Course Description

This course is designed as a one- or two-credit independent research seminar forstudents wishing to extend and apply topics in advanced technology that are aboveand beyond what can be investigated in a standard course. Interested students wouldtake this course to pursue new independent research, or to extend a topic they areworking with in another course or studio. The focus of this seminar is a topically appliedexploration in an individually selected problem or technology.

The course is essentially a group / independent-study, structured and collaborative,and oriented toward problem solving through the use of advanced technologies. Eachparticipant in the seminar will identify a specific problem and technology to apply to thestudy of that problem. The semester will be spent working through the problem withadvice from the instructor and other participants, and collectively as a group reviewing,discussing, and collaboratively learning approaches and solutions.

Past topics include:

Computational Fluid Dynamics; Energy Modeling and Simulation; Information andProcess Flow Mapping; GIS web systems; Web and Information services; Generativeand Parametric Modeling; Spatial/Visual Comfort Assessments; Fabrications &Prototyping; Chinese Torture Boxes; Advanced Rendering; Building InformationModeling; Video and Animation; and more. A wide variety of topics are feasible andencouraged.

The output of the seminar is an ongoing injection of ideas back into the topics ofresearch, courses or studios that initiated the studies, as well as a developing recordand report of approaches, progress, and findings.

Work for the semester will conclude prior to exams/final reviews such that output fromthese overlay studies can be readily incorporated into final work.

The seminar will meet and operate within the Shure Studio / Insight Lab – a newcenter for Advanced Technology Research, with access to several new computation,interface, and collaboration technologies, as well as the Sandbox cluster for testing newand experimental software.