Students register for this course to complement an industry work experience. Topics focus on the application of engineering principles, analysis, methods and best practices in an industrial setting. A final report is required.

Specialized or advanced topics not in DS current course offerings. Requires (a) approval of the program director and (b) an SDS faculty member who will serve as instructor.  Propose a syllabus which includes a week-by-week accounting of the topics, materials (papers and textbooks), and assessments.  Reach out to the program director for more details.

Course provides foundat'l understanding of orgs&processes in US statecraft, directly from current practitioners across govt. Students explore how elements of nat'l power are brought to bear to further US interests & strategy. Students explore Dept of Defense, Dept of State, the Intelligence Community, US Agency for Internat'l Development, & the Nat'l Security Council & policymaking processes. Lectures, guest-speakers, & research projects aid in learning org.structure, cultures&practices.

Learning tools and concepts for computing on big data. Learn how to use Spark for large-scale analytics and machine learning. Spark is an open-source, general-purpose computing framework that is scalable and blazingly fast. Fundamental data types and concepts will be covered (e.g., resilient distributed datasets, DataFrames) along with Tools for data processing, storage, and retrieval, including Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Course investigates practical challenges policy researchers face conducting impact evaluations. Develop capacity to replicate prominent empirical research using experimental & quasi-experimental methods & present results in compelling, accessible formats.Course primarily uses R (No prior exp. w/R expected). Course assumes prior grad-level instruction in experimental & quasi-experimental methods and Batten MPPs likely have completed RMDA II.

The threat of international terrorism in the wake of 9/11 prompted costly & controversial US military & stabilization efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Initially targeting terrorism, it expanded into regime change. Bush, Obama, & Trump administrations struggled to craft effective strategies, facing setbacks like ISIS & Taliban resurgence. What can we learn from this chapter in America¿s endeavor to counter terrorist and security threats abroad?

Graduate-level poetry writing workshop for advanced writing students. A weekly 2.5 hour workshop discussion of student poems. For more details, visit our program website at creativewriting.virginia.edu.

International relations studies often overlook underlying geographic, economic, & intern¿l order dimensions that varyingly benefit some states & disadvantage others. How does access to open seas or having a veto at the UN benefit a country? How does being landlocked or lacking natural resources disadvantage a country? Course highlights underlying dimensions shaping how a country perceives its interests & what it emphasizes in foreign policy.

Covers advanced theoretical concepts for deep neural networks. Topics include convolutional neural networks and their design principles, encoder-decoder architectures, recurrent neural networks, transformers, bounding box detection, image segmentation, generative adversarial networks, diffusion models, etc. Using open-source Python libraries such as NumPy, TensorFlow, and Keras, to understand how theoretical concepts are implemented.

The DI Seminar will provide a unique learning experience that combines interdisciplinary inquiry with diverse forms of scholarly engagement, opportunities to interact with distinguished guests, both academics and community leaders, from on and off-Grounds. The fall semester will be devoted to readings that explore critical, conceptual, and methodological problems on the seminar theme.