This dissertation models and simulates optimization problems to find the optimal set of strategies to allocate network space (lanes or zones) to autonomous vehicles (AVs) in partially automated dynamic networks. This dissertation aims to develop a set of methods to determine the appropriate AV managed space strategies. Managed space strategies...
This dissertation considers how 21 trans and queer teenagers learned to create livable lives in unlivable worlds through routine participation on social media. Through a multi-year partnership with an interdisciplinary gender program in Chicago, I employed a humanizing qualitative design anchored by interview and participatory visual methods over three nested...
Nuclear receptors (NRs) are an important family of transcription factors that often regulate genes in response to ligands and by way of direct interactions with coactivator proteins. Many NR-coactivator pairs have been identified that cooperate to regulate transcription but fully understanding how NRs recruit specific coactivators involves learning which of...
Kidney transplantation remains the best and most cost-effective treatment for patients with end stage kidney disease, and the number of kidney transplants performed in the U.S. annually has increased steadily since 2015. To ensure transplant success, kidney transplant recipients (KTRs) are often prescribed lifelong, complex medication regimens that include immunosuppressants,...
Quantum mechanical phenomena are playing tremendous roles in many areas of chemistry and materials science research. In recent years, the potential role of coupling between electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom in photochemical processes has been widely researched. Despite its potential to improve molecular technologies, the lack of studies focusing...
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) images the retina noninvasively with micrometer-scale volumetric resolutions. It is an invaluable resource in the clinic for identifying, monitoring, and treating blindness-causing diseases. By shortening illumination wavelengths to the visible range, visible-light OCT (vis-OCT) improves image resolution, provides new scattering contrasts, and enables oxygen saturation (sO2)...
This thesis contains two research projects. The first research project examined the coherent nature of electron transfer in two donor-acceptor dyads – one single acceptor control compound and one dual acceptor molecule of interest. Using transient absorption spectroscopy in the ultraviolet/visible/near-infrared and mid-infrared regions, magnetic field effect experiments, and theoretical...
Today’s romance fiction landscape is drastically different than the early 1980s when its community of readers and writers formalized in the Romance Writers of America and Romantic Times fan magazine. Then, romance fiction was understood to focus on “the interaction between male and female.” Today, romance depicts a variety of...
This thesis presents a new self-assembling robotic system that diverges from traditional approaches by enabling robots to build structures not constrained to a lattice and formed based on environmental conditions, rather than on a priori blueprints. Robot self-assembly is a class of behavior in swarm robotics in which many robots...
“Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” is the name for one of French artist Paul Gauguin’s most influential paintings. Unsurprisingly, these very questions have occupied the minds of countless philosophers, artists, and scholars since the beginning of human civilization. These questions become especially salient...