Since their introduction nearly a century ago, protein vaccines and therapeutics have revolutionized our ability to prevent and treat human disease. However, existing production processes for biopharmaceuticals are technically complex and rely on living cells, which necessitates highly centralized manufacturing in large-scale production facilities, specialized equipment, and cold-chain distribution. With...
In 2008, the term "remix culture" is widely understood to refer to mash-up videos and movie parodies, distributed on websites such as YouTube and authored primarily by white male teenagers. This dissertation argues that digital remix was invented primarily by African American men, who, in the mid-1980s, began using digital...
This project examines the uneven adoption of therapeutic initiatives within the organizational field of American museums to ask: How do people frame museum-going as “good” for visitors’ health? Existing research on legitimation processes would predict cultural institutions respond similarly to pressures for greater accountability from their external environments, or resist...
X-ray Fluorescence Microscopy (XFM) is a useful technique for study of biological samples. XFM was used to map and quantify endogenous biological elements as well as exogenous materials in biological samples, such as the distribution of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles. TiO2 nanoparticles are produced for many different purposes, including development...
This dissertation is an ethnography that investigates how Chicago-based artists and organizations use hip-hop performance as a tool for grassroots education and communal dissent. By exploring these local artistic approaches, this research reveals the salience of hip-hop performance in cultivating social movements, embodied politics, and choreographic repertoires that respond to...
Erythropoietin-producing human hepatocellular (Eph) receptors and their corresponding ephrin ligands are asymmetrically expressed at cell-cell contacts allowing for bidirectional signaling with forward signaling through the receptor expressing cell and reverse signaling through the ligand expressing cell. Eph receptors are the largest family of receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) in mammals, which...
Memory systems research has established the importance of two distinct types of memory systems in the brain: explicit and implicit. While a robust literature exists on individual differences in the explicit domain (Chapter 3), research on individual differences in implicit learning remains relatively limited. The key question guiding the investigation...
Individual plasmonic nanoparticles have the potential to revolutionize all areas of energy science, catalysis, organic electronics, and solar technology. Owing to their light trapping and focusing ability, single nanoparticles can be utilized to efficiently drive chemical reactions at the sub-nanometer scale. Much of the fundamental science regarding how plasmons can...
This dissertation endogenizes information acquisition in two-player games across three different settings. The first chapter explores when moral hazard in a principal-agent contract can lead to pareto improvements when it is preceeded by information gathering. The second chapter studies how product differentiation affects the amount of market research done by...