Postgraduate Courses

With more and more data available, data mining and knowledge discovery has become a major field of research and applications in data science. Aimed at extracting useful and interesting knowledge from large data repositories such as databases, scientific data, social media and the Web, data mining and knowledge discovery integrates techniques from the fields of database, statistics and AI.

In this course, theories, models, algorithms of deep learning and their application to data science will be introduced. The basics of machine learning will be reviewed at first, then some classical deep learning models will be discussed, including AlexNet, LeNet, CNN, RNN, LSTM, and Bert. In addition, some advanced deep learning techniques will also be studied, such as reinforcement learning, transfer learning and graph neural networks. Finally, end-to-end solutions to apply these techniques in data science applications will be discussed, including data preparation, data enhancement, data sampling and optimizing training and inference processes.

In this course, the concepts and implementation schemes in advanced database management systems for data science applications will be introduced, such as disk and memory management, advanced access methods, implementation of relational operators, query processing and optimization, transactions and concurrency control. It also introduces emerging database related techniques for data science.

In this course, advanced algorithms for data science will be introduced. It covers most of the classical advanced topics in algorithm design, as well as some recent algorithmic developments, in particular algorithms for data science and analytics.

Introduction to parallel computer architectures; principles of parallel algorithm design; shared-memory programming models; message passing programming models used for cluster computing; data-parallel programming models for GPUs; case studies of parallel algorithms, systems, and applications; hands-on experience with writing parallel programs for data science and analytics.

This course will introduce fundamentals techniques for data science and analytics. Specifically, it will teach students how to clean the data, how to integrate data and how to store the data. On top of these, it will also teach students knowledge to conduct data analysis, such as Bayes rule and connection to inference, linear approximation and its polynomial and high dimensional extensions, principal component analysis and dimension reduction. In addition, it will also cover advanced data analytics topics including data governance, data explanation, data privacy and data fairness.

This course will teach students data science computing techniques. Topics cover: (1) Basic concepts of Data Science Computing and Cloud; (2) MapReduce - the de facto datacenter-scale programming abstraction - and its open source implementation of Hadoop; and (3) Apache Spark - a new generation parallel processing framework - and its infrastructure, programming model, cluster deployment, tuning and debugging, as well as a number of specialized data processing systems built on top of Spark.

This course introduces basic concepts and technologies of blockchain, such as the hash function and digital signature, as well as data analysis and privacy protection over blockchain applications. The students will learn the consensus protocols and algorithms, the incentives and politics of the block chain community, the mechanics of Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, data analysis techniques over blockchain and user/transaction privacy protection.

This course covers essential techniques for data exploration and visualization. Students will learn the iterative process of data preprocessing techniques for getting data into a usable format, exploratory data analysis (EDA) techniques for formulating suitable hypotheses and validating them, and specific techniques for domain-related data exploration and visualization such as high-dimensional, hierarchical, and geospatial data. The course uses programing languages such as python and tools like Tableau.

In this course, we will introduce spatial and multimedia database management concepts, theories and technologies, from data representation, indexing, fundamental operations to advanced query processing. Challenges and solution for high dimensional data will also be introduced.

The special topics course is designed for faculty to offer a course about popular research topics. The research topics in data science and analytics change and evolve very fast. The special topics will help students to know the research trend in this area and master the state-of-the-art solutions. Students will not only learn from the lectures, but also investigate the techniques by reading papers, giving presentations and working on projects.

This course offers students opportunities to learn the possible industry topics and supervisors that they will work with during their internship. The goals are: (a) understand (i) problems in industry, (ii) existing data-sets, (iii) AI models, (iv) service scenario and KPI, (v) challenges; (b) propose industrial projects based on the understanding; and (c) matching for their industrial projects. This course is only available for MSc(DCAI) students. Graded P or F.

In this course, an independent research project will be carried out under the supervision of a faculty member.

This course will teach students practical programming and parallel processing skills on implementing various deep learning or machine learning models, starting from preparing data, feature selection to model choosing, hyperparameter tuning, and final result analysis and explaining. This course is only available for MSc(DCAI) students.

In this course, students are required to attend at least 6 seminars offered by the program. The program will offer at least 10 seminars related to the state of the art research on data science and analytics in each term. These seminars will help students to broaden the horizons of their knowledge on data science and analytics. Graded P or F.

In this course, students are required to attend at least 6 seminars offered by the program. The program will offer at least 10 seminars related to the state-of-the-art research on data science and analytics in each term. These seminars will help students to broaden the horizons of their knowledge on data science and analytics. Graded P or F.

In this course, the student will work on a practical project. The independent project is related to real problems existing in data science and AI application domains. The student needs to conduct literature survey, method comparison, solution selection and implementation, experimental study and write the final report. The course will train students skills on proposing end-to-end solution for a realapplications problem. This course is only available for MSc(DCAI) students. Graded P or F.

In this course, students will be trained in the industry. They will work under the guidance of their supervisors (industry and academia) to practice what they have learned in the program, and apply the data science and AI knowledge and techniques to various real-life problems. In Part I, students are required to complete an Open Topic report with oral examination on the scientific value, feasibility and technical challenges of the proposed topic. This course is only available for MSc(DCAI) students. Graded PP, P or F.

In this course, students will be trained in the industry. They will work under the guidance of their supervisors (industry and academia) to practice what they have learned in the program, and apply the data science and AI knowledge and techniques to various real-life problems. In Part II, students are required to complete an Intermediate report with oral examination on the student’s progress and industry collaboration progress. This course is only available for MSc(DCAI) students. Graded PP, P or F.

In this course, students will be trained in the industry. They will work under the guidance of their supervisors (industry and academia) to practice what they have learned in the program, and apply the data science and AI knowledge and techniques to various real-life problems. In Part III, students are required to complete a Final report with oral examination on the final output from the internship project and whether the student indeed knows how to apply AI techniques to concrete data science applications. This course is only available for MSc(DCAI) students. Graded PP, P or F.

Master's thesis research supervised by co-advisors from different disciplines. A successful defense of the thesis leads to the grade Pass. No course credit is assigned.

Original and independent doctoral thesis research supervised by co-advisors from different disciplines. A successful defense of the thesis leads to the grade Pass. No course credit is assigned.