Natural products provide a renewable resource of novel chemical structures with relevance to the pharmaceutical, agricultural and materials industries. Genome sequencing has revealed that these industries currently rely on only a fraction of the number of natural products that exist in nature. Based on the impact that known natural products...
The genetic code, a set of rules by which mRNA codons are translated into the twenty standard amino acids used in protein synthesis, was once thought to be immutable. As we expanded our understanding of molecular biology more variations in this genetic code have been found across the animal kingdom....
As the title suggests, this dissertation is composed of three major topics. The first two are optimization problems focusing on developing effective solution methodologies, while for the last topic we present a large-scale information retrieval system in the domain of sports. With the algorithms and frameworks developed in this dissertation,...
Classic mechanism design studies the implementation of optimal systems or processes in the presence of multiple selfish and fully rational agents. The theory of mechanism design has been one of the most celebrated advances in the economics discipline, especially with regards to auctions Myerson (1981),Vickrey (1961), Clarke (1971), Groves (1973)....
Semiconducting nanoelectronic materials, including single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) possess interesting optoelectronic properties that could enable next-generation electronics, sensing technologies, and biomedicine. In this thesis, biomolecule-assisted dispersion and assembly of these nanomaterials are explored for human toxicity, environmental hazard potential, and applications in supramolecular hydrogels.
Liquid-based...
This thesis discusses the application of advanced digital signal and image processing techniques, particularly the technique known as super-resolution (SR), to enhance the imagery produced by cameras mounted on an airborne platform such as an unmanned aircraft system (UAS). SR is an image processing technology applicable to any digital, pixilated...
This dissertation reports on novel theoretical concepts as well as experimental efforts toward laser cooling of semiconductors. The use of quantum well system brings the opportunity to engineer bandstructure, effective masses and the spatial distribution of electrons and holes. This permits the incorporation of novel quantum mechanical phenomena to manipulate...
Client-server architectures have been used for years, and many modern applications rely on this approach to be able to present rich and complex information to users without needlessly encumbering their local device with computation, and also to be able to keep all data in a (more-or-less) centrally available location, as...
Chronic pain is a prevalent and under-treated condition that remains a mystery to the medical system and a major social and economic problem. Unfortunately, there is no single treatment superior to others for relieving chronic pain. While recent scientific discoveries have provided us with functional and anatomical brain biomarkers of...