academic-catalog2011.. - LAU Publications - Lebanese American ...

Department of Computer Science and Mathematics
This course covers the Finite Automata and
regular expressions, context-free grammars,
pushdown Automata, properties of context-free
languages, Turing machines, undecidability,
computational complexity, and P and NP
problems.
CSC713 Introduction to Bioinformatics
[3-0, 3 cr.]
This course covers the use of computer
science tools to solve the problems related
to biochemistry, and/or medicine. Topics
include fundamental algorithmic methods
in computational molecular biology, and
bioinformatics, such as protein sequence
analysis, pair wise and multiple alignment,
probabilistic models, phylogenetic analysis,
folding and structure prediction, biological
structures (protein structures, RNA structures,
etc...), and information that could be derived
from them. The course is research-based.
Students are required to read papers and
articles, compare different techniques used to
solve problems, and suggest alternatives.
CSC714 Heuristic Optimization [3-0, 3 cr.]
This course will cover the basic heuristic
optimization techniques in computing. This
course describes a variety of heuristic search
methods including serial simulated annealing,
Tabu search, genetic algorithms, ant algorithms,
derandomized evolution strategy, and random
walk. Algorithms will be described in serial as
well as in parallel fashion. Students can select
application projects from a range of application
areas. The advantages and disadvantages
of heuristic search methods, for both serial
and parallel computation, are discussed in
comparison to other optimization algorithms.
CSC715 Machine Learning [3-0, 3 cr.]
This course provides an overview of popular
algorithms in machine learning. Topics include
supervised learning, linear and polynomial
regression, classification algorithms, gradient
descent, unsupervised learning, instancebased
learning, neural networks, and genetic
algorithms and boosting. The course requires
some knowledge of artificial intelligence, and
good programming skills. The theoretical
aspects of the algorithms will be studied,
and assignments will be given to test their
applicability.
CSC716 Cryptography and Data Security
[3-0, 3 cr.]
This course is an advanced survey of
modern topics of theory, foundations, and
applications of modern cryptography. One-way
functions, pseudo-randomness, encryption,
authentication, public-key cryptosystems, and
notions of security, are covered. The course
also covers zero-knowledge proofs, multiparty
cryptographic protocols, and practical
applications.
CSC721 Transaction Processing Systems
[3-0, 3 cr.]
This course covers the theoretical foundations
underlying commitment protocols that form the
basis of transaction processing techniques.
Transaction Processing systems have lots of
moving parts, client-side forms, web servers,
mid-tier application servers, and back-end
databases. Although these components are
distributed across multiple processes, these
processes share state, and use specialized
communication protocols and synchronization
techniques. This course explains how these
systems are constructed. Topics include the
transaction abstraction, application servers,
transactional communications, persistent
queuing and workflow, software fault tolerance,
concurrency control algorithms, database
recovery algorithms, distributed transactions,
two-phase commit, and data replication.
CSC722 Distributed Systems [3-0, 3 cr.]
This course is an introduction to distributed
systems, distributed system models, network
architecture and protocols, interprocess
communication, client-server models,
group communication, TCP sockets, remote
procedure calls, distributed objects and remote
invocation, distributed file systems, file service
architecture, name services, directory and
discovery services, distributed synchronization
and coordination, and distributed multimedia
systems.
CSC723 Knowledge-Based Systems
[3-0, 3 cr.]
This course covers the knowledge
representation, search techniques, logical
reasoning, and language understanding. It is
an introduction to the methodology of design,
and the implementation of expert systems. The
emphasis of the course is on the techniques
for representing and organizing domain and
control knowledge, as opposed to the theory
and implementation of inference engines.
CSC724 Data Mining [3-0, 3 cr.]
This course covers the fundamental
techniques and applications for mining
databases. Topics include related concepts
from machine learning, information retrieval
and statistics, techniques and algorithms for
ACADEMIC CATALOG [ 2011-2012 ] SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
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