Upcoming Doctoral Dissertations
School of Engineering and Science
DISSERTATIONS IN JULY
Candidate | Huan Han |
Date | Monday, July 28, 2025 |
Time | 10:00 AM (Eastern) |
Title | In Vivo Optical Imaging of Oviduct Transport Function and Ovarian Cancer Outgrowth in The Mouse Model |
Location | McLean 114 |
"This dissertation addresses the challenges of studying the cause of tubal ectopic pregnancy and the spread of ovarian cancer. These challenges are reflected by the difficulties in analyzing how the oviduct (fallopian tube) transports preimplantation embryos toward pregnancy and in assessing the outgrowth of ovarian cancer at its native site of formation and detachment." Read more
Candidate | Maria Venolia |
Date | Monday, July 28, 2025 |
Time | 1:00 PM (Eastern) |
Title | Wind Wave Climatology Analysis of the Western North Atlantic Ocean Using a Spectral Approach |
Location | Peirce 216 |
"This Ph.D. dissertation enhances understanding of wind wave climatology in the Western North Atlantic Ocean through wave energy spectral approach. As coastal regions face increasing challenges from climate variability and extreme weather events, accurate wave climate analysis has become essential for coastal management and marine operations." Read more
Candidate | Ramana Nagasamudram |
Date | Tuesday, July 29, 2025 |
Time | 12:00 PM (Eastern) |
Title | Auto-active relational verification and alignment completeness |
Location | Gateway North 303 |
"Establishing relations between programs arises as a task in various verification contexts such as relating new versions of programs with older versions or proving the correctness of program transformations. Existing tools for relational verification provide a high degree of automation at the cost of restricting the class of programs handled. Auto-active tools such as Dafny and Why3, on the other hand, require more user interaction and support verification of a broad class of programs, including those that act on pointers." Read more
DISSERTATIONS IN AUGUST
Candidate | Xuening Xu |
Date | Friday, August 8, 2025 |
Time | 9:00 AM (Eastern) |
Title | Defense and Mitigation Against Cyber Attacks in Smart Home Internet of Things Ecosystems |
Location | Virtual (https://stevens.zoom.us/j/93488327072) |
"The growing adoption of smart home platforms has brought convenience and automation, but also exposed critical security vulnerabilities at the edge, where device integrations and message flows occur. This dissertation systematically investigates and mitigates previously unexplored attack surfaces in smart home systems across two key dimensions: edge driver exploitation and IoT message delays." Read more
Candidate | Shima Jalalian Sedaghati |
Date | Friday, August 8, 2025 |
Time | 2:00 PM (Eastern) |
Title | Multiphysics Modeling of Alzheimer's Disease |
Location | Babbio 319 |
"Early and reliable diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease is challenging due to the complex interactions between protein pathology and structural neurodegeneration. The aim of the research is to develop a multiphysics framework that predicts the effect of Alzheimer’s disease on brain shape changes to distinguish between healthy and accelerated aging. As a result, we developed a framework that couples the progression of neurotoxic proteins and local tissue volume loss to capture essential hallmark features of dementia." Read more
Candidate | Yingtao Wang |
Date | Monday, August 18, 2025 |
Time | 9:00 AM (Eastern) |
Title | Manufacturing and Thermal Transport Properties of Flexible Two-Dimensional Materials |
Location | Carnegie 207 |
"This dissertation presents a comprehensive investigation into the thermal transport properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials, with a focus on how strain engineering can modulate phonon and electron transport. A combination of experimental fabrication, advanced characterization, and first principles simulations was employed to uncover the underlying mechanisms governing heat and charge conduction in low-dimensional systems." Read more
School of Business
DISSERTATIONS IN AUGUST
Candidate | Agathe Sadeghi |
Date | Monday, August 18, 2025 |
Time | 10:00 AM (Eastern) |
Title | Contagion Dynamics in Traditional and Decentralized Finance |
Location | Babbio 605 |
"Financial systems are inherently interconnected, with shocks propagating through institutions in complex ways. Understanding contagion dynamics is crucial for identifying vulnerabilities, particularly during periods of financial turmoil. This dissertation explores these broader themes by combining network theory, statistical validation, and advanced risk modeling to analyze both traditional financial networks and decentralized finance (DeFi) systems." Read more
To view past Doctoral Dissertations, please visit this website.