Dissertations: June 29, 2020

DISSERTATIONS DEFENDED

Anthropology

• Montero Castrillo, Fernando. Martial love: Articulation and detachment in the Moskitia's military occupation (Nicaragua/Honduras). Sponsor: Claudio Lomnitz.

Applied Physics

• Brooks, John. Active feedback control of MHD modes and plasma rotation using currents driven from a bias electrode array. Sponsor: Michael Mauel.

Astronomy

• Blancato, Kirsten. Decoding starlight with big survey data, machine learning, and cosmological simulations. Sponsor: Melissa Ness.
• Zorrilla Matilla, Jose Manuel. Extracting cosmological information from small scales in weak gravitational lensing data. Sponsor: Zoltan Haiman.

Biomedical Engineering

• Altoé, Mirella. Diffuse optical tomography imaging of chemotherapy-induced changes in breast tissue metabolism. Sponsor: Andreas Hielscher.
• Melki, Lea. Electromechanical wave imaging in the clinic: Localization of atrial and ventricular arrhythmias and quantification of cardiac resynchronization therapy response. Sponsor: Elisa Konofagou.
• Robinson, Samuel. Bone mechanobiology of modeling and remodeling and the effect of hematopoietic lineage cells. Sponsor: X. Edward Guo.
• Sayseng, Vincent. Toward clinical realization of Myocardial elastography: Cardiac strain imaging for better diagnosis and treatment of heart disease. Sponsor: Elisa Konofagou.

Biomedical Informatics

• Chau, Michelle. Leveraging social media in nutrition interventions for young populations. Sponsor: Olena Mamykina.
• Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Studies
• Su, Steven. Characterization of primary cilia and Intraflagellar Transport 20 in the Epidermis. Sponsor: Ellen Ezratty.

Chemistry

• Fiala, Tomas. Polymer supported probes and drugs for targeted brain imaging and pharmacology. Sponsor: Dalibor Sames.
• Hughes, Isaac. Expanding Silane-mediated coupling methodologies for the formation of medicinally relevant structural motifs. Sponsor: Luis Campos.
• Mohd, Noushad. Efforts towards the synthesis of silanes for their use as catalysis and molecular wires. Sponsor: Tomislav Rovis.
• Peurifoy, Samuel. Organic electronics via molecular contortion. Sponsor: Colin Nuckolls.

Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics

• Morgantini, Marcello. Structural damage assessment through parametric and non-parametric models. Sponsor: Raimondo Betti.

Classics

• Simone, Caleb. Enchanted bodies: Reframing the culture of Greek Aulos performance. Sponsor: Nancy Worman.

Computer Science

• Mahajan, Kunal. Performance and pricing of container deployments in cloud computing. Sponsor: Vishal Misra.
• Shokri Razaghi, Hooshmand. Statistical machine learning & deep neural networks applied to neural data analysis. Sponsor: Liam Paninski.

Earth and Environmental Engineering

• Doss-Gollin, James. Sequential adaptation through prediction of structured climate risk. Sponsor: Upmanu Lall.

Earth and Environmental Sciences

• Jin, Xiaomeng. Observing the distributions and chemistry of major air pollutants (O3 and PM2.5) from space: Trends, uncertainties, and health implications. Sponsor: Arlene Fiore.

East Asian Languages and Cultures

• Rogers, Joshua. Enchanted texts: Japanese literature between religion and science, 1890-1950. Sponsor: Tomi Suzuki.
• Tsering, Sonam. Role of texts in the fomration of the Geluk school in Tibet during the 14th and 15th centuries. Sponsor: Gray Tuttle.
• Yi, Yuan. Malfunctioning machinery: The global making of Chinese cotton mills, 1877-1937. Sponsor: Eugenia Lean.

Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology

• Quebbeman, Andrew. The big effects of small-scale environmental variation: Exploring spatial patterns of tree community composition and greenhouse gas production in a tropical forest. Sponsor: Duncan Menge.

Economics

• Huynh, Khanh Ngoc Han. Essays in experimental economics. Sponsor: Mark Dean.

Electrical Engineering

• Fleischer, Daniel. Electrochemical noise limits of femtoampere-sensing, CMOS-integrated transimpedance amplifiers. Sponsor: Kenneth Shepard.

English and Comparative Literature

• McIntyre, Katherine. Fugitive poetics: Ecological resistance in the Plantation Era. Sponsor: Branka Arsić.
• Stevens, Jeremy. Secularization and the British lyric in the twentieth century. Sponsor: Sarah Cole.

Environmental Health Sciences

• Kramer, Sarah. Forecasting influenza in Europe and globally: The role of absolute humidity and human travel, and the potential for use in public health decision making. Sponsor: Jeffrey Shaman.
• Nigra, Anne. Arsenic exposure in US drinking water: Spatial patterns, temporal trends, and related mortalities. Sponsor: Ana Navas-Acien.

Epidemiology

• Cohen, Gregory. Equity and efficiency tradeoffs in the prevention of heart disease - Concepts and evidence. Sponsor: Sandro Galea.

French and Romance Philology

• Burns, Raphaelle. The stories we tell: Novellas, news, and the uses of casuistry in early modern Europe. Sponsor: Pierre Force.
• Burton, William. On the origin and end of sex: Social construction from Monique Wittig to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Sponsor: Joanna Stalnaker.

Genetics and Development

• Joseph, Sarah. The role of SMARCAD1 during replication stress. Sponsor: Alberto Ciccia.
• Nambiar, Tarun. Leveraging DNA damage response pathways to enhance the precision of CRISPR-mediated genome editing. Sponsor: Alberto Ciccia.

History

• Katz, Jordan. Jewish midwives, medicine and the boundaries of knowledge in early modern Europe, 1650-1800. Sponsor: Elisheva Carlebach.
• Somotan, Titilola. 'In the wider interests of Nigeria': Lagos and the making of federal Nigeria, 1941-76. Sponsor: Mamadou Diouf.

Italian

• Delfino, Massimiliano. Terrorism and the body: Representations of political violence in Italian film and literature during the early Anni di Piombo. Sponsor: Elizabeth Leake.

Latin American and Iberian Cultures

• Acosta, Santiago. We are like oil: An ecology of the Venezuelan culture boom, 1973-1983. Sponsor: Graciela Montaldo.
• Marín-Cobos, Almudena. Beyond Desencanto: Challenging the archivization of the Spanish transition (2010-2018). Sponsor: Alberto Medina.

Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies

• Cohen, Matan. Disengaged lives? Israel-Palestine and the question of surplus humanity. Sponsor: Gil Hochberg.

Music

• Fort, Anthony. Rhythm in modernist classical music sounds different depending on how you move. Sponsor: Joseph Dubiel.

Neurobiology and Behavior

• Kaufman, Alexandra. Noncannonical circuit members of reward signaling in the hippocampus. Sponsor: Attila Losonczy.
• Long, Laura. Neural mechanisms of language perception in human intracranial neurophysiology. Sponsor: Nima Mesgarani.
• Odean, Naomi. Information routing for decision making. Sponsor: Michael Shadlen.

Nursing

• Song, Jiyoun. Analyzing risk factors for healthcare-associated infections using multiple methodological approaches. Sponsor: Elaine Larson.
• Zheng, Katherine. Developmental assets in adolescents with chronic illness and co-morbid depression. Sponsors: Jean-Marie Bruzzese and Arlene Smaldone.

Operations Research

• Gao, Wenbo. Convex optimization and extensions, with a view toward large-scale problems. Sponsor: Donald Goldfarb.
• Oh, Min-hwan. Sequential decision making with combinatorial actions and high-dimensional contexts. Sponsor: Garud Iyengar.
• Qian, Huajie. Efficient uncertainty quantification in simulation analysis. Sponsor: Henry Lam.
• Yang, Shuoguang. Optimization and revenue management in complex networks. Sponsors: Daniel Bienstock and Van-Anh Truong.

Pathobiology and Molecular Medicine

• Yang, Young Joo. Understanding autophagy from the perspective of the autophagosome. Sponsor: Ai Yamamoto.

Philosophy

• Britto, Arthur. Brentanian continua and their boundaries. Sponsor: Achille Varzi.
• Martin, Laura. The social ontology of systemic oppression. Sponsor: Frederick Neuhouser.
• Rivat, Sébastien. Representations and realism in the age of effective theories. Sponsor: David Albert.
• Yaure, Philip. To reforge the Nation: Emancipatory politics and Antebellum black abolitionism. Sponsor: Robert Gooding-Williams.

Physics

• Chiriacò, Giuliano. A theoretical study of out of equilibrium phases of matter. Sponsor: Andrew Millis.

Political Science

• de la Paz, Alexander. The problem of human shields in war. Sponsor: Robert Jervis.
• McAlexander, Richard. The politics of anticolonial resistance: Violence, nonviolence and the erosion of empire. Sponsor: Virginia Page Fortna.
• Slough, Tara. Essays on the distributive politics of bureaucracy. Sponsor: Michael Ting.
• Sutherland, Joseph. Three essays on the study of nationalization with automated content analysis. Sponsor: Robert Shapiro.

Psychology

• Lee, Won. Behavioral, neurobiological and physiological plasticity of mice living in social hierarchies. Sponsor: James Curley.

Social Work

• Bochicchio, Lauren. "Home away from home": Affirmative care practices among leading LGBTQ+ organizations serving youth. Sponsor: Susan Witte.

Sociology

• Fox-Williams, Brittany. Trust matters: Race, relationships, and achievement in NYC public schools. Sponsor: Thomas DiPrete.
• Urena, Anthony. From risk to reality: Race, class, and HIV in an age of uncertainty. Sponsor: Shamus Khan.

Sustainable Development

• Lee, Ruiwen. Essays on the regulation and remote sensing of natural gas flaring. Sponsor: Geoffrey Heal.
• Varela Valera, Ana. Floods and inequality: Implications for sustainable development. Sponsor: Wolfram Schlenker.

TC / Applied Anthropology

• Dubuisson, Darlene. Place-making in a fractured academic landscape: Haitian intellectual exile & academic diaspora homecomings. Sponsor: Herve Varenne.
• Zhang, Michelle. What are friends for?: The arts of making do and working out in Beijing, China. Sponsor: Herve Varenne.

TC / Clinical Psychology

• Jackson, Devlin. The nature, motives, and perceived consequences of therapist dishonesty. Sponsor: Barry Farber.

TC / Economics and Education

• Yanagiura, Takeshi. Equity and higher education: Essays on performance-based financial aid, community college degree completion, and dual enrollment. Sponsor: Jordan Matsudaira.

TC / Social-Organizational Psychology

• Merriweather Woodson, Tarani. A [k]ink in the armor: How the intersection of racial and gender prototypicality affect perceptions of Black women aspiring to be managers. Sponsor: Caryn Block.

Theatre

• Kuntz, Emily. Transformed within, transformed without: The enactment of religious conversion in medieval and early modern European saint plays. Sponsors: Eleanor Johnson and Julie Peters.

DISSERTATION PROPOSALS FILED

Anthropology

• Fitoussi, Margaux. The lives of the Quartier Lafayette: A historical anthropology of French colonial-era architecture in the Tunisian present.
• Mitchem, Alexandria. Cultivating a new scientific order in 18th and 19th century America: Excavating the roots of Bartram's botanical gardens.
• Thompsett, Fern. Civilization's discontents: The politics of world-making against colonial capitalism in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

Architecture

• Vanable, Ife. Tall tales: Hybrid, high rise schemes for housing New York’s Black urban middle – Mitchell-Lama low-moderate-/middle-income housing, 1955-1980.

Biomedical Engineering

• Blumenfeld, Nicole. Engineering technology for accessible precision therapeutics and diagnostics.
• Brudnicki, Philip. Development of a fibrous, collagen-based analog of the extracellular matrix.
• Sachar, Chirag. Investigating mechanosensing within the dynamic phases of T cell activation.

Chemical Engineering

• May, Richard. Obtaining a molecular-level description of the solid electrolyte interphase on Lithium metal.
• Mayilvahanan, Karthik. Development of physics-based models aided by data science tools to understand limiting physical phenomena in secondary batteries.
• Padash, Azin. Bubble rise in complex fluids.
• Pang, Xueqi. Design principles for membraneless electrolyzers for production of fuels and chemicals.

Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics

• Russ, Jonathan. Computational design of structures for enhanced failure resistance.

Classical Studies

• Farrior, Mary-Evelyn. Greek epigraphy in the urban landscapes of Rome: Communication and communicator.

Classics

• Petrella, Erin. Herba Sanabit: Botanical Latin and the healing of bodies and texts.
• Pletcher, Charles. Economies of knowledge and deception in Sophocles' Electra, Philoctetes, and Odeipus at Colonus.

Computer Science

• Joseph, Tyler. Approaches for investigating microbiome dynamics.

Earth and Environmental Sciences

• Bock, Nicholas. Evaluating the role of small euakryotes in the structure and function of marine microbial communities.
• Trinh, Rebecca. Microbial ecology and particulate organic carbon export of the West Antarctic Peninsula.

East Asian Languages and Cultures

• Hao, Tenggeer. The Xin medium: Towards a philosophy of media.
• Tan, Chun Kiang. Cultures of blood: Science, empire, and mass media in twentieth-century Japan.

Germanic Languages

• Tedford, Laura. Unstageable plays: Tieck, Kleist, Goethe.
• Vaughn, Chloe. "Das Volk bilden": The pursuit of Volkstümlichkeit in the long 19th century.

History

• Blatchford, Barrie. Fashion victims: An environmental history of the American Fur Trade, 1870-2006.
• Quijano, Carolyn. Spectacle, disorder, and the foreigner in the medieval Italian city-states, 1200-1475.
• Rivadeneira, Stephanie. A journey towards the sacred: Nahua pilgrimages in colonial New Spain.
• Ryuk, Sohee. Weaving "oriental carpets" into the Soviet Union: Handicraft and folk art at the intersections of nations, commodity, and labor, 1928-1982.
• Wilkinson, Conor. A social history of plant and insect use in Africa's Great Lake Region: From early times to the nineteenth century.

Italian

• Colleluori, Tylar. Moderata Fonte's Floridoro and Renaissance chivalric epic: Revising the genre.

Mechanical Engineering

• Bhattacharya, Smiti. A preclinical biomimetic platform to study podocyte physiology.
• Zhang, Zhixing. Affinity micro and nanosensors for continuous glucose monitoring.

Philosophy

• Botti, Martina. Metaphysical information.
• Gurdon, Molly. Neo-Aristotelian absolute prohibitions.
• Marsh, Anthony. Aquinas and Teresa of Ávila on higher knowledge and how it makes us happy.
• McCarthy, William. Indefinite extensibility and modal logic: A defense of modal pluralism.
• Richmond, Andrew. Computational theories and the theory of computation.

Psychology

• Naft, Michael. Extending the rejection sensitivity model to the stigma of criminal status: Trauma and coping in the age of mass incarceration.

Sociomedical Sciences

• Green, Sharon. Social and health impacts of remittances: Evidence from panel data in Kerala, India.

Urban Planning

• Nguyen, Minh. The remaking of Southeast Asian American spaces across the Bay Area region