Schedule (Semester B 2025/2026)

Weekly Schedule

Week	Date	Topics	Notes	Readings	Submissions
1	Jan 12	Course Overview A Brief History of AI with Deep Learning Review of Math	Lecture01A Lecture01B (YouTube) Lecture01C Colab Python Tutorial PyTorch Linear Algebra	History of AI with DL Python Basics Python Classes YouTube: Colab Tutorial	-
2	Jan 19	Artificial Neurons Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs) MLP Architectures Traditional Activation Functions Loss/Cost Functions Gradient Descent	Lecture02A Lecture02B Colab Housing Regression Colab IRIS Classification	The Evolution of AN Mastering MLPs Activation Functions PyTorch	-
3	Jan 26	Backpropagation Mastering Deep Neural Network Training Training Objectives Model Architecture Design Optimizers Regularizations: Dropout, Data Augumentation, etc.	Lecture03A Lecture03B Colab MLP MNIST Colab MLP FMNIST Colab MLP CIFAR-10	Backpropagation PyTorch AutoGrad Classification Metrics GD Optimizer Variants Core Techniques Deep Dive with PyTorch	Project Grouping Due: Jan 31, 2026
4	Feb 1	Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) Evolution of CNN Architectures LeNet, AlexNet, VGGNet, ResNet, etc Transfer Learning CNN-based Computer Vision Apps	Lecture04A Lecture04B Colab CNN CIFAR-10 Colab AlexNet CIFAR-10 Colab Transfer Learning	Basics of CNNs The Evolution of CNNs AlexNet Paper Colab Yolo12 (Camera) YOLO CVPR2016
5	Feb 9	Tokenization and Word Embeddings Recurrent Neural Networks: RNN, LSTM and GRU RNN Attention Mechanism	Colab Word2Vec Colab LSTM SA	Tokenization Word Embeddings RNN, LSTM, GRU RNN Attention	Project Proposal Due: Feb 14, 2026 Assignment 1 Due: Feb 21, 2026
6	Feb 23	Transformers Quiz (1:45pm - 2:45pm)	Colab LSTM Stock Prediction Colab Transformer Stock Prediction	Self-Attention & Transformers Attention Is All You Need	-
7	Mar 02	Large Language Models (LLMs) BERT and its Variants GPT-1, GPT-2, GPT-3, LLaMA BART and T5 Advanced LLM Architectures (Optional)	Colab BERT Spam Colab LLaMA3-8B	A Brief History of LLMs BERT Unleashed The GPT Revolution BART and T5 Advanced Architectures DeepSeek-V3	-
8	Mar 09	LLM Decoding Algorithms Prompt Engineering LLM Evaluations (Optional)	Colab RAG LLaMA3	LLM Decoding Prompt Engineering LLM Evaluations	-
9	Mar 16	LLM Quantization Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT)	Colab LLM Quantization Colab LLaMA-2 QLoRA	LLM Scaling Laws LLM Quantization VRAM Estimation PEFT of LLMs	Assignment 2 Due: Mar. 21, 2026
10	Mar 23	Instruction Tuning Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback DPO (Optional) GRPO (Optional)		Instruction Tuning RLHF, DPO, GRPO DeeepSeek-R1 LLMs are Not Smart	-
11	Mar 30	Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) (Optional) Mid-Term Exam	Colab LLaVA Voice Assistant	CLIP and SigLIP MLLMs Diffusion Models	-
12	Apr 06	Easter Holiday	Presentation Schedule: See Project Page	-	-
13	Apr 13	Project Presentation	Presentation Schedule: See Project Page	-	Assignment 3 Due: Apr. 18, 2026
14	Apr 20	Group Project Report Submission	Final Report Template: Template Technical Report	-	Final Report Due: Apr 25, 2026

Important Notes

• Quiz: Week 6 (Feb 23) from 1:45pm - 2:45pm
• Mid-Term Exam: Week 11 (Mar 30)
• Project Presentations: Weeks 13 (Apr. 13)
• Final Report: Due Apr. 25, 2026

Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong