At the interface of two dissimilar entities, something novel can emerge. This idea has driven a vast amount of fruitful work on semiconductor interfaces, and given us the digital revolution. In the past decade, remarkable progress has been made in the synthesis and understanding of interfaces between oxides, opening up...
Fused polycyclic scaffolds with three-dimensional complexity from an array of stereocenters compose the core structures of countless natural product families with a variety of desirable biological activity. The development of synthetic methods and strategies to afford rapid access to these structures is essential to expose a wealth of untapped biological...
This dissertation is a mixed-methods study of municipal building inspections in Chicago. Existing literature demonstrates links between housing, urban governance, perceptions of dilapidated buildings, and racial and economic stratification. Less is known, however, about the intermediary actors who work at the nexus of on-the-ground interpretative processes and city-wide regulation. Building...
This dissertation provides an explanatory framework to explain the variations in battle-spaces, alternatively seen as wartime authority configurations across time and space. I place these variations along types of states along their functional dimension, and their respective forms of state power on the ground. I argue that these variations are...
Understanding the chemical complexity of the extracellular matrix (ECM) and how chemical, biological, and physical cues bring changes to the behavior of cells has remained a grand challenge. Addressing these questions requires not only achieving systematic control over the interactions between cells and the ECM but also utilizing suitable analytical...
Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) materials are of great interest as a low-cost material the purposes of achieving wide spread, solar energy adoption. However, a limiting factor in materials development is the ability to proactively determine the active layer thin film morphology that largely informs device performance. Thus, understanding how materials design...
Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) materials are of great interest as a low-cost material the purposes of achieving wide spread, solar energy adoption. However, a limiting factor in materials development is the ability to proactively determine the active layer thin film morphology that largely informs device performance. Thus, understanding how materials design...
The increasing production and use of nanoscale transition metal oxide materials in the next generation of consumer electronics and electric vehicle batteries, specifically lithium intercalation compounds, may lead to environmental release and exposure, with poorly understood biological outcomes. As the toxicity mechanism of nanomaterials may vary fundamentally from their bulk...
While college attendance, persistence, and completion has consistently increased since the 1970s, increases in attainment were greater for students from high-income families compared their low-income counterparts. As a result, low-income students are the least likely to attend or complete college. While college costs and poorer academic preparation are often barriers...
The neural crest is a unique, vertebrate specific stem cell population that gives rise to a diverse set of derivatives in the embryo, including sensory neurons, glial cells, melanocytes, and craniofacial structures such as cartilage, bone, and connective tissue. Unlike other multipotent stem cell populations present at this time, neural...