Digital Commons Network^™

Efficient Mathematical Modeling And Synthesis Of Realistic Musical Instrument Sounds, Andrew Chookaszian

Master's Theses

This thesis develops and evaluates a compact parametric additive synthesis model for isolated musical instrument tones. The method analyzes a single-note recording, estimates its fundamental frequency, extracts harmonic amplitude and frequency behavior, and stores the sound as a reduced set of interpretable parameters. These parameters include the note duration, pitch, per-harmonic amplitude envelopes, phase information, and amplitude- and frequency-modulation vibrato parameters. The stored model is then used to resynthesize the tone without directly using the original audio waveform.

The model was evaluated using synthetic signals, real instrument samples, objective error metrics, storage comparisons, pitch and duration modification tests, and listening …

Object Detection And Classification For Man-Made Structures To Aid In Search And Rescue (Sar), Mio A. Nakagawa

Master's Theses

This project explores the use of various object detection and classification models to identify permanent man-made structures, specifically cell towers, water towers, watch towers as well as its corresponding shadows (attributes), from aerial imagery. The goal is to evaluate those models and test the feasibility of current models to detect man-made structures in aerial images, in an effort to support search and rescue operations as well as update network infrastructure databases. Multiple object detection models, as well as classification models, including YOLOv8 and VGG19 are implemented and trained on annotated aerial images to determine the presence or absence of man-made …

Prototype X-Band Front End Upconverter & Transmitter With An Integrated Pll, Mont Ziadoon Murad

Master's Theses

In recent years, there has been growing interest in high-speed communication for small satellites. Achieving higher communication speeds will enable any experimental CubeSat to conduct experiments at higher rates and allow further research into SAR and deep-space exploration. At Cal Poly, the CubeSat Lab has mainly operated at 9600 baud and utilized the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) amateur radio band. While it has proven itself resilient, the UHF band lacks the infrastructure to support higher-bandwidth communication systems. To address this gap, this work presents a prototype space-side downlink RF front end comprising an upconverter, a power amplifier (PA), and a …

Challenges And Opportunities Of Mastery-Based Learning: A Student-Centered Analysis In An Upper Division Programming Languages Course, Parshana Sekhon

Master's Theses

Traditional grading structures in computer science courses reward performance on a few high-stakes assessments that may not accurately reflect a student’s mastery of concepts. Mastery-Based Learning (MBL) offers students multiple opportunities to demonstrate understanding through iterative feedback and reassessment, promoting their persistence and self-regulation. However, MBL can promote student behaviors like procrastination, “minimal effort” attempts, or de-prioritizing the course in favor of other courses with inflexible deadlines, which may undermine its effectiveness. This case study investigates how students navigated MBL in an upper-division computer science course at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. The course explores the fundamentals of programming …

Scorespeak: An Agentic System For Natural Language Control Of Musical Scores, Nathan S. Lim

Master's Theses

With the recent popularization of large language models (LLMs), natural language has become one of the most accessible and powerful ways for people to interact with creative tools. Although they have become common in mainstream domains like image and audio editing, there is currently no robust AI-based system that can reliably turn free-form language into edits for symbolic musical scores. This gap represents a missed opportunity to improve human workflows for creating and editing sheet music, but it is also a fundamental limitation for other agentic music systems; without a robust mechanism for translating free-form language into structured scores, AI …

Hamster: Hybrid-Actuated Mobile Spherical Terrain Exploration Rover, Winnie Gao

Master's Theses

The expansion of space exploration to increasingly challenging planetary environments requires mobility systems capable of extreme traversal capabilities and operational reliability. This thesis presents the design, development, and testing of a low-cost Hybrid-Actuated Mobile Spherical Terrain Exploration Rover (HAMSTER) intended for use on a planetary surface exploration mission. HAMSTER uses a pendulum-based actuation method for steering and an actuated internal shaft to propel the vehicle forward. The internal structure includes a two-tiered central case composed of the navigation control module, accelerometer, motor controller, primary DC motor, battery, voltage regulators, Raspberry Pi, pendulum servo motor, and drive shafts. Additive manufacturing through …

Trustworthy Intelligence Fusion For Search And Rescue: Designing Grounded And Secure Multi-Agent Ai For Mission Decision Support, Yayun Tan

Master's Theses

Search and rescue (SAR) operations require teams to integrate uncertain information under severe time pressure. Large language model (LLM)-based multi-agent systems (MAS) can support decision-making, but they also risk producing hallucinated outputs and processing unreliable or malicious data. This thesis addresses these risks through three linked studies. First, it proposes a modular eight-agent SAR MAS architecture that reflects the structure of real SAR missions by assigning specialized roles to different agents. Second, it introduces a post-hoc probabilistic verification framework that checks LLM agent outputs against a probabilistic knowledge graph built from historical SAR incidents.  Third, the thesis examines indirect adversarial …

Empirical Comparsion Of Traveling Salesperson Approximation Algorithms, Shayan Daijavad

Master's Theses

The traveling salesperson problem deals with optimizing the route a traveling sales- person might take to visit a set of places exactly once and return back to their starting point. The problem is NP-hard, and it is hard to approximate in general, but special cases have many approximation algorithms, which come with tradeoffs. In this thesis we compare the runtime, approximation ratio, and overall implementation complexity of two approximation algorithms for the Euclidean version of the problem, a classical 2-approximation algorithm and the multifragment heuristic. We run both algorithms on randomly generated point sets and real world data from TSPLIB. …

Uncertainty-Weighted Fusion Of Sensor And Monocular Foundation-Model Depth For 3d Gaussian Splatting In Indoor Rgb-D Capture, Brandon S. Howell

Master's Theses

Depth-supervised 3D Gaussian Splatting can improve scene geometry in indoor RGB-D capture, but noisy commodity depth measurements can also reduce rendered image quality. This thesis studies that trade-off in room-scale indoor reconstruction using two complementary depth sources: Kinect-class RGB-D sensor depth, which is metric but noisy and incomplete, and Depth Anything 3 (DA3) monocular depth, which is dense and meter-valued but not calibrated to the sensor or laser-reference geometry. 

The proposed method constructs a per-pixel depth supervision target by inverse-variance fusion of the sensor depth and the monocular depth prediction. The fused target is used to train a depth-supervised 3D …

Space Quacker Advanced Development (Squad): Lora Modulation On A Leo Cubesat Mission For Evaluation Of 916 Mhz Uplink, Samantha Brunton

Master's Theses

The LoRa Modulation format was developed by SEMTECH in 2018 and has revolutionized terrestrial Internet of Things (IoT) networks. LoRa (Long Range) has been successfully demonstrated as a long-range, low-data-rate communication modulation format and packet protocol for low-power terrestrial applications. LoRa offers low power consumption, low cost, robust signal sensitivity, and long communication range. Recently, interest has grown in using LoRa communication in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite systems, especially for global IoT connectivity. Previous studies have investigated the theoretical feasibility and simulated the performance of LoRa satellite communication. Companies such as Lacuna Space have demonstrated the practical potential of …

Comparative Analysis And Optimization Of Control Strategies For Single Axis Tracking Solar Arrays On Skewed Topography, Emerson Nicholas

Master's Theses

Photovoltaic solar farms on uneven terrain present consistent challenges to performance optimization. Standard backtracking algorithms can generate potential losses due to interrow shading caused by sloped terrain as well as a lack of plane of array irradiance that can occur even on level ground. The purpose of this thesis is to use the Gold Tree site as a case study to develop and evaluate different solar tracking control strategies. Specifically, it compares the relative performance of fixed, direct tracking, closed-form backtracking, and global optimization strategies. It is done under a two-dimensional, idealized predictive power model of a representative portion of …

Development Of A Video-Based Tool To Measure Motor Asymmetry In Infants At Risk For Hemiparesis, Roha Ali

Master's Theses

Congenital hemiparesis is a unilateral motor impairment stemming from brain injury in utero or early postnatally. Hemiparesis can be difficult to detect in early infancy with current clinical tools. Yet, early identification of motor asymmetry could play a key role in the design of effective early intervention and rehabilitation strategies. This thesis presents the development and validation of a video-based tool designed to extract infant limb movement data using DeepLabCut’s (DLC) machine learning network. The pipeline was developed using videos of typically developing (TD) infants and infants with Asymmetric Perinatal Brain Injury (APBI), all at or under 3 months corrected …

Political Inconsistency Detection Across Legislative Speech And Public Communications, Scott M. Pramuk

Master's Theses

Political actors communicate about legislation across multiple contexts, including committee hearings, recorded votes, and public-facing press releases. Differences between these forms of communication can provide useful signals for journalists and researchers seeking to understand how legislators present policy positions to different audiences.

This thesis extends the Digital Democracy Project, a legislative transparency initiative that provides access to California state legislative hearing transcripts, voting records, and related legislative data. Specifically, this work incorporates publicly accessible, legislator-authored news releases into the Digital Democracy Database and develops a pipeline for analyzing legislative communication across multiple sources. The system collects news releases from California …

A Security Framework For Pacemaker Lead Failure: Anomaly Detection System And Failsafe Policy Considerations, Ethan Wagner

Master's Theses

Embedded system security in implantable medical devices (IMDs) remains an underexplored challenge due to the unique constraints of these systems. Specifically, pacemakers are optimized for ultra-low power consumption to maximize device lifespan, are highly resource constrained, and demand reliable and correct operation to prevent severe health consequences. These systems rely on sensing electrodes, called leads, to detect cardiac activity and stimulate the patient’s heart when appropriate. Therefore, pacemaker lead integrity is a critical issue, as malfunction or compromise can result in device failure jeopardizing patient safety.

The security framework presented in this thesis integrates several works to proactively detect and …

Controllable Tile-Based Level Generation For Vertical Platformers, Aiden P. Smith

Master's Theses

Procedural Content Generation (PCG) has had much research poured into it in recent years, as it is a way to more easily create content and levels for player replayability. Historically, this type of level generation has been done by algorithms with strict rules and black-and-white decision making. However, in recent years Large Language Models (LLMs) have been fine-tuned for this task in research in games such as Super Mario Bros and other 2D platformers. In this thesis, we apply a similar approach to level generation for a vertical platformer called Kid Icarus. We create a tile-based level generation system that …

Large Scale Kmer-Based Proteomic Analysis: An Application Towards Evolutionary Constraint Discovery, Matthew Chak

Master's Theses

Large protein databases now make it possible to study short peptides across natural protein sequence space at unprecedented scale, but exhaustively counting k-mers across billions of protein sequences remains computationally difficult. This thesis develops an exact amino-acid k-mer counting method based on direct addressing, in which fixed-length amino-acid strings are encoded as base-20 integers and updated with a sliding-window recurrence. By avoiding key storage and collision resolution, this approach removes overhead inherent to hash-map-based methods when the k-mer space is sufficiently dense. A memory analysis shows when direct addressing is preferable to open-addressing hash tables, and expected-saturation calculations motivate its …

Effect Of The Stacking Sequence And Number Of Ply Orientation In A Quasi-Isotropic Laminated Plate On In-Plane Shear Modulus And Failure Modes, Ann Larson

Master's Theses

Maximizing the shear modulus and strength, as well as predicting failure mode and location, when designing a stacking sequence of quasi-isotropic carbon fiber laminated plates is essential to predict stability, resistance to deformation, and overall stiffness of the structure. This research investigates the effect of the stacking sequence of quasi-isotropic laminated composite plate materials in accordance with ASTM D5379: Standard Test Method for Shear Properties of Composite Materials by the V-Notched Beam Method.

In this research, experimental testing and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) were first used on aluminum to validate the simulation process before applying it to composite materials. The …

Analysis And Design Of Auger Cast Piles With Isolation Casing, Zachary Lindsay

Master's Theses

This research addresses the analysis and design of double cased piles. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) runs a large rail system both above and below ground that connects the entire Bay Area. BART requires that all new constructions avoid transmitting axial load to their tunnels from adjacent piles. If piles fall within the zone of influence, builders must install double cased piles. Double casing is where there is an extra casing around the pile, with an air gap between them. The air gap prevents load from transferring to the outer casing. The length of this casing is called the isolation …

Structured Dynamic Factor Analysis Of Environmental Time Series With Application To Morro Bay Estuary, Jose Garcia

Master's Theses

This thesis develops a structured dynamic factor analysis (sDFA) framework for decomposing multivariate environmental time series into latent biological and physical components. The methodology is applied to five years of high-resolution passive monitoring data collected from two sites in Morro Bay, California from 2020 through 2024. Relative contribution indices are developed based on the structured DFA that measure how much each latent process contributes to each observed variable at any given time. Structured DFA models fit to the application data suggest site-specific patterns in how biological and physical processes affect water quality variables. At the bay mouth location, physical processes …

A2s Uplink Latency Minimization For Wildfire Monitoring Systems Using Mbse And Stochastic Modeling, Luis Giovanni Wang

Master's Theses

Wildfire response depends on how quickly a detection reaches the people who act on it, and the slowest remaining step is often the link that carries an alert from a remote sensing platform to a satellite. This thesis models the latency of that link, the Air-to-Space uplink, for a wildfire-monitoring UAV that carries a Starlink terminal and sends an ALERT packet to a serving Low Earth Orbit satellite. The uplink is difficult to predict because both the UAV and the satellite move, and because the wildfire environment degrades the channel at the moment the data matters most.

The thesis uses …

Evaluating The Cost-Benefit Tradeoffs Of Simt Control Mechanisms In Resource-Constrained Gpus, Nikolas Tambornini

Master's Theses

This thesis conducts a hardware-level analysis of the cost–benefit tradeoffs associated with increasingly complex SIMT control mechanisms in a resource-constrained GPU core. Four design implementations are evaluated: a Base Tiny GPU without warp scheduling capability; a Warp Scheduler using round-robin warp selection; a Branch Divergence implementation incorporating a dedicated divergence stack and post-dominator reconvergence mechanism; and a Dynamic Warp Allocation implementation that replaces the static warp structure with a runtime warp manager, regrouping threads by current program counter to recover SIMD lane utilization during active divergence. Each design is evaluated using two complementary measurements: functional simulation implemented using the CocoTB …

Multimodal Machine Learning For Soil Burn Severity Mapping Across California Wildfires, Sanjana Checker

Master's Theses

Accurate mapping of soil burn severity (SBS) is critical for post-fire watershed management, erosion risk assessment, and ecological recovery planning, yet traditional field-based approaches remain costly, time-intensive, and spatially limited. This thesis presents a machine learning pipeline for wall-to-wall SBS classification across California wildfires using multi-sensor satellite imagery, terrain derivatives, and bioclimatic covariates. Field-collected SBS observations (n = 2,180) from 52 wildfires occur- ring between 2013 and 2025, sourced from the U.S. Forest Service and CAL FIRE, were used to train and evaluate multiple classification architectures within a Google Earth Engine and Google Cloud-based prediction framework. After upsampling the unburned …

Assessing The Trends, Impacts, And Societal Implications Of Censorship On History Professors, Classrooms, And Historical Materials, Sarah Kula

Interdisciplinary Studies

This paper examines how censorship shapes historical understanding through its influence on research, classroom instruction, and societal narratives. Drawing on interviews with four history professors at California public institutions and existing scholarship on censorship, this study explores both historical and contemporary forms of censorship, with particular attention to topics of race, gender, and sexuality. Insights from the conducted interviews and pre-existing scholarly work are explored through three dimensions: personal, academic, and societal, emphasizing how these forces affect historical research, the teaching of history, and societal understanding of the “historical canon” that determines which narratives are preserved and prioritized, and which …

Restoreband: An Electromyography Band For Tracking Forearm Muscle Action And Activation In Post-Stroke Adults, Mairin T. Mullen, Melody Nwagwu, Kosuke Nishimura, Benjamin Miramon

Biomedical Engineering

This study involves the design of a non-invasive surface electromyography (EMG) band to estimate hand posture for individuals recovering from stroke and other neuromuscular disorders. The device is meant to measure forearm muscle activation to provide objective recovery data that can supplement traditional rehabilitation. Current EMG systems are often expensive, cumbersome, and difficult to use. The goal of this study is to develop an affordable, accurate, and easy to use solution that improves access to EMG motor monitoring.

The key stakeholders include stroke survivors, clinicians, and the project sponsor, Dr. Espinoza-Wade. This report includes project introduction, background, objectives, and project …

Cerebral Palsy Detection In Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Infants, Anais Jeday, Shane Tryon, Bryanna Leary, Oleana Jacobson

Biomedical Engineering

The project is conducted in collaboration with Dr. Eric Espinoza-Wade to develop a secure, accurate wearable sensing system for infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) who have experienced asymmetric perinatal brain injury (APBI). Infants with APBI are at increased risk for developing unilateral cerebral palsy; however, clinical diagnosis is often delayed until 12–24 months of age, limiting opportunities for early intervention.

The goal of the project is to design a wearable system that securely attaches small, lightweight accelerometers to an infant’s limbs to quantify bilateral limb movement. Triaxial acceleration data will be used to detect movement asymmetries, which …

2026 Annual V.E.S.T Hackathon: Improving Gender Inclusivity Of Glove Fitting, Makena E. Fix

Construction Management

Safety gloves are an essential part of field personnel's personal protective equipment (PPE). Gloves protect against cuts, burns, chemicals, and other hazards. Properly fitting gloves reduce the risk of injury by enabling the suitable use of task-specific protection. The 2026 Verifying Everyone’s Safety Together (V.E.S.T) Hackathon was hosted to identify ways in which gloves fit workers differently, and evaluated six different glove types, ranging from woven cut rated to firefighting gloves. To understand experiences faced by workers with their PPE, firefighters were interviewed and discussions were held at the Hackathon. The collaborative event brought industry members and students together to …

The Use Of Modular Construction To Improve Schedule Efficiency, Brandon Ritchie

Construction Management

The construction industry continues to face growing pressure to deliver projects on tighter schedules with fewer resources. Modular construction has emerged as a delivery method with the potential to improve schedule efficiency by allowing off site fabrication and on site work to occur simultaneously. This research examines how modular construction affects schedule performance compared to traditional construction methods. When modular construction is well coordinated, project schedules will show improved efficiency compared to traditionally built projects. Qualitative interviews were conducted with members of the Whiting Turner team on the Cal Poly Student Housing Project, backed up by a review of schedule …

Ada Concrete Walkway Improvements At The Gala Pride And Diversity Center, Jonathan A. Mintz, Manuel Gonzalez

Construction Management

This paper presents the planning, design, and construction of an accessible concrete walkway completed for the GALA Pride and Diversity Center in San Luis Obispo, California. The project addressed an accessibility gap between the center's front entrance and rear parking lot through a combination of site preparation, concrete work, retaining wall construction, and supporting improvements. Construction was managed around the active events schedule while staying within the constraints of a nonprofit budget. Challenges encountered during the project included scope changes, material selection decisions, and client coordination. The completed walkway provides a safe and stable path for all visitors and directly …

Designing And Building Benches For Slo City Farm, Julian Cervantes

Construction Management

The purpose of this project was to design and create multiple small benches for the City Farm SLO during the term of Spring 2026 quarter. This project was specifically intended to be an affordable, pragmatic, and durable project that would last a long time in order to serve the people that visit a comfortable place to sit and come together. In order to achieve the project delivery for these benches the pre-construction of the project started by visiting the city farm to inspect the existing benches and taking the measurements of them in order to shorten them for the use …

Modular Student Housing At California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo: A Case Study On Efficiency And Implementation, Michelle Lara

Construction Management

As universities continue searching for ways to deliver student housing more efficiently, volumetric modular construction has emerged as a potential alternative to traditional construction methods. However, there is limited documentation on how modular student housing projects are implemented on active California State University campuses. This study examines the implementation of volumetric modular construction on the California Polytechnic State University Student Housing Project through a qualitative case study approach. Data was collected through interviews with project personnel involved in construction management, project engineering, and fire and life safety compliance, along with a review of existing literature. While the project demonstrated several …