Wisam Al Bakri
Atmospheric aerosols are solid and liquid particles suspended in the air. Primary sources emit particles directly to the atmosphere, while secondary aerosol forms in the atmosphere. Secondary organic aerosols (SOA) from aromatic precursors are poorly constrained and their magnitude is highly...
Alaa Hani Naser Al Minshid
Engineered nanoparticles NPs have unique physiochemical properties and are used in a variety of applications including cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and catalysts. NPs can make their way into the environment and human body and can dissolve or agglomerate which has important consequences for toxicity...
Hayder Alalwan
This work aims to develop fundamental insights about the underlying surface and bulk chemical processes instrumental to the efficiency of chemical looping combustion (CLC). CLC, which uses a solid-state oxygen carrier (e.g., metal oxides) to drive hydrocarbon combustion, is a promising combustion...
Carrie Aldrich
Doctoral students must participate in academic discourse communities, yet they report being underprepared to do so. In a collection of three papers, I employ autoethnography, qualitative classification, and discourse analysis to address the overarching question: Given a discipline-specific writing...
Benjamin Alleva
Meiosis is the specialized cellular division that forms gametes, sperm and eggs. If meiosis is perturbed, unequal amounts of DNA can be separated into the resulting gametes; this is known as aneuploidy which is a major cause of genomic disorders such as Down syndrome. I identified a previously...
Jason Bell
It is important for marketers to extract information about competition from data about choices. However, competition cannot be measured directly. Instead, one must infer competitive influences from data patterns. Often this can be quite difficult. This dissertation studies two cases of competitive...
Jorge Berumen
Plasmas are gases with charged particles. Sound waves can be generated in plasmas, just like in normal gases, and these waves can be absorbed or reflected by surfaces depending on their electrical properties. We measure ion acoustic wave reflections by inducing fluorescence on the plasma with a...
Kristina Bigsby
This research uses college football as a case study to explore the complex interactions between social networks and recruitment. I examine the impact of athletes’ Twitter connections and content on three recruiting outcomes: offers, commitments, and decommitments. This work can benefit athletes and...
Ellen Black
Native freshwater mussels of the Upper Mississippi River filter over 14 billion gallons of water and transfer tons of nitrogen into surrounding sediment each day. My research aims to determine how mussels influence nitrogen-cycling microorganisms using next-generation sequencing and bioinformatic...
Christine Bricker
I develop a new theory of regional classification in the United States based on geography, political psychology, and public opinion. I use this theory to create a new classification system of American regional subcultures. I apply this new measure to state policy adoption across the United States...
Wei Chen
I use a quasi-exogeneous shock to information asymmetry to evaluate the effect of information asymmetry on corporate disclosure. In the post-Regulation FD period, the merger between a shareholder and a lender of the same firm provides a quasi-exogeneous shock to the information asymmetry among...
Matthew Childers
Naturalism is the worldview that philosophy and science ought to be continuous enterprises concerning the nature of the world. Although naturalism is popular, it is also highly controversial. My dissertation advances a systematic assessment of naturalism and a critical analysis of its commitments...
Rachel Clark
Aging is associated with both changes in the brain and declines in cognitive function like learning and memory. Exercise is one behavior that is well known to benefit the brain, particularly in the hippocampus, a region necessary for cognitive functions such as episodic learning and memory and...
Erica Damman
Climate change is here but there remains a gap between acceptance of scientific knowledge and actionable change. My hybrid dissertation offers a model for closing this gap. I am creating three ecoaesthetic games, playing them with various publics, and assessing their ability to affect environmental...
Emane Claudio de Souza Jr.
Regulation of thrombin commands a high interest in the medical community because it is a key enzyme involved in blood coagulation, being an important target for preventing thrombotic disorders, such as venous thromboembolism and stroke. My thesis focuses on design, synthesis and characterization of...
Carlos del Rio Bermudez
Sensory feedback arising from spontaneous motor activity during REM sleep (i.e., myoclonic twitching) is thought to play an important role in driving the early development of the sensorimotor system. My dissertation aims to elucidate the motor pathways involved in the generation of twitching and...
Michael Delcau
Bioremediation, the use of bacteria and fungi to remove harmful contaminants from the environment is an emerging technology used to in place of traditional remediation techniques. We are exploring the use of a microbe, Pseudomonas sp. strain ADP, to degrade the ubiquitous pesticide atrazine found in...
Courtney Donahue
The synthesis of complex chemicals and materials, such as pharmaceuticals and plastics, utilize catalysts (often metals attached to organic components called ligands) to assist in the formation of new chemical bonds. Despite years of research, there is a lack of simple models to predict how catalyst...
Chad Drake
Agriculture in the U.S. Midwest is a major source of nutrients to streams and a significant contributor to the “Dead Zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. Nutrient reduction exchange (NRE) is a conceptual, voluntary framework to improve water quality in which point sources could invest in upstream...
Ruoxi Du
This research examines global media framing of protests and repression. Applying the structural topic model to original international newspaper data, I find that when covering mass movements in non-democracies, free press focus more on aspects of the events that are dramatic and challenge the status...
Alexis Elmore
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is highly prevalent in adults and has been linked to functional difficulties in various life domains, increased risk of other disorders (e.g., depression), and deficits in self-regulation (e.g., time management). My dissertation aims to address a gap...
Reinaldo Franqui Machin
NEK2 is a drug resistance-inducing protein accumulated in the blood cancer Myeloma however, the mechanism is unknown. My dissertation shows NEK2 is stabilized by interacting with USP7, another cancer-promoting protein. Once stable, my data shows NEK2 promotes drug resistance by activating NF-kB, a...
Ananda Kumar Ghosh
Enzymes are biological catalysts, which are important for maintaining the cellular activity by increasing the rate of biochemical conversion. I am studying-kinetics, mechanisms and dynamics of the enzyme Thymidylate Synthase (TSase), which is one of the chemotherapeutic drug targets. Despite many...
Allison Gorga
My research seeks to understand how penal change is framed and sought after by individuals who work within the criminal justice system. Specifically, I hoped to uncover the barriers and catalysts to providing adequate recidivism reducing programs for women prisoners. After interviewing and observing...
Bharath Gowdampally
Lung surfactant is present at the liquid surface of the alveoli, and helps in maintaining the structural stability of alveoli during breathing. When inhaled particles deposit in the alveoli, they can inhibit surfactant function and lead to respiratory diseases. My project is to investigate the...
Huiyi Guo
One important issue in mechanism design theory is to model agents’ behaviors under uncertainty. The classical approach assumes that agents hold commonly known probability assessments towards uncertainty, which has been challenged by many experimental economists. My dissertation adopts alternative...
Anusha Hettiyadura
Atmospheric aerosols adversely affect human health and alter the earth’s radiative energy balance. With the overall goal of better understanding how anthropogenic emissions affect aerosol formation from gas-phase precursors, my dissertation includes the development and validation of a method to...
Yue Hu
My dissertation explores how authoritarian governments use language policy to impact public political trust. Based on a comprehensive examination through survey analyses, experiments, and large-scale text analyses, my research demonstrates that language policy in authoritarian governments, such as...
Sikder Rezwanul Huq
Self-adjusting algorithms enable distributed systems to respond to changes in input patterns and spontaneously adjust their properties to improve overall performance. As an example, a network meant to deliver streaming videos may dynamically replicate a viral video in multiple servers to minimize...
Thomas James
Our brains are remarkably stable in function. At each synapse, or connection between two neurons, both neurons continuously calibrate and adjust their connection strength to stabilize their connections. To understand this process, I utilize the Drosophila melanogaster larval neuromuscular junction...
Youn Soo Jung
Medicaid expansion significantly increases the demand for medical services, but what about the supply? It is not clear how the expansion affects physicians' behavior. In my dissertation, I investigate how physicians respond to Medicaid expansion. I found that physicians' total working hours did not...
Delalcan Kilic
The currently accepted theory of gravitation, Einstein’s general relativity, leads to the dark energy problem. Visible matter is insufficient to explain the observed expansion rate of the Universe. Moreover, general relativity is incompatible with quantum mechanics, the most successful theory of...
Sanga Kim
This study investigates potential heterogeneity within educational experiences and outcomes of Asian American students. This dissertation reveals how parental involvement predicts Asian American students’ academic success during early education. Beyond pre-secondary education, this study...
Hye Won Kwon
Grit (perseverance and passion towards long-term goals) has received growing attention from academia and the general public as a strong predictor of academic achievement. Yet current scholarship largely fails to consider structural and cultural contexts that may impact grit’s development. Bringing...
Natalie Langenfeld
A novel compartmental model is used for the prescription opioid epidemic to model the path of addiction over months in Iowa counties. This model allows forward and backward progression through the compartments: susceptible, exposed, dependent, and removed. The model is informed by prescription rates...
Jui Teng Liao
Since assessments are key indicators of language ability, it is essential to develop and implement empirically-grounded approaches that reflect language proficiency as accurately as possible. This study explores the effects of multiple-choice and short-answer question formats on English learners’...
Qi Ling
My dissertation studies how feminist discourses are incorporated in the emerging women-centric television dramas in contemporary China. I examine the industrial conditions of these dramas, the practices of the liberal-minded female television professionals and the neoliberal feminist discourses in...
Melissa Marchal
Prostate cancer is the third most lethal cancer in U.S. men, due to advanced metastatic disease. My dissertation focuses on how the notoriously oncogenic Abl family kinases paradoxically act to suppress the growth and metastasis of prostate cancer. By utilizing a cell-based-model of metastatic...
Kathryn McCormick
Boundary representations are an important tool for studying subalgebras of C*-algebras. Boundary representations were defined almost fifty years ago, but it wasn't until extremely recently that they were proven to exist in all cases, and there are no general methods of computing them. In my thesis I...
Paul Morris
My research focuses on acoustic cues in the speech sound signal which are used for speech perception and differentiating sounds. Specifically, using production and perceptual experiments, I will investigate the Spanish acoustic cues that differentiate voicing categories of consonant sounds (e.g., p...
Barbara Okeke
My research assesses the toxicity of multiple pesticide exposures in adolescents over time by characterizing urinary metabolites, blood, health profiles, reported symptoms and neurobehavioral changes. A main research objective answers a gap in the literature by estimating associations between these...
Brian Olovson
My dissertation examines the process and products of collaborative and individual writing as they relate to learning Spanish as a second language. The purpose of my study is to shed light on the nature of peer interaction during the writing process, to examine the relationship between learners’...
Felicia Ooi
The Heat Shock Response (HSR) is a cellular defense mechanism that minimizes accumulation of misfolded proteins, which are a hallmark of age-related neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s Diseases. Using Caenorhabditis elegans, my research shows that stimulating serotonergic...
Katherine Ostdiek
In my dissertation, “Memory and the Metropole” I examine three figures—the Scot, criminal, and socialist—who play crucial roles in Britain’s economic, cultural, and moral composition between 1882 and 1899 as Britain begins to question its imperial posture and internal cohesion. Each chapter...
Jacob Rysted
My research focuses on how the energy producing part of the neuron, called mitochondria, affects neuronal function. More specifically, my research investigates how mitochondria contribute to normal neuronal activity as well as different aspects of animal behavior including memory, anxiety, and motor...
Farzad Salamifar
My dissertation uses French critical theory to explain the prevalence of autobiographical and biographical fictions in contemporary French literature. I demonstrate that the popularity of autobiographical narratives in the contemporary French novel follows the collapse of grand ideologies, and...
Namita Sawant
Nasal sprays available for the treatment of cold and allergy symptoms currently use identical formulations and devices for adults as well as for children. However, based on nasal airway dimensions, it is apparent that the nasal cavities of children differ from adults. The overall goal of this work...
Dong Hoon Shin
The workers whose capability does not match with the demanded capability for their jobs have been of interest to scholars investigating the transition from school to jobs. By focusing on these mismatched workers, this dissertation particularly aims to 1) examine how the relationship between...
Jodi Smith
A man’s misperception of a woman’s momentary level of sexual interest can increase the risk of sexually aggressive behavior between acquaintances. A better understanding of these basic perceptual errors may inform future prevention efforts on college campuses. My dissertation assesses whether men’s...
Rebecca Smith
My dissertation examines the design of Reims Cathedral, the coronation church of France, from a geometric perspective. I amassed thousands of onsite measurements and developed a new, precise plan of the thirteenth-century Gothic structure. From the plan and the measurement data, the building’s...
Crissa Stephens
This 20-month ethnographic and discourse analytic study utilizes data collected in a Midwestern school district across homes, schools, the community, and district offices to understand the interplay between educational language policies and the social identity development and opportunities of newly...
Cole Stiegler
The quadratic assignment problem (QAP) is a notoriously difficult combinatorial optimization problem with optimally solvable instances of the QAP being relatively small. For most instances, heuristic techniques are necessary to provide a solution in a reasonable amount of time. Through the use of...
Angela Toepp
Leishmaniasis is a deadly protozoan disease endemic in more than 98 countries placing more than 1 billion people at risk and killing more than 40,000 annually. My thesis aims to understand further the epidemiology of leishmaniasis, the influence of tick borne disease co-infections on progression of...
Angela Toscano
My research questions the assumption that the novel replaced earlier prose romances as the dominant form of fiction. I look beyond the distinction between romance and the novel to examine their shared tropes and conventions, asking: why do certain kinds of stories recur across genres and historical...
Stephanie Tsank
My dissertation examines how food scenes are used by American authors in works of realism to depict immigrants and, in turn, to comment on dominant culinary and narrative trends. By tracing the development of realism alongside social and cultural ideas about how and what people were instructed to...
Eric Tvedte
Reproduction is a core organismal trait, and transitions between reproductive strategies may influence the evolutionary trajectory of a species. My dissertation research utilizes newly sequenced genomes from Diachasma wasps to a) investigate whether sex loss in an asexual wasp is associated with...
Bo Wang
This dissertation research addresses how to detect structural changes in linear regression. By introducing a special structure to the design matrix, we convert the structural change detection problem to a variable selection problem. We then design two penalized regression algorithms to accomplish a...
Jeremy Williams
This study investigates whether college students on civilian college campuses and military academies differ in perceptions of college climate for Personal and Social Responsibility (PSR), given their unique campus culture attributes. Students’ perceptions of academic integrity, and ethical and moral...
Jie Ying
My dissertation focuses on how risks should be handled by individuals, firms, and financial markets. Simply speaking, it studies risk management. It answers three questions from a theoretical perspective: how customers choose the insurance coverage when the insurance contract may fail to perform as...