CDS593 Course Schedule - Spring 2026
Topics and dates in this table are subject to change. Please check back regularly for updates. We will also announce any major changes in class.
| Date | Day | Topic / What's Due |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | ||
| Jan 21 | Wed | Welcome, GitHub and collaboration |
| Jan 25 | Sun | Week 1 Lab+Reflection due |
| Week 2 | ||
| Jan 26 | Mon | Cancelled for snow |
| Jan 28 | Wed | AI-assisted development + NLP intro |
| Jan 30 | Fri | Week 2 Lab+Reflection due |
| Week 3 | ||
| Feb 2 | Mon | Deep learning fundamentals |
| Feb 4 | Wed | Tokenization |
| Feb 6 | Fri | Week 3 Lab+Reflection due |
| Week 4 | ||
| Feb 9 | Mon | Sequence-to-sequence models |
| Feb 11 | Wed | Attention mechanisms |
| Feb 13 | Fri | Week 4 Lab+Reflection due |
| Week 5 | ||
| Feb 17 | Tue (Mon schedule) | Transformers |
| Feb 18 | Wed | Decoding + Review |
| Feb 20 | Fri | Portfolio Piece 1 and Week 5 Reflection due |
| Week 6 | ||
| Feb 23 | Mon | Cancelled for snow |
| Feb 25 | Wed | EXAM 1 |
| Feb 27 | Fri | Portfolio Piece 1 feedback due |
| Week 7 | ||
| Mar 2 | Mon | Training at scale |
| Mar 4 | Wed | Post-training and RLHF |
| Mar 6 | Fri | Week 7 Reflection due |
| SPRING BREAK: March 9-13 | ||
| Week 8 | ||
| Mar 16 | Mon | LLM landscape |
| Mar 18 | Wed | Fine-tuning strategies |
| Mar 22 | Sun | Week 8 Lab due |
| Week 9 | ||
| Mar 23 | Mon | Prompt engineering and prompt injection |
| Mar 25 | Wed | Safety, alignment, and red-teaming |
| Mar 29 | Sun | Week 9 Reflection + Project ideation due |
| Week 10 | ||
| Mar 30 | Mon | Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) - Part 1 |
| Apr 1 | Wed | RAG - Part 2 |
| Apr 5 | Sun | Week 10 Lab due |
| Week 11 | ||
| Apr 6 | Mon | AI agents - Part 1 |
| Apr 8 | Wed | AI agents - Part 2 |
| Apr 12 | Sun | Weeek 11 Lab + Project abstract due |
| Week 12 | ||
| Apr 13 | Mon | Project clinic and review |
| Apr 15 | Wed | EXAM 2 |
| Apr 19 | Sun | Technical readiness check due |
| Week 13 | ||
| Apr 20 | Mon | No class (holiday) |
| Apr 22 | Wed | Guest lecture - Naomi Saphra |
| Apr 26 | Sun | Progress check-in due |
| Week 14 | ||
| Apr 27 | Mon | Final project presentations |
| Apr 29 | Wed | Final project presentations |
| May 1 | Fri | Final project write-ups due |