Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic explosions in the Universe, producing up to $\sim10^{53}$ ergs of energy in the first few seconds of their emission -- the so-called prompt phase that is dominated by high energy X-ray and $\gamma$-ray photons. The very large luminosities released in these events...
The persistent color (pc) trait in snap bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) belongs to a member of the cosmetic stay-green gene family. It is considered very desirable by snap bean breeders for its impacts on pod quality. Persistent color imparts a uniform dark-green color to pods and expresses in seeds as...
The last century has experienced a marked increase in emerging infectious disease (EID, hereafter) – jeopardizing human, domestic animal, and wildlife health. EIDs are commonly associated with spillover from one host species into a novel host species, with many destructive diseases, for both livestock and wildlife, emerging at the wildlife-livestock...
Secure two-party computation (2PC) is the task of performing arbitrary calculations on secret inputs provided by two parties, while maintaining secrecy if at least one party is honest. 2PC has been applied to privacy-preserving record linkage and machine learning, in areas such as medicine where maintaining privacy is crucial. One...
The body of work aims to contribute to the area of Quantitative analysis in Environmental Sciences, and is focused on the microbiome. The underlying theme for the dissertation is methods and workflow. The unique bioinformatics workflow used for the analysis of genomic data was used to answer distinct and pressing...
Collective robotic systems are biologically-inspired and exhibit behaviors found in spatial swarms (e.g., fish), colonies (e.g., ants), or a combination of both (e.g., bees). Collective robotic system popularity continues to increase due to their apparent global intelligence and emergent behaviors. Many applications can benefit from the incorporation of collectives, including...