Ph.D. Presentations

Advances in microscopy have enabled the collection of high-quality single-cell datasets, providing new opportunities to identify the mechanisms underlying complex biological processes. In this work, we develop machine-learning frameworks using single-cell temporal data with the goal of predicting and providing insights into these mechanisms. We produce frameworks for two biological systems, bacterial spore germination, the […]

In March 2024, a backdoor was discovered in xz Utils, a widely used open source data compression library present in nearly every major Linux distribution. The attack was discovered days before merging into major distributions, and if this had happened, it would have allowed attackers to execute arbitrary code on millions of systems worldwide via […]

The accelerating adoption of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) in California is reshaping both the transportation and electrical grids at the moment as climate-driven disasters are intensifying in frequency and severity. This dual transition exposes a critical structural gap: existing resilience research treats pre-disaster evacuation readiness and post-disaster grid restoration as separate problems, even though both are […]

Many somatic variant-calling pipelines begin by aligning tumor and matched-normal sequencing reads to a single linear reference genome, such as GRCh38. Because every individual differs substantially from this reference, this approach can introduce reference bias, causing reads to map incorrectly or not at all and potentially leading to missed somatic variants or germline variants being […]

Coherent wireless reception depends on accurate channel state information (CSI), yet acquiring CSI through pilot transmission consumes time–frequency resources that could otherwise carry data. This tradeoff becomes more pronounced in […]

Artificial intelligence and machine learning models depend on large and diverse datasets to learn patterns across different situations and generalize to cases they have not seen before. In cybersecurity, suitable […]

Aluminum and silver are excellent metal-bases for astronomical telescopes designed for broadband spectral measurements. In particular silver excels in the violet to infrared spectral range range with over 95% reflectance. In turn aluminum excels deep ultra-violet to infrared with over 90% reflectance across the bulk of its spectral range. In astronomical telescope optics, each percent […]

A complete and accurate genome reconstruction serves as the foundation for studying an organism’s biology and the mechanisms underlying disease. It is particularly critical for reference genomes, which provide a universal coordinate system for downstream genomic analysis. Errors or missing sequences in a reference genome create bias in all of the studies built on top […]

In lung cancer, recurrent alterations in RNA processing regulators reshape both the proteins genes encode and the sequences that regulate their production. Understanding how mRNA processing influences protein production requires […]