Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluating The Effects Of Technology-Based Self-Monitoring And Contingency Mapping On The Disruptive Behavior Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Alexandra R. Pruitt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Self-monitoring (SM) is an evidence-based self-management procedure that can improve behavior and academic performance across diverse populations and settings. However, results of a meta-analysis of SM on strategy use and academic performance of K-12 and higher education students suggest that SM is more effective when it is embedded into a multi-component intervention. Contingency mapping (CM), a visual representation of contingencies in effect for desirable and undesirable behaviors, has been shown to improve behavior (e.g., increase social communication skills, increase on-task behavior) in the clinical and school settings. Previous research has not evaluated the effects of a treatment package consisting of …

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 …

Engineering Fsh-Cer T Cells To Enhance Response To Epithelial Ovarian Cancer, Nolan J. Beatty

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ovarian cancer remains a significant cause of cancer-related mortality, with epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) being the most common subtype. Despite advances in treatment, the 5-year survival rate for late-stage EOC remains low due to factors such as tumor heterogeneity and an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME). This study investigates the therapeutic potential of chimeric endocrine receptor (CER) T cells engineered to express follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) in a syngeneic mouse model of EOC expressing follicle stimulating hormone receptor (ID8-FSHR). We compared two different co-stimulatory domains—CD28ζ and 4-1BBζ—in FSH-CER T cells and found that FSH-CD28ζ CER T cells exhibited enhanced cytotoxicity, proliferation, …

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 …

Nanoscale Morphological Perturbations Of Lipid Membranes Induced By Membrane Active Peptides, Yasith Sandeepa Indigahawela Gamage

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Membrane-active peptides (MAPs) are a diverse group of biologically relevant molecules that induce nanoscale modulations during their interactions with cell membranes. Understanding the precise mechanism by which these MAPs perturb or modulate the cell membranes is a cornerstone of membrane biophysics, as it facilitates rational design of useful therapeutics. That is, if we have the knowledge to determine what the peptide can do, how selective it is, or how toxic it might be, we can optimize them and design new peptide therapeutics such as for antimicrobial, anticancer, or drug-delivery applications. In general, MAPs can be categorized into two classes based …

The Isotopic Profile Of Plague Victims Buried On The Quarantine Islands Of Venice, Italy, Katherine L. Dunning

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis combined carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen stable isotope analysis and historical documentation to explore diet and mobility for 45 individuals whose remains were excavated from the Venetian island Lazzaretto Vecchio, where plague victims were quarantined, cared for, and buried between 1423 and 1700 CE. δ13C from bone collagen, bone apatite, and tooth enamel apatite was evaluated to determine terrestrial, aquatic, C3, and C4 contributors to diet. δ15N from bone collagen was evaluated to understand the individuals’ trophic levels. δ18O from tooth enamel apatite and bone apatite was evaluated to detect mobility over the life course. Adult diet was primarily …

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 …

Examining The Impact Of A Positive Psychology Service-Learning Experience On Undergraduates’ Mental Health And Career Intentions, Cydney E. Williams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Universities currently face a growing public health concern regarding college students’ mental health and well-being (Hobbs et al., 2022; Sheldon et al., 2021). Given this, research has explored experiences that are advantageous for students’ overall well-being, including courses on positive psychology and service-learning experiences that may promote flourishing (Hobbs et al., 2022; Maples et al., 2022). Service-learning is also well situated to support undergraduate career development (Collison & Eck, 2022). Kranzler et al. (2011) described how the pedagogical approach of service-learning aligns well with positive psychology, leading them to implement a positive psychology service-learning course. However, to date, no study …

"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 …

Trauma-Informed Care In Residential Settings: Staff Perceptions And The Impact Of The Prevent-Teach-Reinforce Model With Trauma-Informed Principles, Marissa L. Del Vecchio

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Trauma-informed care (TIC) has been recognized as a critical framework for supporting individuals on the autism spectrum, intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) and those within residential facilities given their heightened risk for experiencing adverse events, including trauma. However, the development and evaluation of a trauma-informed behavior analytic assessment and intervention approach is lacking. Although behavior analysts frequently target behaviors associated with trauma, research suggests that many practitioners have limited training, supervision and competence in TIC, despite widespread recognition of its importance. The Prevent-Teach-Reinforce (PTR) model may be a promising approach to address these limitations, as its practices align closely with …

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. …

Testimonios From Latine Educational Leaders Supporting Youth Development Programs, Luis E. Feliciano

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The United States has been experiencing a demographic change for the last twenty years representing a rise in both Latiné students and families. Despite this demographic change, Latiné folk remain widely underrepresented in school leadership, and furthermore underrepresented in specific Youth Development Programs (YDPs), with the relationship between educational leaders and YDPs being widely unexplored in academia. This study sought to bridge the gap between YDPs and educational leadership, specifically for Latiné folk by asking how Latiné educational leaders used their cultural heritage to encourage YDP development. To accomplish this a testimonio methodology was implemented via a two staged interview …

Evaluating The Role Of Individual Differences: Impact On Fruit And Vegetable Intake Outcomes In Nourish-T+ Caregivers Of Pediatric Cancer Survivors, Sandra Soca Lozano

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pediatric cancer survivors are at increased risk for obesity and related long-term health complications, highlighting the need for interventions promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors during survivorship. The present study examined caregivers’ fruit and vegetable intake in the full NOURISH-T+ intervention and evaluated whether their dietary outcomes changed from baseline to the 3-month post-assessment and differed by selected caregiver sociodemographic characteristics. The study also examined whether these characteristics accounted for variance in 3-month fruit and vegetable outcomes. Participants included 68 caregivers in the full NOURISH-T+ condition who completed both baseline and 3-month post-assessments. Fruit and vegetable intake was assessed using the Healthy …

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 …

Efficient, Secure Learning And Resource Management For Wireless Networks, Jiahao Xue

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rapid advancement of wireless networks has enabled a wide range of applications such as federated learning (FL) and Internet of Things, with supporting technologies like radio frequency identification (RFID). However, resource management and security challenges in wireless networks remain insufficiently addressed for these representative applications. In this dissertation, we first investigate wireless resource management for FL, then study novel attack and defense mechanisms for RFID systems. Finally, we analyze the performance and security of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled next generation wireless networks.

First, we investigate the client assignment and bandwidth allocation problem for FL in a multi-provider wireless setting. Unlike …

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 …

Aligning Perspectives: Exploring Parent-Youth Agreement On Well-Being And The Impact Of Positive Psychology On Communication & Relationship Habits, Daijah N. Hines

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As research calls for best practices in assessment of psychological constructs from multiple informants, more information is needed for secondary reports of subjective experiences such as perceptions of life satisfaction. Adolescence is a vital period for intervention and assessment supports to promote well-being, yet there is a gap in the research on how to interpret multi-informant data for mental health constructs such as subjective well-being especially within this population. Research has shown support for and validated the use of parents/caregivers as secondary informants (Dew & Huebner, 1994; Hines et al., 2023; Shoshani & Slone, 2017) yet there is still vague …

Language Models For Oncology Clinical Text: How Model Architecture And Data Strategies Shape Tumor Phenotype Extraction And Disease Progression Detection, Thanh Duong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rapid growth of electronic health records (EHRs) has created new opportunities to apply machine learning to clinical data.However, a large portion of important clinical information is still stored in unstructured text, such as pathology reports, radiology reports, and longitudinal clinical notes.These documents contain key details about tumor characteristics, diagnoses, treatments, and patient outcomes.Extracting structured and useful information from this text is challenging due to complex medical language, varied document formats, and the need to combine information across multiple reports over time.This dissertation studies how language models can be designed and adapted to better extract and use oncology-specific information from …

House Sparrow Invasion Success Across Ecological, Immunological, And Molecular Scales, Kailey Marie Mccain

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Biological invasions offer natural experiments for studying how organisms cope with ecological novelty. Although invasion success is often attributed to enemy release, introduced organisms do not enter enemy-free environments. Instead, they enter heterogeneous landscapes in which some familiar enemies are absent, others remain, and entirely novel enemies may be encountered. The question, then, is how invaders (hereafter non-natives) are poised to respond to these threats? This dissertation examines whether successful invasions in house sparrows (Passer domesticus) is associated with shifts in pathogen exposure, immune dynamics in blood, gut physiology, and gene co-expression network structure.

Chapter 1 is at the population/ecological …

Mapping Seafloor Habitats And Characterizing Demersal Reef Fish Communities On The West Florida Shelf Across Multiple Spatial Scales Using Multibeam Sonar And Underwater Video, Alexander R. Ilich

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine the role of spatial scale in deriving seafloor terrain attributes, modeling benthic habitat, and analyzing ecological patterns of the demersal reef fish communities on the West Florida Shelf (WFS), with implications for improving predictive habitat mapping and understanding fish-environment relationships. Spatial scale plays a central role in benthic habitat mapping and ecological inference, influencing how terrain attributes are derived, how habitats are modeled, and how ecological responses are manifested. This work integrates multiscale terrain analysis, acoustic remote sensing, and community ecology to evaluate how spatial scale influences both physical habitat representation and ecological analysis.

Chapter …

Association Of Social Isolation, Loneliness, Social Strain And Support With Cancer Onset, And Frailty And All-Cause Mortality In People With Cancer, Joanne Elayoubi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cancer is the second leading cause of death both in the United States and globally and for individuals over sixty-five. In 2026, approximately 2,114,850 new cancer cases are projected to emerge according to the National Center for Health Statistics (Siegel et al., 2026). Cancer incidence is increasing, making older adults sixty-five and older at risk of frailty and mortality following cancer. Although social isolation, loneliness, lack of social support, and social strain have been found to be risk factors for poor health and mortality, it is not clear the extent to which social relationships are associated with incident cancer, and …

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, …

Race, Ethnic, And Gender Disparities In Human Trafficking Risk, Identification, And Investigation, Emily D. Walker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Youth and human trafficking remain significant and complex issues. Existing literature suggests that trafficking risk, victimization, and identification are shaped by structural and social context, creating differential impacts across demographic groups, such as racial, ethnic, and gendered groups. Yet, current research has yet to fully capture the complexity of victimization across groups. This dissertation consists of three interconnected studies examining youth trafficking investigations. Using a mixed-methods approach and administrative data from Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), this dissertation address three objectives (1) examining potential variation in documentation of trafficking risk, victimization, and narrative framing of youth trafficking investigations …

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 …

Philanthropic Grantmakers’ Roles In Transforming Higher Education: A Narrative Inquiry, Elizabeth Jean Larkin Davis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Philanthropic foundations have become influential actors in higher education reform, often supporting initiatives to improve student success, advance equity, and promote systemic change. Yet limited research has examined how philanthropic grantmakers understand and navigate their roles in shaping long-term change across the higher education field. This narrative inquiry explored the personal and professional experiences of eight philanthropic grantmakers working across different foundations, roles, and organizational contexts in the United States. Guided by organizational change theory, Strategic Action Fields theory, and sustainability planning in dynamic systems, the study examined how grantmakers made sense of their responsibilities, influence, and contributions to systemic …