This dissertation explores the entanglements of performed refusals and witnessing practices in the face of gendered violences. I analyze how contemporary artists use staged performance to generate new modes for witnessing histories of gendered violence across temporal and national boundaries. In particular, I investigate four performances addressing local histories of...
Volunteers play an essential role in humanitarian and non-profit organizations that strive to improve society. 30% of the population in the United States volunteered in 2019, and this percentage has been stable for the past two decades. This dissertation is motivated by the scheduling decision process in nonprofit organizations. These...
The simplicity of morphogenesis, manifested as collective shape changes, emerges from complex biophysical regulations within a multicellular embryo. Constructing a spatio-temporal atlas of mechanical stresses is central for understanding the emergence of this simplicity. Developing a new mathematical theory for the static mechanics of three-dimensional multicellular aggregates involving pressures and...
Bacteria represent the most abundant form of life on Earth and have evolved to successfully colonize nearly every environmental niche. In doing so, bacteria predominately form multicellular communities known as biofilms, resulting in increased resilience, persistence, and emergent behaviors. Consequently, biofilms present an attractive target for engineering and synthetic biology,...
The literature on racial/ethnic diversity in schools largely shows evidence of positive academic outcomes for students in diverse schools relative to segregated schools. At the same time, there is ample research demonstrating the discrimination and marginalization that students of color experience in desegregated schools. In this dissertation, I seek to...
Visual information plays a critical role in controlling movement. People use visual information to plan future actions and correct current actions through feedforward and feedback processes, respectively. We can gain insights into these visually guided motor control processes by quantifying where people look during movement and measuring how much they...
Historians have long argued that humanitarianism—what Thomas Haskell once described as “alleviating the suffering of distant strangers”—first emerged in eighteenth-century Europe as part of a complex set of perceptual changes involving capitalist growth, Enlightenment ideas, and Christian values. Given these claims, it is no coincidence that humanitarianism has often been...
Topology optimization is a powerful tool for maximizing structural performance, enabling multifunctionality of the structure, and reducing the materials waste and cost for sustainable manufacturing. However, current topology optimization tools are limited to a few scales, and the potential of nested topology optimization in engineering design has yet to be...
Early transition metal organometallics chemisorbed on extremely Brønsted acidic sulfated metal oxides such as sulfated alumina (AlS) and sulfated zirconia (ZrS) produce highly active single-site catalysts for olefin polymerization, alkene and arene hydrogenation, and alkane hydrogenolysis, typically with a large percentage of catalytically significant sites. The low support conjugate basicity...
Photochemistry allows chemists to harness the energy in specific wavelengths of light and use it to achieve new chemical transformations. These chemical transformations are often impossible or energetically demanding under traditional thermal conditions. My dissertation focuses broadly on different strategies to apply visible-light photochemistry and photocatalysis to the development of...