Program overview

The Columbia University Center for Veteran Transition and Integration (CVTI) supports excellence and innovation in transition programming for current and former members of the armed forces.

As a service member in transition, you may face barriers reaching your potential in accessing higher education and beginning meaningful careers, despite the many effective programs offered to this population by the Department of Labor, Department of Defense’s Transition Assistance Program, and other programs offered by the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. With this in mind, the CVTI is dedicated to creating free courses that will help to break down those barriers to your successful transition. Currently we are offering three courses to meet these demands, with more courses on the way. While these courses are created for veterans and active duty service members, they are free and available for all.

Attaining Higher Education is a course designed to facilitate the successful transition of active duty service members and veterans to postsecondary education, whether at a two- or four-year college for an associate’s or bachelor’s degree, or even graduate school.

University Studies for Student Veterans helps orient veterans to the norms and expectations of the college classroom, along with offering strategies to ease the transition, to help achieve academic goals, and to allow students to optimize their college education.

Find Your Calling: Transition Principles for Returning Veterans will focus on the development of interpersonal, intrapersonal, and intellectual character strengths as they relate to making a successful career transition from military service to the civilian workforce. The course content is meant to provide you with a framework for an iterative process of self-reflection and the development of practical skills that enables you to make career choices that better align with your values, ambitions, and continued service. Ultimately, this course helps you answer the question: What should I do next?

What will you learn

General and detailed information about colleges and universities.
Foundational academic and study skills for achieving academic success in college.
Strategies for more effective reading, writing, test preparation, and time management.
Practical tips and strategies for making a successful military-to-civilian career transition.
A framework for how to begin thinking about and exploring new career opportunities.

Program Class List

Prepare to transition to college using intentional decision-making. Aimed at active duty service members and veterans, with this course you will learn about the college admission process, including financial aid, to help you choose a right-fit college.

This course helps veterans transition smoothly from military service to college, and helps them maximize their success once they arrive.

This course provides military veterans with a useful roadmap to transition more smoothly from military service to a new and meaningful civilian career.

Meet Your Instructors

Beth E. Morgan

Director of Higher Education Transition and Partnerships at Columbia University Born in Quantico, Virginia, Beth grew up in a Marine Corps family and was raised around the world, living for periods of time in Hawaii, Germany, and Korea. Professionally, Beth has worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, for several non-profits, as a consultant, and on staff at major universities throughout the United States, including Colgate University, Princeton University, and the University of Southern California. Prior to joining the Center for Veteran Transition and Integration at Columbia University, Beth worked most recently with the non-profit Service to School as Executive Director and previously directed the Marine Corps Leadership Scholar Program (LSP), both of which assisted transitioning service members and veterans with admission to undergraduate and graduate programs. Beth has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Virginia and a Master of Arts degree from Stanford University.

R.J. Jenkins

Curriculum Designer at Columbia University Before joining the Columbia University Center for Veteran Transition and Integration as a Curriculum Designer in 2016, R.J. served as an Associate Dean of Students at Columbia University’s School of General Studies where he directed the Academic Resource Center and served as the lead instructor for University Studies, a transition course for first-year, non-traditional students. An award-winning teacher, R.J. has advised college students at Columbia, Cambridge, and Harvard Universities, and has taught courses in English and American literature, literary history, close reading, academic skill-building, and English for Speakers of Other Languages. R.J. holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and anthropology from Columbia University (2003), a Master of Letters in English literature from the University of Cambridge (2005), and is currently pursuing doctoral work in English literature.

Skip Bailey

Senior Advisor to the Director of Educational Financing at Columbia University William ”Skip” Bailey has been a financial aid administrator for more than 34 years. He has been managing financial aid for non-traditional students at the School of General Studies (GS) for over 20 years. Previously he administered financial aid at multiple colleges including the University of San Diego and the University of Michigan. A degree in education from Michigan State University and lots of experience has provided Skip with the tools he uses every day to assist students at GS with the myriad issues involved with college financial aid.

Tanya Ang

Vice President of Veterans Education Success at Columbia University Tanya is the Vice President of Veterans Education Success and has more than 17 years of experience in higher education. She has worked at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and also served as the Director of Veterans Programs at the American Council on Education. Prior to joining ACE, Tanya worked at two universities including working as an Administrative Analyst for the Vice President of Student Affairs Office at California State University - Fullerton and as Associate Registrar at Vanguard University where most her work focused on the non-traditional student including military and student veterans. She was the certifying official at her institution for student veteran GI Bill benefits and worked hand-in-hand with the various offices on-campus to ensure students received the benefits and the support they needed to successfully navigate their academic career. In her current role, she works to ensure military-connected students have access to high-quality education to achieve their long term career goals. Tanya is the first in her family to graduate from college, and earned her BA in Communications at Biola University and an MA in Organizational Leadership at Vanguard University.

Sara Remedios

Associate Dean of Students at Columbia University Sara is Associate Dean of Students at Columbia University’s School of General Studies where she directs the Academic Resource Center and oversees all academic and learning initiatives. Before coming to Columbia, she worked to restructure the CUNY Pipeline Honors Program, a program dedicated to assisting exceptional undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds in gaining admission to doctoral programs. She is also an accomplished teacher. Dean Remedios holds a B.A. in English and political science from Washington University in St. Louis (2009), an M.Phil. in English literature from the City University of New York (2014), and a Ph.D. in English literature from the City University of New York (2016).

Josh Edwin

Senior Assistant Dean of Students at Columbia University Josh is Senior Assistant Dean of Students at Columbia University’s School of General Studies. His teaching experience at Columbia includes University Studies, academic writing classes, one-on-one writing support, and creative writing workshops for veterans. He has also taught at a public high school in Atlanta and an English language school in Seoul, South Korea. In addition to teaching, he has published widely as a poet, translator, and reviewer. He holds a B.A. in English and creative writing from Emory University and an M.F.A. in poetry and literary translation from Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

Michael Abrams

Executive Director - Center for Veteran Transition and Integration, Marine Corps Veteran at Columbia University Michael Abrams joined the Marine Corps shortly following the September 11, 2001 attacks and served on active duty for eight years, which included a deployment to Afghanistan with an infantry company as the artillery forward observer. After leaving active duty, Michael attended New York University’s Stern School of Business graduating with an M.B.A. in Finance and Entrepreneurship & Innovation. While attending business school, he founded FourBlock to help bridge the gap between returning service members and the business community. The program is a university accredited, semester-long course that educates and prepares transitioning veterans for meaningful careers in corporate America. FourBlock is in nearly twenty cities across the country, educating and serving hundreds of transitioning veterans each semester. Michael is now serving as the executive director of the Columbia University Center for Veteran Transition and Integration. The newly established center of excellence is dedicated to creating and supporting evidence-based programming that enables returning service members with reaching their academic and career potential.

William Deresiewicz

Best-Selling Author, Award-Winning Essayist at Columbia University William Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic, a frequent speaker at colleges and other venues, and the best-selling author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. He taught English at Yale and Columbia before becoming a full-time writer in 2008. Bill has published over 250 essays and reviews. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper's, The Nation, The New Republic, The American Scholar, and many other publications. He has won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and a Sydney Award; he is also a three-time National Magazine Award nominee. His work has been translated into 17 languages and anthologized in more than 30 college readers. He has spoken at over 80 colleges, high schools, and educational groups and has held visiting positions at Bard, Scripps, and Claremont McKenna Colleges. Bill’s previous book is A Jane Austen Education. He is working on a book about how artists are making a living in the new economy.

Sheena Iyengar

World-Renowned Expert on Choice, S. T. Lee Professor of Business at Columbia University Professor Iyengar has taught courses in leadership and entrepreneurial creativity. Her research addresses the implications of offering people, whether they be employees or consumers, choices. She has examined choice in a multitude of contexts ranging from employee motivation and performance in a global organization, Citigroup, to chocolate displays at Godiva, to the magazine aisles of supermarkets, and to mutual fund options in retirement benefit plans. Professor Iyengar received the Presidential Early Career Award for her ongoing work in examining cultural, individual, and situational factors that influence people's choice-making preferences and behaviors.

Sebastian Junger

NYT Best-Selling Author, Documentary Filmmaker at Columbia University Sebastian Junger is the #1 New York Times Bestselling author of THE PERFECT STORM, FIRE, A DEATH IN BELMONT, WAR and TRIBE. As an award-winning journalist, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a special correspondent at ABC News, he has covered major international news stories around the world, and has received both a National Magazine Award and a Peabody Award. Junger is also a documentary filmmaker whose debut film "Restrepo", a feature-length documentary (co-directed with Tim Hetherington), was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

Program Overview

This XSeries Program has been designed to influence, empower and educate a wider population to improve the health and healthcare of people with intellectual disability.

Worldwide, 60+ million people with intellectual disability experience poor health, die prematurely and receive inadequate healthcare. You will gain an understanding of the barriers and enablers for people with intellectual disability, their families, and their healthcare providers.

In our courses, you will learn about best practice in the field of intellectual disability healthcare and gain knowledge to improve health outcomes for this disadvantaged group.

What you will learn

What is the experience of people with intellectual disability around the world, what barriers do they face, and how do they overcome these?
What are their healthcare needs and how can good health be promoted?
What health conditions do they commonly experience and how can these be assessed and managed?
What influence do other factors such as ageing and epilepsy have on their health?
What mental health issues do they have and how can these be recognised and managed?
What are some of the ethical and legal issues that are of particular relevance to them?

Program class list

Learn, from personal stories, the daily life and challenges faced by those with intellectual disabilities.

Learn how to help those with intellectual disability achieve better health.

Gain an understanding of mental health issues and ethical decision-making for people with intellectual disability.

Meet your instructors

Miriam Taylor

Miriam is the former Education Coordinator at the Queensland Centre for Intellectual and Developmental Disability in the School of Medicine at the University of Queensland. She has a wealth of educational design experience for multi-users including people with intellectual disability, their families, disability organisations and health practitioners. Miriam has established an ongoing international collaboration with and is an invited contributor to the first World Disability Report for the World Health Organisation.

Nicholas Lennox

Nick is the former Director of the Queensland Centre for Intellectual and Developmental Disability at the University of Queensland. He is a researcher, educator, advocate and clinician and has specialised in the health of adults with intellectual disability since 1992. He is trained in general practice, and has developed interventions to improve the health of people with intellectual disability.

Program overview

The Project Management MicroMasters® program from RIT is a graduate level series of courses designed to provide you with the in-depth knowledge and skills needed to be a successful project manager in any industry. This online sequence is a semester’s worth of work from RIT’s Master’s degree and consists of three courses and a final capstone exam.

By earning the MicroMasters® program certificate you will develop the leadership skills needed to effectively manage a team that will meet the expectations of your customers and business goals. Build on your MicroMasters® program certificate by applying to RIT’s School of Individualized Study for a customized master’s degree.

What you will learn

The tools and techniques to manage the comprehensive project management life cycle for a project – from initiation through closing.
To balance the critical tradeoffs of time, cost and scope to meet customer expectations.
The ability to apply best practices across a variety of industries and businesses.
Lead a project to success, and how to capitalize on the leadership and behavioral facets to do so.
To navigate the social and cultural aspects, legal and regulatory practices, technology and infrastructure that influence projects’ success in the global market.

Program Class List

Project Management is one of the most in-demand skills in all industries -- from healthcare to technology and business. Take this one course, or the entire program, to prove your skills to employers.

Learn how to create an organizational environment that supports project success.

Learn what makes global projects uniquely challenging and how to successfully manage projects based in different industries and countries.

Demonstrate the knowledge and skills acquired in the Project Management MicroMasters program, and prepare for graduate level program options at RIT.

Meet Your Instructors

Celine Gullace

Celine is an Instructor of Project Management at the School of Individualized Study at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Celine has over 20 years of experience in business management and teaching. She has a keen interest in influencing business decisions and leading high visibility projects. She is an experienced project management instructor and award winning teacher in mathematics. Celine was born and raised in the South of France and came to the US in 1993 to continue her education. For more information, please contact ritonline@rit.edu.

Leonie Fernandes

Leonie is an Instructor of Project Management at the School of Individualized Study at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is a certified Project Management Professional with over 25 years of project management experience in large, global corporations in the high tech, manufacturing, healthcare and automotive industries. Leonie has extensive coaching and mentoring in leading projects within the United States and in the global arena. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and master’s degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology. For more information, please contact ritonline@rit.edu.

Program overview

Gain an interdisciplinary understanding of the essential fundamentals of analytics, including analysis methods, analytical tools, such as R, Python and SQL, and business applications.

Using common analytics software and tools, statistical and machine learning methods, and data-intensive computing and visualization techniques, learners will gain the experience necessary to integrate all of these parts for maximum impact.

Project experience is also included as part of the MicroMasters® program. Through these projects, learners will hone their skills with data collection, storage, analysis, and visualization tools, as well as gain instincts for how and when each tool should be used.

These projects provide hands-on experience with real-world business applications of analytics and a deeper understanding of how to apply analytics skills to make the biggest difference.

What you will learn

Use essential analytics tools like R, Python, SQL, and more.
Understand fundamental models and methods of analytics, and how and when to apply them.
Learn to build a data analysis pipeline, from collection and storage through analysis and interactive visualization.
Apply your new analytics skills in a business context to maximize your impact.

Program Class List

A hands-on introduction to basic programming principles and practice relevant to modern data analysis, data mining, and machine learning.

This course prepares students to understand business analytics and become leaders in these areas in business organizations.

Learn essential analytics models and methods and how to appropriately apply them, using tools such as R, to retrieve desired insights.

Meet your instructors

Joel Sokol

Director of the Master of Science in Analytics program

He received his PhD in operations research from MIT and his bachelor’s degrees in mathematics, computer science, and applied sciences in engineering from Rutgers University. His primary research interests are in sports analytics and applied operations research. He has worked with teams or leagues in all three of the major American sports. Dr. Sokol's LRMC method for predictive modeling of the NCAA basketball tournament is an industry leader, and his non-sports research has won the EURO Management Science Strategic Innovation Prize. Dr. Sokol has also won recognition for his teaching and curriculum development from IIE and the NAE, and is the recipient of Georgia Tech's highest awards for teaching.

Richard W. Vuduc

Associate Professor of Computational Science and Engineering

Associate Professor of Computational Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Sridhar Narasimhan

Professor at The Georgia Institute of Technology

Sridhar Narasimhan is Professor of IT Management and Co-Director -Business Analytics Center (BAC), Scheller College of Business. The BAC partners with its Executive Council companies in the analytics space and supports Scheller’s BSBA, MBA, and MS Analytics programs. Professor Narasimhan has developed and taught the MBA IT Practicum course. Since 2016, he has been teaching Business Analytics to undergraduate and MBA students at Scheller. Professor Narasimhan is the founder and first Area Coordinator of the nationally ranked Information Technology Management area. In fall 2010, he was the Acting Dean and led the College in its successful AACSB Maintenance of Accreditation effort. He was Senior Associate Dean from 2007 through 2015.

Charles Turnitsa

Professor at The Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Charles "Chuck" Turnitsa has spent a career, since the early 1990s, in performing information systems and modeling based research and development, chiefly for the Department of Defense and for NASA. He received his PhD from Old Dominion University in Modeling and Simulation (M&S), and has spent some years teaching a variety of topics in the field. Most recently, before coming to Georgia Tech, he spent two years leading the M&S Graduate Program at Columbus State University. Now he is serving as research faculty with Georgia Tech Research Institute, continuing research into various topics related to M&S, and continuing to teach graduate level and professional education level topics in information systems and M&S.

What you will learn

The history of data science, tangible illustrations of how data science and analytics are used in decision making across multiple sectors today, and expert opinion on what the future might hold
A practical understanding of the fundamental methods used by data scientists including; statistical thinking and conditional probability, machine learning and algorithms, and effective approaches for data visualization
The major components of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the potential of IoT to totally transform the way in which we live and work in the not-to-distant future
How data scientists are using natural language processing (NLP), audio and video processing to extract useful information from books, scientific articles, twitter feeds, voice recordings, YouTube videos and much more

Program Class List

Learn how statistics plays a central role in the data science approach.

Learn the principles of machine learning and the importance of algorithms.

Discover the relationship between Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Meet your instructors

Tian Zheng

About Me

Tian Zheng is associate professor of Statistics at Columbia University. She obtained her PhD from Columbia in 2002. Her research is to develop novel methods and improve existing methods for exploring and analyzing interesting patterns in complex data from different application domains. Her current projects are in the fields of statistical genetics, bioinformatics and computational biology, feature selection and classification for high dimensional data, and network analysis. Especially, Dr. Zheng have been developing statistical and computational tools for high dimensional data, searching for genetic interactions associated with complex human disorders, quantifying social structure and studying hard-to-reach populations using survey questions, with more than 40 peer-reviewed publications in journals including JASA, AOAS and PNAS. Her work was recognized with the 2008 Outstanding Statistical Application Award from the American Statistical Association, The Mitchell Prize from ISBA and a Google research award. She is on the editorial board of Statistical Analysis and Data Mining and Frontier in Genetics. She was Associate Editor for JASA from 2007 to 2013.

Kathy McKeown

About Me

A leading scholar and researcher in the field of natural language processing, McKeown focuses her research on big data; her interests include text summarization, question answering, natural language generation, multimedia explanation, digital libraries, and multilingual applications. Her research group's Columbia Newsblaster, which has been live since 2001, is an online system that automatically tracks the day's news, and demonstrates the group's new technologies for multi-document summarization, clustering, and text categorization, among others. Currently, she leads a large research project involving prediction of technology emergence from a large collection of journal articles. McKeown joined Columbia in 1982, immediately after earning her Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania. In 1989, she became the first woman professor in the school to receive tenure, and later the first woman to serve as a department chair (1998-2003).

Ansaf Salleb-Aouissi

Ansaf is a Lecturer in discipline of the Computer Science Department at the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University. She received her her BS in Computer Science in 1996 from the University of Science and Technology (USTHB), Algeria. She earned her masters and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Orleans (France) in 1999 and 2003 respectively.

Cliff Stein

About Me

His research interests include the design and analysis of algorithms, combinatorial optimization, operations research, network algorithms, scheduling, algorithm engineering and computational biology. Professor Stein has published many influential papers in the leading conferences and journals in his field, and has occupied a variety of editorial positions including the journals ACM Transactions on Algorithms, Mathematical Programming, Journal of Algorithms, SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics and Operations Research Letters. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and Sloan Foundation. He is the winner of several prestigious awards including an NSF Career Award, an Alfred Sloan Research Fellowship and the Karen Wetterhahn Award for Distinguished Creative or Scholarly Achievement. He is also the co-author of the two textbooks. Introduction to Algorithms, with T. Cormen, C. Leiserson and R. Rivest is currently the best-selling textbook in algorithms and has sold over half a million copies and been translated into 15 languages. Discrete Math for Computer Scientists , with Ken Bogart and Scot Drysdale, is a new text book which covers discrete math at an undergraduate level.

David Blei

About Me

David Blei joined Columbia in Fall 2014 as a Professor of Computer Science and Statistics. His research involves probabilistic topic models, Bayesian nonparametric methods, and approximate posterior inference. He works on a variety of applications, including text, images, music, social networks, user behavior, and scientific data. Professor Blei earned his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Brown University (1997) and his PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley (2004). Before arriving to Columbia, he was an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. He has received several awards for his research, including a Sloan Fellowship (2010), Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2011), Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2011), and Blavatnik Faculty Award (2013).

Itsik Peer

About Me

Itsik Pe’er is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science. His laboratory develops and applies computational methods for the analysis of high-throughput data in germline human genetics. Specifically, he has a strong interest in isolated populations such as Pacific Islanders and Ashkenazi Jews. The Pe’er Lab has developed methodology to identify hidden relatives — primarily in such isolated populations — that involves inferring their past demography, detecting associations between phenotypes and genetic segments co-inherited from the joint ancestors of hidden relatives, and establishing the exceptional utility of whole-genome sequencing in population genetics. With the arrival of high-throughput sequencing methods, Pe’er has focused on characterizing genetic variation that is unique to isolated populations, including the effects of such variation on phenotype.

Mihalis Yannakakis

About Me

He studied at the National Technical University of Athens (Diploma in Electrical Engineering, 1975), and at Princeton University (PhD in Computer Science, 1979). He worked at Bell Labs Research from 1978 until 2001, as Member of Technical Staff (1978-1991) and as Head of the Computing Principles Research Department (1991-2001). He was Director of Computing Principles Research at Avaya Labs (2001-2002), and Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University (2002-2003). He joined Columbia University in 2004. His research interests include design and analysis of algorithms, complexity theory, combinatorial optimization, game theory, databases, and modeling, verification and testing of reactive systems.

Peter Orbanz

About Me

Before coming to New York, he was a Research Fellow in the Machine Learning Group of Zoubin Ghahramani at the University of Cambridge, and previously a graduate student of Joachim M. Buhmann at ETH Zurich. His main research interests are the statistics of discrete objects and structures: permutations, graphs, partitions, and binary sequences. Most of his recent work concerns representation problems and latent variable algorithms in Bayesian nonparametrics. More generally, he is interested in all mathematical aspects of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Fred Jiang

Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at Columbia University

Fred received his B.Sc. (2004) and M.Sc. (2007) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and his Ph.D. (2010) in Computer Science, all from UC Berkeley. Before joining SEAS, he was Senior Staff Researcher and Director of Analytics and IoT Research at Intel Labs China. Fred’s research interests include cyber physical systems and data analytics, smart and sustainable buildings, mobile and wearable systems, environmental monitoring and control, and connected health & fitness. His ACme building energy platform has been widely adopted by universities and industries, including Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Taiwan University, and several commercial companies. His project on wearable and mobile fitness, in collaboration with University of Virginia, was featured on New Scientist and the Economist magazine. His air-quality monitoring project has been featured on China Central Television and People’s Daily, and was successfully incubated into a startup. He is actively serving on several technical and organizing committees including ACM SenSys, ACM/IEEE IPSN, and ACM BuildSys. He was a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Fellow and a Vodafone-US Foundation Fellow.

Julia Hirschberg

Percy K. and Vida LW Hudson Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University

Julia Hirschberg does research in prosody, spoken dialogue systems, and emotional and deceptive speech. She received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985. She worked at Bell Laboratories and AT&T Laboratories -- Research from 1985-2003 as a Member of Technical Staff and as a Department Head, creating the Human-Computer Interface Research Department at Bell Labs and moving with it to AT&T Labs. She served as editor-in-chief of Computational Linguistics from 1993-2003 and as an editor-in-chief of Speech Communication from 2003-2006. She is on the Editorial Board of Speech Communication and of the Journal of Pragmatics. She was on the Executive Board of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) from 1993-2003, have been on the Permanent Council of International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP) since 1996, and served on the board of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) from 1999-2007 (as President 2005-2007). She is currently the chair of the ISCA Distinguished Lecturers selection committee. She is on the IEEE SLTC, the executive board of the North American chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, the CRA Board of Directors, and the board of the CRA-W. She has been active in working for diversity at AT&T and at Columbia. She has been a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence since 1994, an ISCA Fellow since 2008, and became an ACL Fellow in the founding group in 2012. She received a Columbia Engineering School Alumni Association (CESAA) Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award in 2009, received an honorary doctorate (hedersdoktor) from KTH in 2007, is the 2011 recipient of the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award and, also received the ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement in the same year.

Michael Collins

Vikram S. Pandit Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University

Michael J. Collins is a researcher in the field of computational linguistics. His research interests are in natural language processing as well as machine learning and he has made important contributions in statistical parsing and in statistical machine learning. One notable contribution is a state-of-the-art parser for the Penn Wall Street Journal corpus. His research covers a wide range of topics such as parse re-ranking, tree kernels, semi-supervised learning, machine translation and exponentiated gradient algorithms with a general focus on discriminative models and structured prediction.

Shih-Fu Chang

Richard Dicker Chair Professor at Columbia University

Shih-Fu Chang’s research interest is focused on multimedia retrieval, computer vision, signal processing, and machine learning. He and his students have developed some of the earliest image/video search engines, such as VisualSEEk, VideoQ, and WebSEEk, contributing to the foundation of the vibrant field of content-based visual search and commercial systems for Web image search. Recognized by many best paper awards and high citation impacts, his scholarly work set trends in several important areas, such as compressed-domain video manipulation, video structure parsing, image authentication, large-scale indexing, and video content analysis. His group demonstrated the best performance in video annotation (2008) and multimedia event detection (2010) in the international video retrieval evaluation forum TRECVID. The video concept classifier library, ontology, and annotated video corpora released by his group have been used by more than 100 groups. He co-led the ADVENT university-industry research consortium with the participation of more than 25 industry sponsors. He has received IEEE Signal Processing Society Technical Achievement Award, ACM SIGMM Technical Achievement Award, IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu award, IBM Faculty award, and Service Recognition Awards from IEEE and ACM. He served as the general co-chair of ACM Multimedia conference in 2000 and 2010, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (2006-8), Chairman of Columbia Electrical Engineering Department (2007-2010), Senior Vice Dean of Columbia Engineering School (2012-date), and advisor for several companies and research institutes. His research has been broadly supported by government agencies as well as many industry sponsors. He is a Fellow of IEEE and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Zoran Kostic

About Me

Zoran Kostic completed his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Rochester and his Dipl. Ing. degree at the University of Novi Sad. He spent most of his career in industry where he worked in research, product development and in leadership positions. Zoran's expertise spans mobile data systems, wireless communications, signal processing, multimedia, system-on-chip development and applications of parallel computing. His work comprises a mix of research, system architecture and software/hardware development, which resulted in a notable publication record, three dozen patents, and critical contributions to successful products. He has experience in Intellectual Property consulting. Dr. Kostic is an active member of the IEEE, and he has served as an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Communications and IEEE Communications Letters.

Andrew Gelman

Andrew Gelman is a professor of statistics and political science and director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University. He has received the Outstanding Statistical Application award from the American Statistical Association, the award for best article published in the American Political Science Review, and the Council of Presidents of Statistical Societies award for outstanding contributions by a person under the age of 40. Andrew has done research on a wide range of topics, including: why it is rational to vote; why campaign polls are so variable when elections are so predictable; why redistricting is good for democracy; reversals of death sentences; police stops in New York City, the statistical challenges of estimating small effects; the probability that your vote will be decisive; seats and votes in Congress; social network structure; arsenic in Bangladesh; radon in your basement; toxicology; medical imaging; and methods in surveys, experimental design, statistical inference, computation, and graphics.

David Madigan

David Madigan received a bachelor’s degree in Mathematical Sciences and a Ph.D. in Statistics, both from Trinity College Dublin. He has previously worked for AT&T Inc., Soliloquy Inc., the University of Washington, Rutgers University, and SkillSoft, Inc. He has over 100 publications in such areas as Bayesian statistics, text mining, Monte Carlo methods, pharmacovigilance and probabilistic graphical models. He is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He recently completed a term as Editor-in-Chief of Statistical Science.

Lauren Hannah

Lauren Hannah is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at Columbia University. Dr. Hannah received a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Financial Engineering from Princeton University, and an A.B. in Classics, again from Princeton University. After completing her Ph.D., Dr. Hannah completed a postdoc at Duke in the Statistical Science Department. Her interests include machine learning, Bayesian statistics, and energy applications.

Eva Ascarza

Eva Ascarza is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Columbia Business School. She is a marketing modeler who uses tools from statistics and economics to answer marketing questions. Her main research areas are customer analytics and pricing in the context of subscription businesses. She specializes in understanding and predicting changes in customer behavior, such as customer retention and usage. Another stream of her research focuses on developing statistical methodologies to be used by marketing practitioners. She received her PhD from London Business School (UK) and a MS in Economics and Finance from Universidad de Navarra (Spain).

James Curley

About Me

Dr. Curley has very broad interests in behavioral development. He has conducted and published research at molecular, systems, organismal and evolutionary levels of analysis in both animals and humans. The focus of Dr. Curley’s lab at Columbia is on the development of social behavior. Dr. Curley is interested in how both inherited genetic variability and social experiences during development can shift individual differences in various aspects of social behavior and what the neuroendocrinological basis of these differences may be. He also researches the reliability and validity of social behavioral tests conducted in the laboratory and whether it is possible to utilize alternative statistical and methodological approaches to more appropriately assess social behavior. Dr Curley believes that it is critical to understand how the 'social brains' of humans and other animals have been differentially shaped by evolution and to acknowledge how this should better inform translational research.

What you will learn

Fundamental R programming skills
Statistical concepts such as probability, inference, and modeling and how to apply them in practice
Gain experience with the tidyverse, including data visualization with ggplot2 and data wrangling with dplyr
Become familiar with essential tools for practicing data scientists such as Unix/Linux, git and GitHub, and RStudio
Implement machine learning algorithms
In-depth knowledge of fundamental data science concepts through motivating real-world case studies

Program Class List

Build a foundation in R and learn how to wrangle, analyze, and visualize data.

Learn basic data visualization principles and how to apply them using ggplot2.

Learn probability theory -- essential for a data scientist -- using a case study on the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

Learn inference and modeling, two of the most widely used statistical tools in data analysis.

Keep your projects organized and produce reproducible reports using GitHub, git, Unix/Linux, and RStudio.

Learn to process and convert raw data into formats needed for analysis.

Learn how to use R to implement linear regression, one of the most common statistical modeling approaches in data science.

Build a movie recommendation system and learn the science behind one of the most popular and successful data science techniques.

Show what you've learned from the Professional Certificate Program in Data Science.

Meet your instructor

Rafael Irizarry

Professor of Biostatistics at Harvard University

Rafael Irizarry is a Professor of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Professor of Biostatistics and Computational Biology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. For the past 15 years, Dr. Irizarry’s research has focused on the analysis of genomics data. During this time, he has also has taught several classes, all related to applied statistics. Dr. Irizarry is one of the founders of the Bioconductor Project, an open source and open development software project for the analysis of genomic data. His publications related to these topics have been highly cited and his software implementations widely downloaded.

What You Will Learn:

Fundamental knowledge of computer hardware and operating systems.
Understand modern operating systems structure.
Use the principles of computational thinking.
Gain knowledge of state-of-the-art in network protocols, architectures, and applications.
Learn the basic of Python programming.

This program introduces learners to the basics of computer programming and computer systems, including hardware, operating systems and computer networking.

No prior knowledge of programming or computer systems is required.

Basics of Computing & Programming outline:

Positional number systems
Hello world
Numerical data types and arithmetic expressions
Branching statements
Iterative/Loop statements
Strings & Functions
Array-based sequences/Lists

Introduction to Networking outline:

Computer networking overview
Computer networking architecture: application, transport, network and link layers
Network Security overview

Computer Hardware & Operating Systems outline:

Fundamentals of system hardware
Introduction to OS concepts
OS processes and threads
Thread concurrency and deadlocks
Memory management

Courses List:

This is a self-paced course that provides an Introduction to Computing and Programming.

This is a self-paced course that provides an Introduction to Networking.

This is a self-paced course that provides an Introduction to Computer Hardware and Operating Systems.

Meet Your Instructors:

Aspen Olmsted

Adjunct Professor at New York University Tandon School of Engineering Aspen Olmsted is an adjunct faculty member in the New York University Tandon School of Engineering in the Computer Science and Engineering department. Aspen's fulltime job is as an assistant professor and Graduate program director at the College of Charleston. He obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from The University of South Carolina. Before his academic career, he was CEO of Alliance Software Corporation. Alliance Software developed N-Tier enterprise applications for the performing arts and humanities market. Dr Olmsted’s research focus is on the development of algorithms and architectures for distributed enterprise solutions that can guarantee security and correctness while maintaining high-availability. In his Secure Data Engineering Lab, Aspen mentors over a dozen graduate and undergraduate students each year

Itay Tal

Industry Assistant Professor at New York University Tandon School of Engineering Tel-Aviv University 2005 M.Sc., Computer Science Tel-Aviv University 1998 B.Sc., Computer Science and Mathematics

Rafail Portnoy

Adjunct Professor at New York University Tandon School of Engineering Raf Porntoy is currently a Senior Vice President of Technology at Anti-Defamation League, being responsible for Applicaitons, Tech Operations, Marketing technology and IT Secuirty of this premier international civil rights organization. Prior to ADL Raf was a Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Safe Horizon, Inc., largest social services agency in US, focused on issues of domestic violence and child abuse. Prior to Safe Horizon he was a founding CIO at the SUNY Global Center, an international think tank, focused on issues of globalization and commerce. And prior to the SUNY Global Center Raf had a successful technical and managerial career at International Business Machines (IBM), where he built global applications and networks for almost 100 clients. He is a graduate of Brooklyn Polytechnic University and an Executive Mentor @ Columbia University Executive Management of Technology Program. He is happily married with 2 beautiful kids.

Daniel Katz-Braunschweig

Senior Lecturer at New York University Tandon School of Engineering Iona College Master of Science

Program overview

Education systems around the world face the central challenge of finding innovative solutions and techniques for improving student performance. This challenge is shared by teachers, teacher-leaders, and principals who are responsible for improving opportunities to learn, with two goals: raising average levels of student performance and reducing achievement gaps between students.

Beyond schools, leaders in district offices, government agencies, professional associations, and other non-governmental enterprises also share the challenge of improving student performance at scale across entire schools, districts, and systems.

What will you learn

To envision new possibilities for the work of students and teachers in classrooms.
To understand alternative logics and strategies for organizing the practice of educational innovation.
To examine the application of the emerging field of improvement science to the practice of educational innovation.
To explore innovation and improvement in large-scale educational reform initiatives in the US and around the world.
To improve your own practice as an educator, innovator, and/or reformer.
To develop and manage teams that use disciplined, evidence-based methods of educational innovation and improvement.
To employ disciplined, evidence-based methods of educational innovation and improvement to manage collaborations among schools, districts, and systems.

Program Class List

Learn why ambitious teaching and learning may be the key to global educational improvement and how to put it into practice.

Learn leading strategies for educational innovation to improve practice, raise student performance, and reduce achievement gaps.

Learn how to apply principles and practices of improvement science to improve educational practice, raise student performance, and reduce achievement gaps.

Learn about leading approaches to continuous educational improvement through case studies of educational innovation.

Apply your knowledge and demonstrate mastery, personal growth, and competency along dimensions central to leading educational innovation and improvement.

Meet Your Instructors

Deborah Loewenberg Ball

The William H. Payne Collegiate Professor of Education and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the School of Education at University of Michigan Deborah Loewenberg Ball is the William H. Payne Collegiate Professor of Education and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan, and the founding director of TeachingWorks. She taught elementary school for more than 15 years, and continues to teach mathematics to elementary students every summer. Ball serves on the National Science Board and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Board of Trustees, chairs the Spencer Foundation Board of Directors, and is the president-elect of the American Educational Research Association. She completed eleven years as dean of the U-M School of Education in June 2016. Ball's research focuses on the practice of mathematics instruction and on the improvement of teacher training and development. She is an expert on teacher education, with a particular interest in how professional training and experience combine to equip beginning teachers with the skills and knowledge needed for responsible practice. Ball has authored or co-authored more than 150 publications and has lectured and made numerous major presentations around the world.

Nell Duke

Professor in the School of Education at The University of Michigan Nell Duke is a Professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. Her work focuses on early literacy development, particularly among children living in poverty. Her specific areas of expertise include development of informational reading and writing in young children, comprehension development and instruction in early schooling, and issues of equity in literacy education. She is the recipient of the P. David Pearson Scholarly Influence Award from the Literacy Research Association and the American Educational Research Association Early Career Award, as well as awards from the National Reading Conference, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the International Reading Association. She has served as co-principal investigator on projects funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the George Lucas Educational Foundation, among other organizations. Duke has served as an advisor for many education and policy organizations. She has also served as author and consultant on a number of educational programs and speaks widely on literacy education. Among her books is Inside information: Developing powerful readers and writers of informational text through project-based instruction and Beyond bedtime stories: A parent’s guide to promoting reading, writing, and other literacy skills from birth to 5, now in its second edition.

Liz Kolb

Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Education at University of Michigan Liz Kolb is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. She authored Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education (published by ISTE, 2008), Cell Phones in the Classroom: A Practical Guide for the K-12 Educator (ISTE, 2011), and Unleash the Learning Power of Your Child's Cell Phone (ISTE, 2013). In addition, she has published numerous articles and book chapters on new technologies and education in prominent publications such as Education Leadership, Scholastic, Edutopia, ISTE's Edtekhub, and Learning and Leading with Technology. Kolb has done consulting work and has been a featured and keynote speaker at conferences all over the United States and Canada. She is an elected board member to MACUL, the state of Michigan organization for teaching with technology. She is a member of the COSN advisory board for mobile learning and emerging technologies. She is passionate about engaging students in education and educational opportunity through their own technologies. Kolb is also the creator and coordinator of the 4T Virtual Conference, which is a free conference for practitioners that occurs every May. Kolb is a former social studies and computer technology teacher.

Elizabeth Birr Moje

Dean of the School of Education at University of Michigan Elizabeth Birr Moje is the Dean of the School of Education, the George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor of Education, and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. She is also a faculty associate in the Institute for Social Research and in the Latino/a Studies program. Moje began her career teaching history, biology, and drama at high schools in Colorado and Michigan. In her current research and community engagement work, Moje uses an array of methods to study and support young people’s literacy learning in Detroit, Michigan. She is particularly interested in the intersections between disciplinary literacies of school and the literacy practices of youth outside of school. She also studies how youth draw from home, community, ethnic, popular, and school cultures to make cultures and to enact identities. In related work focused on teacher learning, Moje developed and co-directs Teaching and Learning the Disciplines through Clinical Practice Rounds, with colleague Robert Bain. The Rounds Project, which advances discipline-based literacy teacher education in urban settings, was awarded the provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize at the University of Michigan in 2010.

Donald J. Peurach

Associate Professor of Educational Policy, Leadership, and Innovation in the School of Education at University of Michigan Donald J. Peurach is Associate Professor of Educational Policy, Leadership, and Innovation in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. His research, teaching, and outreach focus on the production, use, and management of knowledge-in-practice among social innovators and those they seek to serve. As such, his work sits squarely at the intersection of educational policy, leadership, and innovation. He is the author of Seeing Complexity in Public Education: Problems, Possibilities, and Success for All (2011, Oxford University Press) and a co-author of Improvement by Design: The Promise of Better Schools (2014, University of Chicago Press). Peurach also serves as a Fellow of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and as a Faculty Associate in the Center for Positive Organizations in the Ross School of Business (University of Michigan). Before pursuing an academic career, he was a high school mathematics teacher and, before that, a systems analyst in manufacturing, healthcare, and higher education. Peurach holds a BA in computer science from Wayne State University, an MPP from the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, and a PhD in Educational Studies from the School of Education at the University of Michigan.

Gretchen Spreitzer

The Keith E. and Valerie J. Alessi Professor of Business Administration at University of Michigan

Gretchen M. Spreitzer is the Keith E. and Valerie J. Alessi Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Management and Organizations in the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on employee empowerment and leadership development, particularly within a context of organizational change and decline. Her most recent work is looking at positive deviance and how organizations enable employees to thrive. This work fits within a larger effort at Ross to develop a Scholarship of Positive Organizing. She is the co-author of several books including How to be a Positive Leader (2014) with Jane Dutton, Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship with Kim Cameron, The Leader's Change Handbook: An Essential Guide to Setting Direction and Taking Action (1999) with Jay Conger and Edward Lawler, The Future of Leadership: Speaking to the Next Generation (2001) with Warren Bennis and Thomas Cummings, and A Company of Leaders: Five Disciplines for Unleashing the Power in Your Workforce (2001) with Robert Quinn.

Anthony S. Bryk

President at Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Anthony S. Bryk is the ninth president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, where he is leading work on transforming educational research and development, more closely joining researchers and practitioners in networked improvement communities to improve teaching and learning. Formerly, he held the Spencer Chair in Organizational Studies in the School of Education and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University from 2004 until assuming Carnegie's presidency in September 2008. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and was appointed by President Obama to the National Board for Education Sciences in 2010. He is one of America's most noted educational researchers. His 1993 book, Catholic Schools and the Common Good, is a classic in the sociology of education. His deep interest in bringing scholarship to bear on improving schooling is reflected in his later volumes, Trust in Schools (2002) and Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago (2010). In his most recent work, Learning to Improve (2015), Bryk argues improvement science combined with the power of networks offers the field a new approach to reach ever increasing educational aspirations. Bryk holds a B.S. from Boston College and an Ed.D. from Harvard University.

Paul LeMahieu

Senior VP for Programs and Operations at Carnegie Foundation Paul LeMahieu is the senior vice president for programs and operations at the Carnegie Foundation. At Carnegie, he directs all of its programmatic efforts as well as the work of the Center for Networked Improvement (comprised of groups dedicated to collaborative technology, analytics, improvement science, as well as network initiation and development). LeMahieu served as superintendent of education for the state of Hawaii, the only state in the nation that is a unitary school district with annual budgets totaling over $1.8 billion. He was President of the National Association of Test Directors and Vice President of the American Educational Research Association. He served on the National Academy of Sciences' Board on International Comparative Studies in Education, Mathematical Sciences Education Board, the National Board on Testing Policy, and the National Board on Professional Teaching Standards. His current professional interests focus on the adaptation of improvement science tools and methodologies for application in networks in education. He is a co-author of the recent book Learning to improve: How America’s schools can get better at getting better, and lead author of the forthcoming Working to improve: Seven approaches to quality improvement in education. LeMahieu has a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh, a master’s from Harvard University, and a bachelor’s from Yale College.

Alicia Grunow

Senior Fellow, Improvement Science at Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Alicia Grunow is a Senior Fellow, Improvement Science, at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Amanda Meyer

Associate, Improvement Science at Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Amanda Meyer is an Associate, Improvement Science, at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Program overview

Solar energy technology use is expanding rapidly. The Solar Photovoltaic (PV) sector is the largest and fastest growing renewable energy employer worldwide with an increasing need for experts that can support this growth.

In this MicroMasters program you will gain the knowledge and skills needed to pursue a career in the solar energy field and become a successful solar energy professional. This program will teach you what is expected from solar experts, and will prepare you for employment in various capacities including:

Systems design and engineering
Solar systems installation
Device fabrication and characterization
QA and reliability testing
Project management and consultancy as well as (technical) sales

What will you learn

The physics of and how to model all aspects of a working solar cell: performance, efficiency limits and design rules.
Design concepts and fabrication processes of various photovoltaic (PV) technologies and applications.
How to evaluate components of a PV system: PV modules, inverters, DC-DC converters, batteries, charge controllers and cables.
Application techniques for designing a PV system ranging from a residential rooftop system to a utility scale solar farm.
Design concepts of microgrids that include PV systems.
How to assess the economics and ecology of PV systems and communicate these accordingly.

Program Class List

Learn how solar cells generate electricity, and about the semiconductor physics and optics required to design and manufacture solar cells.

Explore the main PV technologies in the current market, to gain in-depth knowledge on the design and processing methods of solar cells.

Explore the wide range of solar energy applications and learn to design a real PV installation with excellent performance and reliability.

Learn how to integrate a photovoltaic system into a microgrid of your design.

Finalize the Solar Energy Engineering program to become a MicroMasters graduate.

Meet Your Instructors

Arno Smets

Professor, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science at Delft University of Technology Dr. Arno H.M. Smets is Professor in Solar Energy in the Photovoltaics Material and Devices group at the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology. From 2005-2010 he worked at the Research Center for Photovoltaics at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tsukuba Japan. His research work is focused on processing of thin silicon films, innovative materials and new concepts for photovoltaic applications. He is lecturer for BSc and MSc courses on Photovoltaics and Sustainable Energy at TU Delft. His online edX course on Solar Energy attracted over 150,000 students worldwide. He is co-author of the book “Solar Energy. The physics and engineering of photovoltaic conversion technologies and systems.” Professor Smets was awarded the first ever edX Prize for Exceptional Contributions to Online Teaching and Learning for his Solar Energy course. To learn more, visit here.

Miro Zeman

Head of the Electrical Sustainable Energy department at TU Delft

Professor Miro Zeman is the head of the Electrical Sustainable Energy department at the TU Delft faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science. His research interests encompass the development of novel materials and concepts for the improvement of thin-film silicon solar cell performance and modeling of devices based on amorphous semiconductors. Since receiving his PhD in 1989 he was in charge of more than 30 Dutch and 6 European projects dealing with the development of thin-film solar cells and technology for their fabrication. He has authored and co-authored more than 270 scientific publications; he contributed to 3 scientific books. He acts as a reviewer for several scientific journals. He regularly attends world conferences on advanced materials and photovoltaics in Europe, USA, Japan and China, where he contributed with more than 80 presentations. He is co-author of the book “Solar Energy. The physics and engineering of photovoltaic conversion technologies and systems.”

René van Swaaij

Associate Professor, Photovoltaics Material and Devices at TU Delft

Dr. René van Swaaij is associate professor in the Photovoltaics Material and Devices group at the TU Delft faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science. He is the programme director of the master programme Sustainable Energy Technology. His research interests lie mainly with the processing of silicon based solar cells and the physics underlying the operation of these cells. He is in charge of several projects in the field of thin-film silicon solar cells and lectures on semiconductor device physics in BSc and MSc courses. René has authored and co-authored more than 100 journal and conference papers is and is co-author of the book “Solar Energy. The physics and engineering of photovoltaic conversion technologies and systems.”

Olindo Isabella

Assistant Professor, Photovoltaics Material and Devices at TU Delft

Dr. Olindo Isabella is assistant professor in the Photovoltaics Material and Devices group at the TU Delft faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science. Between 2011 and 2012 he was visiting researcher at AIST (Tsukuba, Japan) working on high performance thin-film a-SiGe:H absorber for multi-junction thin-film silicon solar cells. He received his PhD (cum laude) from Delft University of Technology in 2013 for his research on light management in thin-film silicon solar cells, overseeing activities on c-Si solar cells and PV systems. He has contributed to two scientific books, has 3 patent applications and is co-author of the book “Solar Energy. The physics and engineering of photovoltaic conversion technologies and systems.” He developed and manages the Lab course on photovoltaics offering students hands-on experience with all aspects of photovoltaic systems.

Ravi Vasudevan

Postdoctoral Researcher with the Photovoltaic Materials and Devices at TU Delft

Dr. Ravi Vasudevan obtained his MSc and PhD from the Delft University of Technology. He has researched solar energy and is an expert in silicon heterojunction solar cells. He also is experienced in solar energy education. He has given many lecturers at the BSc and MSc level for various solar-based courses at TU Delft. He also helped to develop the MSc course in PV Systems taught at TU Delft and is in charge of managing the creation of the Solar Energy Engineering ProfEd series hosted on the edX platform.

Seyedmahdi Izadkhast

Postdoctoral fellow researcher, DC Systems, Energy Conversion and Storage at TU Delft

Seyedmahdi Izadkhast received PhD degrees within SETS doctorate from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands; Comillas Pontifical University, Spain; KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Since January 2016, Dr. S. Izadkhast has been working as a postdoctoral research fellow with DC Systems, Energy Conversion and Storage (DCE&S) at the Delft University of Technology, where he is also the lecturer of "AC & DC Microgrids" course, and OnlineSolar and instructor/project leader of "Systems Engineering" course. Moreover, he has been involved in numerous international research projects like GRID4EU, NICE GRID, CSGriP, and DCSMART ERA-Net SG+.

Laura Ramirez

Assistant Professor of Energy Conversion at TU Delft

Laura Ramirez is an Assistant Professor of Energy Conversion with the Department of Electrical Sustainable Energy of Delft University of Technology and DC Systems, Energy Conversion and Storage group (Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science). In 2003, she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and her Bachelor’s degree in Music with a major in Piano at the Universidad de Costa Rica (but she cannot improvise). She graduated with honors from her M.Sc. studies in Electrical Power Engineering at Delft University of Technology in 2007. Laura worked on her PhD project from September 2007 to December 2011. In 2013, she was awarded with the Erasmus Energy Science Award.

Pavol Bauer

Full Professor, Department of Electrical Sustainable Energy at TU Delft

Pavol Bauer is a full Professor in the Department of Electrical Sustainable Energy of Delft University of Technology and head of DC Systems, Energy Conversion and Storage group. He earned his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Kosice (‘85) and Ph.D. from Delft University of Technology (’95). He has worked on many projects for industry, focusing on solar wind and wave energy, power electronic applications for power systems and electric mobility. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE (’97), former chairman of Benelux IEEE Joint Industry Applications Society, Power Electronics and Power Engineering Society chapter, chairman of the Power Electronics and Motion Control (PEMC) council, member of the Executive Committee of European Power Electronics Association (EPE).

Program overview

Safe water supply and hygienic water treatment are prerequisites for the well-being of communities all over the world. This Water XSeries, offered by the water management experts of TU Delft, will give you a unique opportunity to gain access to world-class knowledge and expertise in this field.

This 3-course series will cover questions such as: How does climate change affect water cycle and public safety? How to use existing technologies to treat groundwater and surface water so we have safe drinking water? How do we take care of sewage produced in the cities on a daily basis? You will learn what are the physical, chemical and biological processes involved; carry out simple experiments at home; and have the chance to make a basic design of a drinking water treatment plant

What will you learn

An understanding of the global water cycle and its various processes
The mechanisms of climate change and their effects on water systems
Drinking treatment and quality of groundwater and surfacewater
The major pollutants that are present in the sewage
The physical, chemical, and biological processes involved in water treatment and distribution
How urban water services function and the technologies they use

Program Class List

Learn about urban water services, focusing on basic sewage treatment technologies.

Learn about urban water services, focusing on conventional technologies for drinking water treatment.

Water is a crucial element in climate and for society. Find out about the latest engineering interventions for water management in rivers, coasts and the urban environment.

Meet Your Instructors

Caroline Katsman

Associate Professor, Oceans and Climate at Delft University of Technology

Caroline Katsman is Associate Professor in Physical Oceanography in the Environmental Fluidmechanics section of the faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences. Her research focuses on the large-scale ocean circulation and its role for climate. In 2014, she received a personal mid-career grant (NWO-VIDI grant) to study how ocean eddies govern the response of the ocean circulation to high-latitude climate change. Before coming to Delft she worked at KNMI (the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) as a climate researcher. Besides her scientific work on ocean warming and future sea level change, she advised the Dutch government on coastal defence policy strategies.

Nick van de Giesen

Professor in Water Resources Management at Delft University of Technology

Since July 2004, Nick van de Giesen has held the Van Kuffeler Chair of Water Resources Management of the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences. He teaches Integrated Water Resources Management and Water Management. His main interests are the modeling of complex water resources systems and the development of science-based decision support systems. The interaction between water systems and their users is the core theme in both research portfolio and teaching curriculum. Since 1 April 2009, he is chairman of the Delft Research Initiative Environment.

Herman Russchenberg

Professor in Atmospheric Remote Sensing at Delft University of Technology

Herman Russchenberg is engaged in intensive and extensive research into the causes of climate change. His own research involves investigating the role played by clouds and dust particles in the atmosphere, but he is also head of the TU Delft Climate Institute, established in March 2012 to bring together TU Delft researchers working on all aspects of climate and climate change. Russchenberg started out in the faculty of Electrical Engineering, conducting research into the influence of the atmosphere (rain, clouds) on satellite signals. After obtaining his PhD in 1992, he shifted his attention to the physics of water vapour, water droplets, dust particles, sunlight, radiation and emissions in the atmosphere. He is now based in the faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences.

Hubert Savenije

Professor of Hydrology, head of the Water Resources Section at Delft University of Technology

Prof. Savenije was born in 1952 in the Netherlands and studied at the Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands, where he obtained his MSc in 1977 in Hydrology. As a young graduate hydrologist he worked for six years in Mozambique where he developed a theory on salt intrusion in estuaries and studied the hydrology of international rivers. From 1985-1990 he worked as an international consultant mostly in Asia and Africa. He joined academia in 1990 to complete his PhD in 1992. In 1994 he was appointed Professor of Water Resources Management at the IHE (now UNESCO-IHE, Institute for Water Education) in Delft, the Netherlands. Since 1999, he is Professor of Hydrology at the Delft University of Technology, where he is the head of the Water Resources Section. He is President of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences and Executive Editor of the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.

Marcel Stive

Emeritus Professor of Coastal Engineering at Delft University of Technology

Marcel Stive studied Civil engineering at the Delft University of Technology, where he graduated in 1977 and received his doctorate in 1988. After graduating in 1977 Stive started working at WL-Delft Hydraulics, where he worked until 1992. In 1992 he became a professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. In 1994 her returned to WL-Delft Hydraulics and at the same time began to work as a professor of Coastal Morphodynamics at the Delft University of Technology. Since 2001 Stive is a professor of Coastal Engineering at Delft University of Technology and he is the scientific director of the Water Research Centre Delft since 2003.

Luuk Rietveld

Professor of Urban Water Cycle Technology at Delft University of Technology Luuk Rietveld is professor of Urban Water Cycle Technology at Delft University of Technology. After finalizing his studies in Civil Engineering at Delft University of Technology in 1987, he worked, until 1991, as lecturer/researcher in Sanitary Engineering at the Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo, Mozambique. Between 1991 and 1994, he was employed at the Management Centre for International Co-operation, and since 1994 he has had an appointment at the Department of Water Management of Delft University of Technology. In 2005, he defended his PhD thesis entitled "Improving Operation of Drinking Water Treatment through Modelling".

Doris van Halem

Associate Professor, Sanitary Engineering at Delft University of Technology Doris van Halem is Associate Professor within the Department of Water Management, section Sanitary Engineering of Delft University of Technology. Her research has an international orientation with an emphasis on understanding natural processes for development of innovative, sustainable water technologies. As Scientific Director of TU Delft Global Drinking Water Programme, Dr. van Halem is in charge of drinking water research with and in the Global South. She graduated from Delft University of Technology in Civil Engineering and Geosciences with a cum laude MSc degree (2007). In 2011 she completed her PhD research (with honours) on subsurface iron and arsenic removal for drinking water supply in Bangladesh. Currently she supervises BSc, MSc and PhD students, in their studies towards development of new, smart drinking water solutions.

Anke Grefte

Project Manager, Open, Online and Blended Education for the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at Delft University of Technology

Anke Grefte is Project Manager, Open, Online and Blended Education for the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology. She graduated from Delft University of Technology in Civil Engineering with a master’s thesis entitled "Behaviour of particles in a drinking water distribution network; test rig results". For this thesis Anke was awarded the Gijs Oskam award for best young researcher. In November 2013, she finished her Ph.D. research on the removal of Natural Organic Matter (NOM) fractions by ion exchange and the impact on drinking water treatment processes and biological stability.

Jules van Lier

Professor, Sanitary Engineering at Delft University of Technology

Jules van Lier is full professor of Environmental Engineering and Wastewater Treatment at the Sanitary Engineering Section of Delft University of Technology and has a 1 day per week posted position at the Unesco-IHE Institute for Water Education, also in Delft Jules van Lier accomplished his PhD on Thermophilic Anaerobic Wastewater Treatment under the supervision of Prof. Gatze Lettinga (1995) at Wageningen University. Throughout his career he has been involved as a senior researcher / project manager in various (inter)national research projects, working on cost-effective water treatment for resource recovery (water, nutrients, biogas, elements). His research projects are focused on closing water cycles in industries and sewage water recovery for irrigated agriculture. The further development of anaerobic treatment technology is his prime focus. In addition to university work he is an Executive Board Member and Scientific Advisor to the LeAF Foundation; regional representative for Western Europe Anaerobic Digestion Specialist group of the International Water Association (IWA); editor of scientific journals (e.g Water Science Technology and Advances in Environmental Research and Development); member of the Paques Technological Advisory Commission; and member of the Advisory Board of World-Waternet, Amsterdam.

Merle de Kreuk

Associate Professor, Sanitary Engineering at Delft University of Technology

Merle de Kreuk is a wastewater Associate Professor at the Sanitary Engineering department of the Delft University of Technology. Her research focus is on (municipal and industrial) wastewater treatment systems and anaerobic processes, aiming to link the world of Biotechnology to the Civil Engineering, as well as fundamental research to industrial applications. Her main research topics are hydrolysis processes in anaerobic treatment and granule formation and deterioration. Merle’s PhD and Post-Doc research involved the development of aerobic granular sludge technology and up scaling the technology from a three litre lab scale reactor to the full scale Nereda® process®. The first application of aerobic granular sludge technology in the Netherlands was opened in May 2012, and currently many more installations are being built, due to its compactness, low energy use and good effluent characteristics. Her previous work experience also involved the position of water treatment technology innovator at Water authority Hollandse Delta on projects such as the Energy Factory in which 14 water authorities cooperated to develop an energy producing sewage treatment plant.

Program overview

What will you learn

Program Class List

1Attaining Higher Education

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2University Studies for Student Veterans

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3Find Your Calling: Career Transition Principles for Returning Veterans

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Meet Your Instructors

Beth E. Morgan

R.J. Jenkins

Skip Bailey

Tanya Ang

Sara Remedios

Josh Edwin

Michael Abrams

William Deresiewicz

Sheena Iyengar

Sebastian Junger

Program Overview

What you will learn

Program class list

1Through My Eyes - Intellectual Disability Healthcare around the World

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2Well and Able - Improving the Physical Health of People with Intellectual Disability

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3Able-Minded - Mental Health and People with Intellectual Disability

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Meet your instructors

Miriam Taylor

Nicholas Lennox

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What you will learn

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1Project Management Life Cycle

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2Best Practices for Project Management Success

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3International Project Management

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4Project Management MicroMasters® Capstone Exam

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Meet Your Instructors

Celine Gullace

Leonie Fernandes

Program overview

What you will learn

Program Class List

1Computing for Data Analysis

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2Data Analytics for Business

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3Introduction to Analytics Modeling

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1
Attaining Higher Education

2
University Studies for Student Veterans

3
Find Your Calling: Career Transition Principles for Returning Veterans

1
Through My Eyes - Intellectual Disability Healthcare around the World

2
Well and Able - Improving the Physical Health of People with Intellectual Disability

3
Able-Minded - Mental Health and People with Intellectual Disability

1
Project Management Life Cycle

2
Best Practices for Project Management Success

3
International Project Management

4
Project Management MicroMasters® Capstone Exam

1
Computing for Data Analysis

2
Data Analytics for Business

3
Introduction to Analytics Modeling

1
Statistical Thinking for Data Science and Analytics

2
Machine Learning for Data Science and Analytics

3
Enabling Technologies for Data Science and Analytics: The Internet of Things

1
Data Science: R Basics

2
Data Science: Visualization

3
Data Science: Probability

4
Data Science: Inference and Modeling

5
Data Science: Productivity Tools