Dissertations: October 19, 2020

DISSERTATIONS DEFENDED

Biological Sciences

• Murphy, David. Genetic variation along the human genome is largely predictable from the effects of background purifying selection. Sponsor: Guy Sella.

Biomedical Informatics

• Chang, Jonathan. Neural circuits involved in autism spectrum disorders. Sponsor: Dennis Vitkup.

Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Studies

• Sampson, Jared. The pH-sensing mechanism of antibody recycling by the neonatal Fc receptor. Sponsors: Richard Friesner and Lawrence Shapiro.

Chemistry

• Ashley, Melissa. Photoredox-catalyzed site-selective functionalization of primary amine derivatives. Sponsor: Tomislav Rovis.
• Imlay, Hunter. Investigations into the development of Epothilones as antibody drug conjugate payloads. Sponsor: Luis Campos.

Earth and Environmental Sciences

• Sandstrom, Robert. Geochronology and reconstruction of Quaternary and Neogene sea-level highstands. Sponsor: Maureen Raymo.
• Coffey, Genevieve. Mapping earthquake temperature rise along faults to understand fault structure and mechanics. Sponsor: Heather Savage.

English and Comparative Literature

• Brown, Natalie. Missing homes: Poe, Brontë, Dickens and displacement. Sponsor: Jenny Davidson.

Epidemiology

• Mushamiri, Ivy. The HIV care continuum: Measuring latent enablers and assessing pathways to viral load suppression in resource-limited settings. Sponsor: Jessica Justman.

History

• Purcell, James. Parsing truth in Merovingian Gaul: Evidence and the early medieval critic. Sponsor: Adam Kosto.
• Giordani, Angela. Making Falsafa in modern Egypt: Towards a history of Islamic philosophy in the twentieth century. Sponsor: Marwa Elshakry.

Pathobiology and Molecular Medicine

• Garretti, Francesca. Alpha-synuclein autoimmunity in Parkinson's disease. Sponsor: David Sulzer.

Religion

• Poletto, Alessandro. The culture of healing in early medieval Japan: A microhistorical study in premodern epistemology. Sponsor: Michael Como.

TC / Clinical Psychology

• McGiffin, Jed. Psychological adjustment to disability: Heterogeneous trajectories of resilience and depression following physical impairment or amputation. Sponsor: George Bonanno.

TC / English Education

• Grene, Gregory. Words, words, words: Purpose and process in teaching literature. Sponsor: Ruth Vinz.

DISSERTATION PROPOSALS FILED

Biomedical Engineering

• Harimoto, Tetsuhiro. Development of living bacterial therapies with bioengineered platforms.

Chemical Engineering

• Tannenbaum, Robert. Understanding gas transport in polymer-grafted nanoparticle membranes.

Computer Science

• Ball, Maynard. On resilience to computational tampering.
• Effland, Thomas. Annotation-efficient approaches for text classification and structured prediction.

Materials Science and Engineering

• Shen, Bonan. Investigation of transmorphic nucleation in thin films.

Music

• Amsellem, Audrey. Sound and surveillance: The making of the neoliberal ear.
• Dawes, Laina. Extremity, race and sexuality in heavy metal.
• DeCoste, Kyle. Sounding #BlackGirlMagic and #BlackBoyJoy: A virtual ethnography of Black childhood imaginaries in popular music and spoken word communities.
• Sewell, Ian. When all you have is a hammer: Expanding the toolkit of tonal analysis.
• Wermager, Sonja. Robert Schumann and "The Artist's Supreme Goal:" Nationalism, historicism, and romantic religion in the late choral works.

Nursing

• Estrada, Leah. Racial and ethnic differences in palliative care services and potentially avoidable hospitalizations at the end-of-life in nursing homes nationwide.
• Hovsepian, Vaneh. The influence of primary care structural capabilities on hospitalizations among older adults with dementia.
• Mantell, Elise. The patient experience in infertility treatment: A qualitative analysis of Reddit.

Philosophy

• Garruzzo, Anthony. From an impersonal perspective.

Psychology

• Krueger, Sydney. Emotion regulation over the life-span.

Theatre

• Suffern, Catherine. "Little on the inside": Claustrophobic dramaturgy and structural violence on the postwar British stage.