expression (writing, movement, improvisation, image making, etc.), with which to playfully observe, meditate and communicate the scientific material. Students will collaborate on final creative projects.