In this course students will be exposed to the applications of artificial intelligence in metallurgical processes. Students will have 20 hours of theory and 20 hours of practical and the course will include a refresher of R and Python programming, understanding data sets, learning statistical methods, learning machine learning techniques, understanding where and when to use a specific machine learning technique, and also understanding the limitations of artificial intelligence and common misconceptions and fallacious statistical interpretations. The students will also be exposed to four real industrial case studies from ferrous, nonferrous, and light metals industries. Here students will learn on how data was acquired, what KPIs are tracked, nature of the data, what statistical models and machine learning techniques were employed and finally how machine learning helped improve the process. The course will also include four practical sessions for hands-on training in analyzing data sets from metals industries using R & Python.

Aluminium is the third most abundant element in the earth's crust, and the most abundant metallic element. For the last 50 years, it has been second only to iron in its industrial use. One essential stage in the process is the extraction of alumina (Al2O3) from the ore bauxite, and an efficient method to do this was developed by Karl Joseph Bayer in 1888. To this day, the Bayer and the Hall–Héroult processes have remained the most economical methods for the production of commercial quantities of aluminium, and are the mainstay of the primary aluminium industry. This course will include 20 hours of theory lectures including key topics related to alumina extraction, primary aluminum production, secondary aluminum production, casthouse metallurgy of aluminium, quality issues in aluminum castings, processing and applications of aluminium and its alloys, and production of aluminum powders. The course will also include a 2-hour in-class course project and case study competition on some selected topics related to the theory taught in this course.

In this course students will be exposed to the applications of machine learning for materials design, including physical metallurgy, catalysis and mechanics of materials. We will begin by conducting a review of statistical and numerical methods, and programming in R and Python. Then, the most important machine learning techniques of relevance to materials science will be described. This will include linear, nonlinear and logistic regression, decision trees, artificial neural networks, deep learning, supervised and unsupervised learning. Thereafter, the students will be provided hands-on experience on analyzing data and apply ML approaches through a set of case studies, pertaining to alloy design, additive manufacturing, and catalyst design. Finally, students will apply these skills through a term project on materials science problem of their interest.

This course has been selected for Data Analytics emphasis in FASE at the graduate level. Due to the broad nature of course topics, we encourage students from Chem Eng, MIE, Chemistry, and other departments.

Understanding how different materials fail is a key design consideration in materials science. In this course students will be exposed to the mechanisms leading to the damage and failure of engineering materials, and modeling of failure at atomic and continuum levels. First, we will describe different mechanisms by which various materials fail, including metals, alloys, ceramics, composite materials, and nanomaterials; and the nature of failure — brittle vs. ductile. Then, various approaches to model and analyze damage and failure in materials will be discussed, including finite element-based failure analysis at the macroscale, and molecular dynamics at the atomic scale. Hands-on practice will be provided through practical case studies using softwares. Finally, students will apply these skills through a term project on a materials science problem of their interest.

The one-week intensive course includes additive manufacturing (AM) process fundamentals, material properties, design rules, qualification methods, cost and value analysis, and industrial and consumer applications of AM. Particular emphasis will be placed on AM technologies for metals and other advanced materials (ceramics and composites), and related design principles and part performance. The AM techniques introduced in this course include, but are not limited, to selective laser melting, direct metal deposition, wire arc deposition, cold spray, powder binder jetting, electroplating, fused deposition modeling (FDM), and stereolithography (SLA).

Lab activities (virtual/hands-on) involving both desktop and industrial-grade 3D printers for metals, ceramics and composites, addressing the full workflow from design to characterization. Several interactive case studies which deploy quantitative analysis tools discussed in lecture to solve a real or imagined market or business need. Virtual/in-person visits to local AM startups and an AM equipment provider/integrator. A multidisciplinary team of speakers including industry experts, and special guest speakers (some are U of T alumni). This course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of AM technology, its applications, and its implications both now and in the future.

Steel is the largest commodity metal produced annually, in 2018 the annual production of steel was 1,808 million tonnes. The annual global steel capacity has increased at an annual rate of 2.5 to 6.0%, over the last 20 years. The design concept of steel plants has changed to accommodate the technological changes which have occurred in the areas of liquid steel production, the use of secondary metallurgy processes, and the evolution of continuous casting processes which are hot linked to rolling mills. Since steel is a commodity product, the industry is very competitive, and it is necessary to understand how plant design impacts on the operation and the product cost. This course will introduce the methodology used to design both greenfield plants and brown field plants.

Students will be assigned into groups of 3 to 4, and will be asked to develop a design brief report for a steel mini-mill consisting of Electric Arc Furnace, Ladle Furnace, and Continuous Caster, where the design will address the equipment size, energy requirements, technologies to meet steel quality requirements, plant layout, safe operation, and economic justification for the plant.

This course is designed to provide an understanding of objects, the storage, handling, conservations and management of collections, that is, the activities upon which the curatorial, research and educational functions of the museum are based.

This course introduces a perspective based on museum ethics and contemporary approaches to leadership in order to address key concepts, contexts and issues of museum management: the changing missions, external environments and stakeholders of contemporary museums, organizational structure and design, mission, policy and strategy, planning and programming, marketing, museum economics and financial management, museum professionalism, leadership and motivation, and managing creativity and change.

This inter-disciplinary course offers students an overview of a wide range of contemporary developments in theoretical approaches to the study of art and culture. In particular, the course focuses on the recent turn towards more socially and historically-grounded modes of analysis within a number of disciplines and research fields, including art history, philosophy and museum studies. The course also traces the development of contemporary cultural theory, surveying recent work in cultural studies, sociology, feminism, and postmodernism, and drawing on several case studies in the museum, gallery, and public art sectors.

This course introduces students to people and communities who do, and do not, visit museums. General topics covered include: studying visitor experiences in physical museums and on their websites; museums as sites for constructing meaning and lifelong learning; on-site and online museum visits that personally change or transform individuals; and museums and social responsibility. Students will have opportunities to analyse experiences planned for visitors across museums locally and internationally, and evaluate visitor response to physical and online exhibitions and programs.

Curation is no longer a practice solely attached to the museum as it has been coopted by several communities and cultural producers, from bloggers to makers, and even chefs. It is in this context, full of contradictions about what curation represents – the skilled practice of the museum professional trained to take care of, research, and display artefacts, or the creative process, framed as democratic and inclusive, of selecting and re-arranging objects and information – that we situate our explorations of curatorial practice. This course, thus, explores the role of the curator (collector, researcher, storyteller, trend setter, social activist, etc.) in various types of museums, from the art gallery to the heritage site, in order to reflect on different models of curatorial practice. These methods for curatorship will be discussed with an emphasis on their histories and their specific cultural, social and political contexts. Likewise, they will be explored as dynamic, complex and shifting practices highly influenced by institutional context, audience expectations and broader taste cultures. To understand the curator’s place in contemporary cultural institutions, this class will explore a series of theoretical concepts such as author, connoisseurship, taste and visual culture, along with a series of curatorial research methods. Students will engage with professional and intellectual practices through a series of hands on projects designed to reflect critically on curation.

Science subjects dominate the museum field — natural history, zoology, botany, anthropology, astronomy, palaeontology, archaeology, and classical physics to name but a few. Furthermore, the history of modern science is tied to the history of museums and in many ways public displays of science have influenced the development of science itself. Yet few museum professionals speak and understand the language of science. With a view to satisfying the basic requirements of any museum professional, this course will introduce the student to the fundamentals of scientific thinking and to the key issues associated with curating science subject matter. Specific examples of science-based museum displays and exhibitions will be explored in an engaging series of lectures, workshops, excursions and conversations with museum professionals.

This course is an introduction to preventive conservation. As such, it focuses on: identifying and quantifying the environmental factors that affect collections; developing strategies that mitigate those factors; understanding the materials that make up a museum collection – how they degrade, react to their environment and the objects around them; and evaluating the conservation requirements for the safe exhibition and storage of museum collections.

This course examines museums and other cultural institutions – public memorials, UNESCO heritage sites or national parks – from a global perspective. The course looks at museums as participants within a global network of institutions, communities and practices informed by diverse histories – colonialism, post-colonialism, socialism, apartheid, etc. It explores, deconstructs and challenges both common global trends in museological culture and particularities of local and national practices. The course introduces students to contemporary and historical case studies from around the world including Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, examined through interdisciplinary and international theoretical perspectives borrowing from anthropology, cultural studies, global studies, history, museum studies and memory studies.

This course examines photographic histories in their complex relations to institutions of collection and display. It looks at the production and circulation of photographs within particular institutional frameworks to explore the discursive production of photographic meaning in relation to the development of photographic technologies, and social, cultural and economic histories.

This course will critically examine the role of text in museum professional practice. Whether brick-and-mortar or virtual, large or small, art or historical or natural history, all museums cultural institutions use text to carry out their missions. Whether internal or public-facing, text is a prominent feature of the museum work environment for staff through collections management, artifact cataloguing, research and exhibit development, exhibition catalogues, marketing, wayfinding, membership and development. Through their consumption of exhibit text, exhibit catalogues, interpretive material and websites, the written word is also a fundamental constituent of the visitor experience. Only occasionally are museum-specific modes of writing situated in a larger critical context of contemporary issues surrounding the politics, production and consumption of text. This course aims to both introduce students to this larger critical context and also equip them to produce credible and appropriate text in the modes they are most likely to encounter in their work as museum professionals.

This proposed Special Topic course is intended to provide students with an introduction to visitor research in museums, where better understanding visitor experience and engagement is increasingly important for strategic planning and exhibition development.

This course explores the role of new and emerging digital technologies in the context of the museum experience. It is intended to provide students with the knowledge and skills to make informed decisions regarding the opportunities and challenges afforded by digital technology in the modern museum environment. From online to on-site digital experiences, students will investigate the impact of digital on museums and their value propositions, as well as explore the adoption of user-centred, multi-channel approaches to content creation and distribution. From digital strategy development to the practical aspects of project management and development of digital experiences, students will gain an overview of the processes related to the application of digital technology by museum professionals. This course will ask students to participate in the group development of a digital exhibit as its core focus, supported by readings, case studies, planning exercises, and guest speakers from related industries. This course is offered in partnership with the Ontario Science Centre.

This course introduces students to the basic theories, fundamentals and practices of web based cultural projects. A central goal of the course is to examine how the Internet supports new ways of thinking and learning in museums. Students will consider new methodologies in the presentation of a museum collection and how the public interacts with it. The students will develop a variety of skills including an introduction to digital media, awareness of curatorial models and learning systems, overview of project management, marketing, budgeting for new media and an understanding of the developmental phases of web based projects.

This course explores contemporary practices of interpretive planning in various museums. In order to study how museums do interpretation, we explore a series of contemporary interdisciplinary theories of interpretation and discuss in depth different articulations of what and who constitutes the museum’s publics and communities. Further, we apply these theoretical perspectives to interpretive planning and work on a variety of individual and group projects in order to experiment with various interpretive practices. We reflect critically and in depth on official and unofficial forms of public programming and education visible in different cultural spaces and we investigate various interpretative methods utilized by cultural institutions to communicate with their audiences.

The exhibition is a museum’s main form of public engagement, and this course investigates the histories, processes and practices through which exhibitions have developed over time, within a Western and global context. Why do museums prioritize exhibitions over other forms of programming? Why do exhibitions succeed, and why do they fail? How do professional communities develop best practices, and how prone are such practices to change?

This course examines the theoretical roots, the ideological positions and the research literature on public programming and education strategies deployed in museums, parks, libraries, and heritage institutions. The course offers a critique of models of schooling, experience, citizenship and critical engagement that dominate current discourse and practices.

Drawing on an eclectic range of academic work in cultural studies, cultural policy studies, sociology, art history, and museum studies, this interdisciplinary course explores a wide variety of topics in contemporary cultural policy, addressing both the subsidized arts sector and the cultural and creative industries.

The objective of this course is to provide students with a more in-depth understanding of fundraising and project management in the museum environment. Students also prepare a detailed plan for a project of their choice. Other topics covered include leadership and motivation.

This course explores the changing relationships between aboriginal source communities and museums holding their material heritage. We begin with a historical overview of collecting practices, the role of indigenous material culture in the development of museums, and the relationship between museums and colonialism. Contemporary case studies primarily drawn from post-colonial and settler contexts during the last three decades are investigated as a response to earlier practices.

This course provides students with an introductory overview of the museum and cultural heritage sectors. Students will be exposed to a wide range of themes and concepts that constitute and shape the discipline, in particular preservation, representation and authenticity, memorialization, taxonomy, technology, ownership and repatriation, global tourism, cultural policy, and the roles of architecture and design in museological practice. Museums, memorials, national parks and historic sites, among other examples of cultural heritage, will be examined in light of philosophical issues and evolving political, social, economic and cultural contexts.

The growing relationship between museums and information is visible in almost all fields of contemporary museum practice. To elucidate this relationship, this course introduces museum documentation and digital collection theory and practice through a historical examination of museum collections, cataloguing practices, and art historical, archaeological and anthropological approaches to the analysis of objects; it explores how information technologies change museums as sites for art curatorship, as infrastructures for scholarship, and as memory institutions – guardians of authenticity and intellectual preservation of the past; finally, it examines critically how interactivity and narrative may determine cognitive access and learning through virtual exhibition, how VR and ambient intelligence may introduce affect in gallery interpretation, and how folksonomies, presence and personalization technologies may empower museum audiences through dialogue and participation.