Understanding organization of soft materials on mesoscopic and nanoscopic scales is importantfor materials design. In this regard, non-van der Waals interactions such as hydrogen
bonding and electrostatic interactions offer great opportunities due to the richness and diversity
in morphological structures they produce. The primary reason for this is that these...
This dissertation studies the integration of analytical modeling and optimization, machine learning, and Bayesian learning to optimize cost, access, and quality of healthcare delivery. Chapter 1 models computer-aided triage (patient prioritization) as feature-based priority queuing where types (diseases) are not perfectly observed but are inferred from observed features using a...
This dissertation develops a causal theory of the relevant alternatives in a situation and applies this theory to the semantics and epistemology of conditionals, the theory of knowledge, and the epistemology of stereotyping. The first chapter presents the theory of causal models and causal alternatives. The second chapter applies this...
Biogenic secondary organic aerosol (SOA) particles, produced by forest ecosystems across the globe, are principal, yet poorly understood constituents in the climate system. These atmospheric particles form when biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) react with atmospheric oxidants, leading to increasingly lower volatility oxidation products that partition into the condensed phase...
Protein-based biomaterials are widely used in biomedical applications and mechanical support because of their novel structural flexibility, biocompatibility and mechanical properties. Protein-based biomaterials outperform traditional synthetic materials in various environments as traditional materials lack the diverse chemical functionalities that proteins offer. Novel bioinspired techniques such as directed evolution offer the...
Coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) methods are techniques that image a sample by illuminating it with a coherent beam and recording the intensity diffraction pattern produced by the wavefront outgoing from the sample. These are lensless methods that are not limited in resolution by the physical characteristics of an objective lens,...
Social engagement, or shared attention between a child and caregiver, is a critical process for language and social development. Although previous EEG studies have investigated child social processing in closely controlled, experimental studies, no study has examined the interactive, reciprocal process of naturalistic social engagement. In my first paper, we...
The explosion of data in the digital age has provided new possibilities for policy creation,the development of knowledge, and societal innovations. In this way, data becomes an essential
tool in personal decision-making, legal change, and policy creation as we leverage new forms of
data to understand social phenomena. But along...
Hollow biopsy needles are widely adopted medical devices for the removal of biological tissue to better identify a lesion or an abnormality observed through a physical exam or a radiology scan. These procedures can provide significantly more information than most medical tests, and they are usually performed on dermis layers,...
This dissertation considers a periodically-forced 1-D Langevin equation that possesses two stable periodic solutions in the absence of noise. We aim at answering the question: is there a most likely noise-induced transition path between these periodic solutions that allows one to identify a preferred phase of the forcing when the...