Subchalcogenides are rare compounds that have both metal-metal and metal-chalcogenide (sulfur, selenium, tellurium) interactions. Unlike conventional semiconductors, the metals do not obey the so-called 8-N octet rule for oxidation states, often resulting in low or zero valent metal atoms. The presence of both metal-metal and metal-chalcogenide bonding can also lead...
Deformation in materials with a hierarchical microstructure is expected to be complex because of the interaction between the units that form such a microstructure. The complexity of deformation would be even higher when additional inelastic deformation modes are active in such materials, apart from traditional elastic and plastic deformation modes....
Metaphor is an important and pervasive phenomenon in language and cognition. The vast majority of psycholinguistic research on metaphor has focused on noun metaphors (e.g., That surgeon is a butcher; That lawyer is a shark), while relatively little has investigated the processing of verb metaphors (e.g., The car limped down...
The recently increasing precision in experimental measurements of observables in collider physics has demanded for a matching precision in the theoretical expectations for such observables. In Quantum ChromoDynamics, the fundamental underlying theory for collider physics, theoretical predictions are expressed under the form of perturbative series, where the expansion parameter is...
Since Infrared radiation was discovered in 1800s, the research and applications on the infrared regime have been continually developed. The infrared detectors are the key technology in these applications and have been successfully used for medical imaging, light detection and ranging (LiDAR), free-space optical communication, target tracking and object identification...
Fluid injection is one of the major triggering factors of infrastructure collapse and geo-hazards, among which some of the most recurrent ones are rainfall-induced landslides. Such events exhibit complicated spatiotemporal patterns, spanning from slow deformation to extremely rapid movements influencing large regions. To prevent the occurrence of catastrophic failures and...
Future large-scale quantum networks will likely require more efficient on-chip devices for quantum key distribution (QKD) systems that can exploit CMOS manufacturing techniques. QKD systems on chip have been produced in a number of material platforms including silicon, indium phosphide, and a range of hybrid structures. Advanced industrial silicon-electronics manufacturing...
Super-resolution (SR) has become one of the most critical problems in image and video processing. In Chapter 2 of this thesis, a detailed review of existing Deep Learning (DL) techniques for addressing the SR task, with an emphasis on how DL and analytical techniques can be combined, is provided. Chapter...
Recent developments in deep learning have led to breakthroughs in rendering novel views from sparse input views of a scene.While the accuracy of these algorithms has improved dramatically, it has come at a huge computational cost.
While developments in graphics hardware have ameliorated some of the computational burdens, deep learning-based...
In the adult hippocampus of many mammalian species, populations of newborn dentate granule cells (DGCs) are continuously generated and undergo subsequent activity-dependent neuronal maturation and incorporation into the preexisting hippocampal circuitry. Increasing evidence has demonstrated that these young adult-born DGCs (abDGCs) participate in numerous cognitive and affective processes such as...
In my dissertation, I investigate how formal and informal structures within the board can affect key board outcomes. While each chapter introduces a relatively under-recognized player in the governance space—compensation consultants (Chapter 1), multi-committee directors (Chapter 2), and executive chairmen (Chapter 3)—the main theme connecting all three centers on the...
This dissertation presents a comprehensive study of thin-film LiMn2O4 (LMO) cathodes applied in lithium ion batteries (LIBs). The primary aim was to establish fundamental understanding of the relationship between interfacial LMO chemistry/electrochemistry and its detrimental drawback, i.e. fast capacity fade over long term cycling, and then develop effective mitigation methods....
The goal of this thesis is to design practical algorithms for nonlinear optimization in the case where the objective function is deterministic or stochastic. Problems of this nature arise in many applications including machine learning and image processing. The thesis is divided into four main chapters. Chapters \ref{chap:Inexact}, \ref{chap:Adasample} and...
For much of the twentieth-century, English-language music scholars were reticent to speculate about the origins of music. In recent years, however, the study of music’s evolutionary origins has been revitalized. Resonating Subjects brings a critical-historical perspective to this renewed convergence of music studies and evolutionary science. Through close examinations of...
My research at northwestern with Dr. Christina Zelano focused on the human amygdala subnucleithat receive monosynaptic input from the olfactory bulb. Surprisingly little is known
about these brain regions, including their potential roles in olfactory and nonolfactory
processing. During my PhD, I completed three projects aimed at furthering our understanding...
While the entire silicon industry has been blooming under Moore’s Law for decades, conventional digital implementation is approaching the “stall” of Moore’s Law due to many physical design limitations. Technology innovation now is going to take a different direction. Given the increasing demand for emerging applications' computational capacity, it is...
Extensive study of nanomaterial chemical and optical properties has enabled their integration into a variety of applications. However, less thoroughly investigated are the heat generation and dissipation processes of nanomaterials following optical excitation. These phenomena are of immense importance as thermal energy can distort a material’s structure, which has profound...
My dissertation, Geographies of Memory, Trauma, and Pleasure in African American and Caribbean-American Literature examines the geographies of the cane fields, bodies of water, and the back porch to illustrate the speculative ways anti-black violence, intergenerational trauma, pleasure and Black memory co-exist in Black literature. Examining the aforementioned geographies as...
This dissertation consists of three studies related to parental employment, maternity leave policy, and early care and education. In study 1, my coauthor and I evaluate the impact of parenthood on men and women’s job performance and career advancement using detailed data from the U.S. Marines. For parents who remain...
Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common non-cutaneous cancer among U.S. men. Lack of effective treatments for advanced disease make it a significant public health concern. However, PCa’s long natural history makes it an excellent target for prevention approaches that reduce overtreatment of indolent disease, treatment related morbidity, and mortality....