Introduction to photovoltaic (PV) systems. Solar energy potential for PV, irradiance, solar radiation and spectrum of sun, geometric and atmospheric effects on sunlight. Solar cells, basic structure and characteristics: Single-crystalline, multi-crystalline, thin film silicon solar cells, emerging new technologies. Electrical characteristics of the solar cell, mathematical model and equivalent circuit, modeling of solar cells including the effects of temperature, irradiation and series/shunt resistances on the open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current. Solar cell arrays, PV modules, PV generators, shadow effects and bypass diodes, hot spot problem in a PV module and safe operating area. Terrestrial PV module modeling. Interfacing PV modules to loads, direct connection of loads to PV modules, connection of PV modules to a battery and load together. Energy storage alternatives for PV systems.

This course will cover the principles, technologies, methods and applications of biosensors and bioinstrumentation. The objective of this course is to link engineering principles to understanding of biosystems in sensors and bioelectronics. It will provide the student with detail of methods and procedures used in the design, fabrication and application of biosensors and bioelectronic devices. The fundamentals of measurement science are applied to optical, electrochemical, mass, and pressure signal transduction. Upon successful completion of this course, students are expected to be able to explain biosensing and transducing techniques, design and construct biosensors instrumentation.

Brief historical perspective. Understanding and using Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Java basics, introduction to graphical user interfaces (GUI) for Java, using Swing Components and Java Listeners, Swing dialogue boxes, developing GUI applications, theory of Object Oriented Programming with Unified Modeling Language (UML). Object-Oriented (OO) problem solving, Object-Oriented (OO) concepts (inheritance, composition, abstract classes etc.), object relations, developing Object-Oriented (OO) applications with design patterns, Unit Testing, Project Presentations.

Pushing a single processor to its limits. Instruction set design and its effect on computer performance. micro-programming. Addressing techniques. Memory hierarchy. Associative, virtual and cache memory. Memory management. Interrupts, DMA and channels. Comparative study of commercial computer architecture.

Introduction to cognitive science. Parallel, distributed problems. Constraint satisfaction. Liopfield model. Supervised vs. unsupervised learning. Single vs. multi-layer perceptions. Static vs. dynamic network architecture. Comparison of neural approaches with parametric and non-parametric statistical methods. Neural network applications.