The convergence of different crises pressuring the world today is probably one of the most complex human-made phenomena we can observe. From biodiversity loss to the threat to democracy, all of these crises are deeply intertwined. Therefore, tools from the complexity and systems-thinking toolsets become very relevant for anyone seeking to have a slight grasp of what is going on and what is probably going to happen. This project is about using two of these tools to have a minimal understanding of how all of these crises are interconnected and to simulate possible future scenarios. The aforementioned tools are Loopy and Mental Modeler, which combine provide a insightful framework for the study of the current Human Predicament and other highly complex situations. Moreover, in this project you will have the opportunity to participate in an experiment that tries to touch on the collective intelligence permeating us all in order to have a better understanding of our current situation - and maybe find more suitable paths. Are you ready? Note: This project works best for learners who are based in the North America region. We’re currently working on providing the same experience in other regions.

Have you ever wondered what is behind different cultural traits and attitudes towards the status quo? Or more broadly, what influences the Zeitgeist of a society? Generally speaking, when it comes to changing (or not) the current spirit and state of affairs of a given society or community, some people show themselves as idealists, and they can even inspire others. At the same time, some other people are traditionalists, and some are just neutral about how things are. In this guided-project you will develop an agent-based model using NetLogo that tries to use these personas to touch and generate insights around theses questions. And while doing so, you will gain some hands-on knowledge on model building and debugging. Note: This project works best for learners who are based in the North America region. We’re currently working on providing the same experience in other regions.

In this project-based course, you will use Kumu to create a relationship map about the life & ideas of physicist and philosopher David Bohm, inspired by the documentary Infinite Potential. By doing so, you will implement advanced functionalities using Kumu's Advanced Editor; and create an interactive presentation based on your map to tell Bohm's story. This project brings the features and capabilities of Kumu to another realm, where maps that are usually used to represent systems and networks become visual scaffoldings for different ways to tell a story. Note: This course works best for learners who are based in the North America region. We’re currently working on providing the same experience in other regions.

The course provides a broad view of how to become and progress as a researcher. It spans over a wide range of topics, from the historical development of scientific thought to research methodology, to the pragmatics of publication, research funding, evaluation, and promotion in a researcher’s career. It also stresses the ethical aspects of research. Although the course speaks about scientific research in general, it especially focuses on the field on Information and Communication Science and Technology. The course is mainly directed to students engaging in research and beginning researchers. It may also be of interest for senior researcher in their role as supervisors or mentors, and to all those who are interested in how scientific research works. The main topics addressed in the course are: - Research, its historical development, and its role in society; - Research methodology; - The products of research: publications and artifacts; - The professional researcher: roles and career progress; - Research evaluation, from peer review to bibliometrics; - Research ethics.

In this course, we will study security and trust from the hardware perspective. Upon completing the course, students will understand the vulnerabilities in current digital system design flow and the physical attacks to these systems. They will learn that security starts from hardware design and be familiar with the tools and skills to build secure and trusted hardware.

This course is an introduction to 3D scientific data visualization, with an emphasis on science communication and cinematic design for appealing to broad audiences. You will develop visualization literacy, through being able to interpret/analyze (read) visualizations and create (write) your own visualizations. By the end of this course, you will: -Develop visualization literacy. -Learn the practicality of working with spatial data. -Understand what makes a scientific visualization meaningful. -Learn how to create educational visualizations that maintain scientific accuracy. -Understand what makes a scientific visualization cinematic. -Learn how to create visualizations that appeal to broad audiences. -Learn how to work with image-making software. (for those completing the Honors track)

In this 1-hour long project-based course, you will create a model that simulates the interrelated dynamics of three different species populations within an environment: plants, deer, and wolves By doing so, you’ll be introduced to Insight Maker, a free web-based simulation environment that supports both System Dynamics modeling and Agent Based modeling. This will equip you with everything you need to know in order to build tailor-made models and simulations. Note: This course works best for learners who are based in the North America region. We’re currently working on providing the same experience in other regions.

In this hands-on guided project you will be introduced to the wonders of Cellular Automata, a powerful modeling framework for the exploration of inter-scale dynamics. That is, how do simple local level rules give rise to global pattern formation and self-organization? You will explore questions like this with the help of Golly and NetLogo, two rich simulations softwares for the creation of CA and agent-based models. Moreover, you will be exposed to cutting edge applications of Cellular Automata in the fields of Biology (Morphogenesis) and Physics.

In this hands-on project, you will learn about the Finite Element Method (FEM) and validate a simulation case using the cloud-based simulation tool SimScale. We will set up a simple simulation case with a provided geometry to learn the fundamentals of the Finite Element Method and how a validation case is approached in the first place. We will walk through the classical three step process of every simulation which includes the pre-processing, processing and post-processing step. SimScale is an engineering simulation platform that is revolutionizing the way engineers, designers, scientists, and students design products. The SimScale platform is accessible completely via a standard web browser, with an easy-to-use interface which supports numerous simulation types including solid mechanics (FEM), fluid dynamics (CFD) & thermodynamics. This course runs on Coursera's hands-on project platform called Rhyme. On Rhyme, you do projects in a hands-on manner in your browser. You will get instant access to pre-configured cloud desktops containing all of the software and data you need for the project, for this project you need no special setup or any data. Everything is already set up directly in your internet browser so you can just focus on learning! Notes: - This course works best for learners who are based in the North America region. We’re currently working on providing the same experience in other regions.

The past 15 years have been exciting ones in plant biology. Hundreds of plant genomes have been sequenced, RNA-seq has enabled transcriptome-wide expression profiling, and a proliferation of "-seq"-based methods has permitted protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions to be determined cheaply and in a high-throughput manner. These data sets in turn allow us to generate hypotheses at the click of a mouse or tap of a finger. In Plant Bioinformatics on Coursera.org, we covered 33 plant-specific online tools from genome browsers to transcriptomic data mining to promoter/network analyses and others, and in this Plant Bioinformatics Capstone we'll use these tools to hypothesize a biological role for a gene of unknown function, summarized in a written lab report. This course is part of a Plant Bioinformatics Specialization on Coursera, which introduces core bioinformatic competencies and resources, such as NCBI's Genbank, Blast, multiple sequence alignments, phylogenetics in Bioinformatic Methods I, followed by protein-protein interactions, structural bioinformatics and RNA-seq analysis in Bioinformatic Methods II, in addition to the plant-specific concepts and tools introduced in Plant Bioinformatics and the Plant Bioinformatics Capstone. This course/capstone was developed with funding from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Arts and Science Open Course Initiative Fund (OCIF) and was implemented by Eddi Esteban, Will Heikoop and Nicholas Provart. Asher Pasha programmed a gene ID randomizer.