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Improving Cancer Diagnosis And Patient Outcomes With Deep Learning Models, Mariana Arriz-Jorquiera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cancer care depends on timely and reliable decisions, from detection and diagnosis to treatment planning and patient monitoring. These decisions are often made under uncertainty because medical images and healthcare data may be noisy, incomplete, or difficult to interpret. In breast cancer imaging, ultrasound is widely used because it is safe, accessible, and complementary to other imaging modalities. However, variations in image quality, acquisition conditions, and noise can obscure lesion boundaries and texture, affecting human interpretation and artificial intelligence reliability. This dissertation develops deep learning, image-analysis, and optimization methods to improve healthcare decisions under imperfect information. Its primary focus is …

Impostor Syndrome In The Ranks: Understanding Self-Doubt To Improve Leader Performance, Joel Kotanko

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Impostor syndrome (IS) — the persistent pattern of self-doubt in which capable individuals fear being exposed as frauds despite objective evidence of competence — has been studied extensively in academic, healthcare, and corporate populations, where it is generally treated as detrimental to professional performance. Little empirical work has examined IS in U.S. military officers, a population operating under structural conditions the literature identifies as primary amplifiers of fraudulence perceptions: high-stakes permanent evaluations, up-or-out promotion systems, cultural pressure against outward expressions of doubt, and recurring role transitions under compressed timelines. This dissertation provides the first quantitative investigation of the relationship between …

From Shortage To Strategy: Optimizing Scarce Resource Allocation In Healthcare, Daniela Duran Cantarino

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The allocation of scarce medical resources presents one of the most consequential challenges in health care, requiring decisions that balance equity and efficiency under pervasive uncertainty. This dissertation develops optimization-based frameworks for two critical domains, organ transplantation and emergency medical services, and demonstrates how operations research methods can improve upon current practice along both dimensions simultaneously.

In the domain of deceased-donor kidney allocation, two complementary frameworks are proposed. The first is a bi-objective stochastic optimization model that jointly maximizes post-transplant survival (efficiency) and prioritizes candidates with the highest pre-transplant mortality risk (equity), subject to regional chance constraints on graft failure …

Toward Intelligent Machines: Conscious Learning And Hardware-Accelerated Ai, Pavia Bera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Artificial intelligence systems excel at narrow, well-defined tasks but remain brittle at theboundaries of their training distributions: they cannot quantify uncertainty, adapt continuously to non-stationary data, or operate efficiently on energy-constrained hardware. This dissertation addresses these limitations through four coordinated contributions spanning probabilistic learning algorithms, biologically inspired temporal memory, cross-entity warning propagation via distributed associative memory, and spintronic processing-in-memory.

The first contribution introduces Boosted Bayesian Neural Networks (BBNNs), which extend standard mean-field variational inference by iteratively constructing a mixture posterior through Boosting Variational Inference. On five clinical medical classification datasets, BBNNs achieve superior uncertainty calibration—lower Negative Log-Likelihood and Expected Calibration …

Subspace Decomposition For Spatial Parameter Estimation, Arthur Grik

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Passive emitter localization is an important capability for wireless sensing, interference detection, and spectrum awareness. Classical timing-based localization methods estimate emitter position from differences in signal arrival time across distributed sensor platforms, but their performance depends on precise receiver synchronization and favorable signal bandwidth characteristics. This thesis investigates subspace-decomposition-based spatial parameter estimation as an alternative approach in which directional information is extracted from coherent antenna-array measurements. This work develops the theoretical foundation and signal-processing framework for angle-of-arrival estimation. Various spatial parameter estimators are presented as supporting array-processing methods before focusing on a well-known subspace-decomposition-based approach called the Multiple SIgnal Classification …

Skill Acquisition: Evaluation Of Instructional Procedures, Ellen I. Ratliff

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Identifying effective and efficient interventions is essential for establishing independent responding in learners with autism spectrum disorder and related developmental disabilities. The present study replicated and extended Gorgan and Kodak (2019) by comparing differential reinforcement, most-to-least prompt fading, and extended response interval procedures for teaching novel skills to three children with autism spectrum disorder who did not demonstrate prompt-dependent responding. Using an adapted alternating treatments design, each intervention was evaluated against a control condition with an equated opportunity interval. Extensions to prior research included conducting a reinforcer assessment to verify differentiation in stimulus potency, modifying the controlling prompt assessment to …

Autoencoders As Classifiers Trained On Single Sources Of Radiographic Images For Generalizability Across Unseen Sources, Ryan M. Putney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Artificial neural networks trained to classify X-ray images according to disease state will learn to distinguish between technical or procedural variations in the images rather than features relevant to the disease. For example, the model might learn to recognize the machine that captured the image or to distinguish an image taken while the patient is lying supine or standing upright. The present work is aimed at using autoencoders as a generalizable classifier to detect COVID vs pneumonia (PNA) X-ray images. The first experiment was to find an architecture for a fully convolutional autoencoder (CAE) and for a convolutional autoencoder with …

"Does The Penis Lie?": Truth, Sexuality, And Psychocarceral Power, Erin Mcqueary

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis critically examines the use of penile plethysmography (PPG), or phallometry, in the treatment and management of sex offenders in the late-twentieth century. Using the Florida Mental Health Institute’s 1986-1989 sex offender treatment program as a case study, it asks how phallometry came to be understood as an objective method for uncovering otherwise hidden sexual truths. Instead of focusing only on its appearance and development throughout the second half of the twentieth century, this thesis draws on the work of Michel Foucault to situate phallometric science within a broader history of sexuality and biopower. In doing so, it argues …

Multi-Modal Survival Prediction On Breast Cancer Mammograms And Enabling Multi-Institutional Collaborations With Federated Learning, Nikolas Koutsoubis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cancer remains one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide, and machine learning is well positioned to leverage the large volumes of routinely collected clinical and imaging data to improve patient outcomes. Realizing this potential at scale requires three capabilities that current practice does not yet deliver in combination: models that integrate the multiple data modalities clinicians use, training procedures that respect institutional data-sharing constraints, and tooling that enables sharing of de-identified data when federated approaches are not sufficient. This dissertation develops methods and infrastructure addressing each of these capabilities in the context of breast cancer and oncology more broadly. …

Interpreting Discrepant Multi-Informant Data: Examining School Psychologists’ Decision-Making Processes With Social-Emotional And Behavioral Assessment, Thomas Koza

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Multi-informant assessment is a common method used by school psychologists to collect data on students' social-emotional and behavioral concerns across the three tiers of the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework. While this data can provide a comprehensive understanding of student functioning, informant discrepancies are common, and little is known about how school psychologists make sense of discrepant data or whether using structured frameworks can support their interpretation. This dissertation used an experimental mixed-methods design with vignettes to examine how school psychologists interpret discrepant multi-informant social-emotional and behavioral assessment data and whether exposure to a structured framework influenced this process. …

Intersectional Inequities In End-Of-Life Care Quality: The Roles Of Race, Ethnicity, And Gender, Jessica A. Yauk

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Persistent gaps remain in end-of-life care quality (EOLCQ) in the United States. Structural factors within the health care system, as well as discriminatory practices, affect the quality of care received by at-risk populations. This dissertation uses a mixed-methods research design to examine perceived EOLCQ across racial/ethnic and gender groups. Study 1 and Study 2 were guided by the intersectionality and Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) frameworks, and examined ten EOLCQ outcomes: pain, dyspnea, sadness or anxiety, having personal care needs met, having decisions made about care without enough input from decedent or family, whether the proxy or family were kept …

The Development And Evaluation Of The Functional Analysis Screening Tool For Athletic Performance (Fast-Ap), Sharayah S. M. Tai

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a growing focus of ABA within sports performance, however, there is a lack of standardized assessments to aid in the development of individualized programming for athletes that is based on the behavior-reinforcing effects to promote optimal athletic performance. The Functional Analysis Screening Tool for Athletic Performance (FAST-AP) is a 16-item questionnaire developed to identify environmental variables that influence athletic performance and identify strategies that can be used to improve motivation and performance of athletes. This allows for the development of function-based interventions and identifying individualized coaching strategies to improve motivation and increase athletic performance more consistently overtime. Study …

Building Trustworthy Information Systems: A Unified Framework For Comparative Risk Detection, Parisa Momeni

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Risk detection in large scale information systems increasingly depends on heterogeneous data generatedby both centralized and distributed ecosystems. While centralized systems provide curated and validated reports, distributed environments produce large-scale and real-time observational evidence. Existing computational approaches analyze these ecosystems in isolation, limiting systematic comparison of risk repre-sentations across heterogeneous sources.

This dissertation presents a unified computational framework for comparative risk detection across centralized and distributed information systems. The framework provides a domain independent methodology for transforming heterogeneous risk reporting data into comparable multidimensional representations. To enable interpretable comparison of heterogeneous risk distributions, this work introduces the Geometric Overlap Score …

Seeing Around Corners: An Indirect Light Transport Decomposition Framework For Fusing Physics And Learned Priors, Fadlullah Raji

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging, or seeing around corners, is the ability to recover information about objects hidden from direct view and remains one of the most compelling challenges in computational imaging. Existing approaches fall broadly into two categories: active and passive. Active time-resolved methods achieve impressive performance but require specialized pulsed laser hardware and ultrafast detectors, making them expensive and limited by slow measurement acquisition. Passive NLOS methods, which instead exploit the subtle soft shadows (penumbrae) cast by a hidden scene onto a visible matte surface, have recently emerged as a practical alternative. However, existing passive approaches are largely limited to …

Hospitality As A Languageless Movement: Mapping The Interconnectedness Of Inclusion, Disability, And Hospitality, Alycia M. Bobak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation thinks with post-qualitative inquiry to explore how inclusion, disability, and hospitality move through spaces in higher education and how their meanings shift between policy, practice, and personal ethics and dispositions. Using Derrida’s notion of hospitality and Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the Body without Organs, this study presents the consideration of how university spaces welcome students with disabilities and how feelings of belonging, receiving, and acceptance are produced within those spaces. Rather than viewing inclusion and disability as fixed concepts, this research considers how language and personal ethics continuously reshape their meaning through interactions and affect.

This study …

Success In Student Leadership: An Appreciative Inquiry Approach To A Student Leader Program, Ana M. Tayeb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the strengths and successes of a Student Leader Program within a Physician Assistant (PA) program at a large southeastern university, using an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) framework to understand how the program positions students for success. The program, established to support leadership development, academic engagement, and professional growth, includes elected student roles such as class president, vice president, wellness champion, volunteer liaison, and class liaisons. Through semi‑structured interviews with faculty, administrators, current Student Leaders, non‑leader students, and a Student Leader alumnus, the study examined lived experiences and perceptions of the program’s impact. Guided by the AI 4‑D cycle, …

Using Contingency Mapping To Decrease Disruptive Behavior And Increase On-Task Behavior For Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Carelis Y. Pabey Pagan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Visual aids have been widely used in educational and therapeutic settings to support individuals with developmental disabilities, particularly autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Among these, contingency maps, a graphic tool that visually represents the outcomes of alternative behaviors and problem behavior, have shown promise in reducing problem behavior, increasing communication, and promoting independence. However, existing research on contingency mapping is limited. The proposed study extended this literature by evaluating the effects of contingency maps on academic engagement and disruptive behavior for children with ASD in a school setting during natural classroom activities. A multiple baseline design across participants was used to …

Portable Trace Gas Analysis With Multipass Cavity Raman Scattering, Charuka Muktha Arachchige

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The continual increase in the production and utilization of chemicals across a growing range of industrial, environmental, and medical applications necessitates accurate and efficient measurement of molecular composition. Trace gas detection is particularly critical in industrialized settings, where the identification of colorless and odorless gases is essential for ensuring operational safety and regulatory compliance. Recent advances in optical instrumentation have positioned spontaneous Raman scattering as a promising analytical technique for trace gas analysis, with multipass cavity enhancement providing a cost-effective pathway to high detection sensitivity. However, existing implementations remain confined to laboratory-scale optical table setups, limiting their applicability in field …

Preparing Preservice Teachers: Developing Skills For Working With Students With Disabilities In The Social Studies Classroom, Melissa Waugh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study was aimed towards investigating the extant research, best practices, and teacher preparation standards related to working with students with disabilities in the social studies classroom. The study was guided using three research questions: Are students with disabilities’ learning needs reflected in the National Council for Social Studies National Standards for the Preparation of Social Studies Teachers?; How do preservice social studies teacher programs prepare their candidates for teaching students with disabilities as evidenced by Social Science Education methods course syllabi?; and, What might a college-level course aimed towards social studies teaching methods centering around students with disabilities’ learning …

Risk-Aware Deep Reinforcement Learning In Portfolio Optimization, Shimin Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Portfolio optimization is important in investment, with the purpose of maximizing profit whilemanaging risk. The traditional portfolio optimization method, Modern Portfolio Theory, is based on the assumption that returns are normally distributed, which is always violated in practical financial market settings. In addition, traditional approaches to portfolio optimization are mostly designed as static optimizations and fail to account for the nonlinearity and non-stationarity of contemporary financial markets. Recent developments in deep reinforcement learning have attracted considerable attention for treating portfolio optimization as a sequential decision-making process. Traditional portfolio optimization methods usually evaluate risk based on the variance of the returns. …

Reading Echoes Of Homer In Plato: Finding Philosophical Insights By Reading Plato's Dialogues As Poiēsis, Stephen R. Lasse

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Reading Echoes of Homer in Plato: Assessing the legitimacy of the macro-level thesis that approaching Plato from the poetic tradition starting with Homer generates philosophical insights not available when reading his dialogues as the first installments in the Western tradition of philosophy. It begins by identifying equivocal nuances in the dramatic content of Plato’s dialogues that are left unexplored by the current standard approach that attributes a progressive developmentalist approach to Plato’s authorial intent before suggesting an alternative unitarian approach to Plato as an author who maintains an unchanged point of view throughout his corpus of work. It then identifies …

Vestitus Auctoritate: Visual Representations Of Power In Late Roman Sicily, Angela L. Costello

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how Late Roman iconography of dress and appearance acted as visual bolsters of elite identity in the province of Sicily by engaging with two villas and their mosaic corpora: the Villa Romana del Casale, and the Villa Romana del Tellaro. Traditional Roman scholarship on power have focused on monuments, military achievements, and imperial building programs, and while these are all necessarily facets of Late Roman identity, there are valuable avenues left unexplored. Some, but not enough, attention has been given to the role of dress iconography during Late Antiquity. This study addresses this gap by investigating how …

Strategic Dimensions Of Artificial Intelligence: Development Globalization, Investment Dynamics, And Firm Performance, Alysson Silveira

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly changing the competitive landscape of most industries, and understanding how to incorporate this technology into products, services, and processes is becoming crucial for firms. This dissertation presents three studies that address different strategic challenges that arose with the unfolding of AI. First, I study how multinational enterprises globalize the development of AI. I argue that concentrating AI development or globalizing it has different implications for supply chain responsiveness and operations complexity. I use a combination of a rare dataset on software presence across 45 countries and financial data to show that AI development globalization has …

Van Der Waals Interactions Through The Lens Of 2d Materials With Emphasis On Many-Body Effects, Thi Xuan Diem Dang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the long-standing challenge of accurately and efficiently modeling long-range electron correlations, with a particular focus on van der Waals (vdW) interactions. These interactions play an essential role in predicting the structure, stability, and functionality of molecular systems and condensed matter materials. Although Density Functional Theory (DFT) has become a robust cornerstone of computational materials science, traditional formulations of the theory frequently fail to capture dispersive interactions, leading to significant errors in determining interlayer distances, binding energies, and stacking configurations. These limitations become particularly pronounced in layered materials and vdW heterostructures (HSTs), where weak long-range correlations are sensitive …

Disability Stigma, Disability Identity, And Psychological Distress Among Young Adults With Disabilities, Dylan G. Serpas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Disability discrimination is positively associated with psychological distress. Internalized disability stigma or the extent to which negative beliefs about one’s disability become personally adopted is implicated as a mediator. Moreover, disability identity processes, including identity affirmation and rejection may shape downstream consequences of navigating disability discrimination and internalization processes. These relationships are particularly relevant among young adults with disabilities (YAWD) who navigate a critical developmental period characterized by identity formation and heightened perception to social evaluation. In this study, 233 YAWD aged 18 to 25 completed a cross-sectional survey measuring disability microaggressions, internalized disability stigma, disability identity (rejection and affirmation), …

A Portable Device To Elicit Sensory Trick And Monitor Forearm Muscle Activity In Pianists With Musician’S Dystonia, Josef Franczak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Musician’s Dystonia (MD) is a condition that can be acquired in professional musicians,causing involuntary contractions and the loss of fine motor control. The most common pharmaceutical treatment, botulinum toxin injections, has been shown to have side effects of muscle weakness and atrophy. The sensory trick, shown to temporarily relieve symptoms of dystonia, has potential to be used as an alternative or alongside current therapies, allowing patients with MD to return to playing music professionally. To systematically deploy the sensory trick and monitor forearm muscle activity, the first prototype of the Wearable Sensorimotor Integrator (wSMI) has been developed.

The wSMI is …

Reproductive Trends Of Male Atlantic Spotted Dolphins (Stenella Frontalis) Following Two Hurricanes In The Bahamas, Tara Southerland Pedersen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Marine mammals are impacted by hurricanes that may influence reproductive success and genetic diversity. Understanding how populations respond to demographic change is increasingly important as extreme weather events become more frequent. A population of Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) on Little Bahama Bank in the Bahamas has been observed continuously since 1985. In 2004, two hurricanes struck the region within one month, resulting in the loss of approximately 36% of the population. Population declines can alter the operational sex ratio (OSR), social structure, and encounter rates among potential mates, potentially influencing patterns of reproductive success. Previous molecular studies showed that …

Development Of A Coupled Hydrological-Nitrogen Modeling Framework For Urban Stormwater Pond Analysis, Tione Grant

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Urbanization impacts the hydrological and biogeochemical processes that regulate water quality in downstream ecosystems, leading to increased stormwater volume and nitrogen loads in receiving aquatic environments. Although stormwater ponds are designed as simple hydraulic storage basins, they function more like managed ecosystems within urban drainage systems, offering both hydraulic attenuation and passive nutrient treatment. However, nitrogen removal efficiency varies significantly and depends on interactions between hydrological and biogeochemical factors. This thesis details the development, calibration, validation, and sensitivity analysis of a coupled hydrological-nitrogen model framework for Aaran’s Pond, an urban stormwater pond in Hillsborough County, Florida.

A process-based water budget …

Development And Evaluation Of The East Florida Coastal Ocean Model (Efcom), Orion B. Scharton-Witmer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida’s Atlantic coast has abundant resources in beaches, state parks, aquatic preserves, and wildlife refuges as well as densely populated coastal cities in low lying areas that are all subjected to natural disaster threats from the oceans. There is an urgent need for a high-resolution coastal ocean circulation model for this region. Based on the application of the Finite Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM), an East Florida Coastal Ocean Model (EFCOM) is developed, downscaling from the deep ocean, across the continental shelf, and into the estuaries. It employs an unstructured grid with horizontal resolution varying from 3 kilometers at the …

Where Diagnosis Meets Daily Life: Testing Theoretical Models Of Social Anxiety, Jessica A. Birg

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is thought to persist through self-reinforcing cycles linking threat perception, fear of evaluation, avoidance, and social behavior. This dissertation examined whether the nature of these daily processes generalize across individuals, cluster into subgroups, or vary by social anxiety severity. Two ecological momentary assessment (EMA) studies were conducted: a community sample with and without SAD (Study 1: N = 96; five prompts per day across two 14-day bursts) and an undergraduate sample (Study 2: N = 129; six prompts per day across 14 days). Momentary variables included social anxiety, avoidance motivation, and threat and safety cues (hurt …