Kombucha is a traditional fermented beverage that has become increasingly popular in the United States due to its perceived health benefits and unique flavor profiles. The drivers of kombucha flavor have not been fully characterized, at least in part because it is produced using a complex microbial community, leading to...
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...
Converting energy from ocean waves is a challenging area for control theory application because of the nonlinear dynamics in various time scales. Generally, wave energy converter (WEC) control is applied in order to maximize power absorption, in the most common wave conditions, and subject to the devices’ physical constraints. Commonly,...
Animals aggregate and interact in nonuniform and nonrandom patterns, which lead to group level characteristics that have important evolutionary and ecological consequences. Network analysis provides a useful conceptual framework for linking animal interactions at all scales from dyads to communities, to populations and ecosystems. Despite exciting theoretical and applied advances...
Expressive motion has been found to be a highly effective tool in communicating intent and motivation in single robot human-robot interaction, but work in exploring how groups of robots can use motion in interactions with humans is relatively nascent. There are many additional complexities to consider expanding from single robot...