Dissertations: September 21, 2020

DISSERTATIONS DEFENDED

Anthropology
Elizondo, Luciana Chamorro. 'Love is stronger than hate': Authoritarian populism and political pentiment in post-revolutionary Nicaragua. Sponsor: Rosalind Morris.

Applied Physics
Cheng, Zhengqian. Variational discretized action theory. Sponsor: Chris Marianetti.

Fung, E-Dean. Three tales of two theories: Experimental investigations of inelastic charge transport in nanoscopic junctions. Sponsor: Latha Venkataraman.

Art History and Archaeology
Marzullo, Francesca. Devotional overdoors in medieval and renaissance Italy. Sponsor: Michael Cole.

Biological Sciences
Altomare, Clara. Structural determination of NediV-IRES-mediated translation initation. Sponsor: Joachim Frank.

Martin, James. Investigation of Ribonuclease RI handle region dynamics using  solution-state unclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, molecular dynamic simulations and X-ray crystallography. Sponsor: Arthur Palmer.

Biomedical Engineering
Lee, Joanne. Functional characterization of exhaustion in chronic lymphocytic leukemia T cells. Sponsor: Lance C. Kam.

Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Studies
Blazejewski, Tomasz. Generative models for synthetic biology. Sponsor: Harris Wang.

Costantini, Daniel. Neuronal topography in a cortical circuit for innate odor valence. Sponsor: Richard Axel.

Luo, Katherine. Regulation of the LIN-12/notch core nuclear complex components in C. elegans reproductive. Sponsor: Iva Greenwald.

Chemical Engineering
Jimenez, Andrew. Controlling particle structures in polymers through nanocomposite processing. Sponsor: Christopher Durning.

Chemistry
Phipps, Erik. Rh(III) - Catalyzed difunctionalization of Alkenes initiated by C-H activation. Sponsor: Tomislav Rovis.

Sambade, David. Investigation of bridgehead atom manipulation in traditionally Boron-centered tripodal ligands. Sponsor: Gerard Parkin.

Zhao, Zhilun. Investigating metabolic activities and phenotypes in biological systems with vibrational probes and Raman techniques. Sponsor: Wei Min.

Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
Bryant, Eric. Capturing evolving size-dependent anisotropy from brittle fracture to plasticity for geological materials. Sponsor: WaiChing Sun.

Svolos, Lampros. Efficient computational methods in coupled thermomechanical problems: Shear bands and fracture of metals. Sponsor: Haim Waisman.

Computer Science
Alkhereyf, Sakhar. Text classification: Exploiting the social network. Sponsor: Owen Rambow.

Tran, Dustin. Probabilistic programming for deep learning. Sponsor: David Blei.

Williams-King, David. Improving security through egalitarian binary recompilation. Sponsor: Junfeng Yang.

Zhang, Wangda. Optimizing query processing under skew. Sponsor: Kenneth Ross.

East Asian Languages and Cultures
Reynolds, Elizabeth. Tibet incorporated: Institutional power and economic practice on the Sino-Tibetan borderland 1930-1950. Sponsor: Gray Tuttle.

Electrical Engineering
Thimot, Jordan. Design of integrated CMOS transceivers with wireless power and data telemetry for implantable medical devices. Sponsor: Kenneth Shepard.

Zhu, Kaiyi. Computational analysis of biomolecular data for medical applications from bulk to single-cell. Sponsor: Dimitris Anastassiou.

English and Comparative Literature
Bowen, Elizabeth. Animal abilities: Disability, species difference, and American literacy. Sponsors: Rachel Adams and Farah Griffin..

English and Comparative Literature
Cox, Therese. Structures of feeling: Architecture and literature in postwar Britain and Ireland. Sponsors: Matthew Hart and Jorge Otero-Pailos.

Polefrone, Phillip. Human/nature: American literary naturalism and the Anthropocene. Sponsors: Austin Graham and Jennifer Wenzel.

Takahata, Kimberly. Skeletal testimony: Bony biopolitics in the early Atlantic. Sponsor: Branka Arsić.

Environmental Health Sciences
Nunez, Yanelli. Air pollution contribution to neurodegenerative diseases. Sponsor: Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou.

Epidemiology
Matsumoto, Hiroko. Predicting surgical site infection in pediatric patients undergoing spinal deformity surgery. Sponsor: Elaine Larson.

Pamplin, John. Explaining the Black-White depression paradox: Understanding the role - and limits - of social stress theory. Sponsor: Lisa Bates.

History
Beckhart Coppinger, Sarah. High in the city: A history of drug use in Mexico City 1960-1980. Sponsor: Pablo Piccato.

Woker, Madeline. Empire of inequality: The politics of taxation in the French empire, 1900-1950s. Sponsor: Emmanuelle Saada.

Materials Science and Engineering
Yang, Long. Local structural insights into exotic electronic states in d- and f -electron oxides with joint neutron and x-ray pair distribution function analysis. Sponsor: Simon Billinge.

Mechanical Engineering
Meeker, Cassie. Intuitive human machine interfaces for non-anthropomorphic robotic hands. Sponsor: Matei Ciocarlie.

Srinivasan, Arvind. Thermal performance of passive radiative cooling strategies on building envelopes. Sponsor: Arvind Narayanaswamy.

Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies
Ghazarian, Matthew. Ghost rations: Empire, ecology, and community in the Ottoman East, 1839-94. Sponsor: Rashid Khalidi.

Music
O'Rourke, Russell. Representation, emotion, and the Madrigal in sixteenth-century Italy. Sponsor: Giuseppe Gerbino.

Neurobiology and Behavior
Clary, Rachel. Dynamics of touch-receptor plasticity in the mammalian peripheral nervous system. Sponsors: Wesley Grueber and Ellen Lumpkin.

Tsitsiklis, Melina. Electrophysiology of human spatial navigation and memory. Sponsor: Joshua Jacobs.

Nursing
Mangal, Sabrina. Patient and family engagement in the prevention of Catheter-associated urinary tract infections and antibiotic resistance. Sponsor: Eileen Carter.

Pho, Anthony. Human papillomavirus vaccination, online health information seeking, and health literacy among transgender and gender nonbinary people. Sponsor: Suzanne Bakken.

Nutritional and Metabolic Biology
Birkenbach, Kathryn. Feeding and gastrointestinal regulation: A novel domain of the Cerebellum. Sponsor: Rudolph Leibel.

Operations Research
Bhandari, Jalaj. Optimization foundations of reinforcement learning. Sponsor: Daniel Russo.

Physics
Cheng, Minghao. Spectroscopy of the temperature and current driven metal-insulator transition in Ca2RuO4. Sponsor: Abhay Pasupathy.

Shih, En-Min. Transport study of transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures. Sponsor: Cory Dean.

Sociology
Kathleen Ann Griesbach. Positional uncertainty: Contingent workers seeking a place in unstable times. Sponsor: Gil Eyal.

Statistics
Auerbach, Jonathan. Statistical models and prediction. Sponsor: Shaw-Hwa Lo.

Hsu, Yayun. Partition-model based representation learning. Sponsor: Shaw-Hwa Lo.

Zhou, Wenda. New perspectives on cross-validation. Sponsor: Arian Maleki and Peter Orbanz.

TC / Behavioral Disorders
Curtis, James. Variable respiratory-swallow coordination training in Parkinson's disease. Sponsor: Michelle Troche.

TC / Clinical Psychology
Long, Kan. Risk and protective processes in the face of loss and potential trauma. Sponsor: George Bonanno.

TC / Economics and Education
Mayyasi, Omar. Understanding the determinants of graduate school enrollment. Sponsor: Judith Scott-Clayton.

Urban Planning
Petretta, Danielle. The political economy of value capture: How the financialization of Hudson Yards created a private rail line for the rich. Sponsor: Elliott Sclar.

DISSERTATION PROPOSALS FILED

Applied Mathematics
Li, Kathy. Leveraging machine learning and large-scale self-tracked mobile health app data to learn generative, predictive models of menstrual cycle length.

Art History and Archaeology
Hutcheson, Rachel. Color photography, 1890-1920: Technology, gender, colonialism.

Wang, Y. L. Lucy. Contagious places, curative spaces: Disease in the making of modern Chinese architecture, 1894-1949.

Biomedical Engineering
Colburn, David. Wearable biosensors for mobile health.

Chemical Engineering
Mohr, Robert. Influence of natural convection in a minimal architecture Zinc-Bromine cell.

Zhengyan, Zhang. Non-equilibrium self-organization in Quincke system.

English and Comparative Literature
Byers, Sheila. Swarms in 18th and 19th century American literature.

History
Wang, Danping. The Chinese war on cancer: Cancer research, prevention and treatment, 1950s-1990s.

Mechanical Engineering
Rauschkolb, Noah. Technologies and economies for a low carbon energy system.

Theatre
Gilovich, Ilana. 'Let's have a dance': Shakespeare and dance in the Americas.

Schroering, Abby. Cultivating collectives: Performance and ecology for the anthropocene.