Dataless Neural Networks For Boolean Satisfiability And Network Optimization, Andrew Evan Gautier

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) require searching over a finite solution space subject to constraints, with the goal of satisfying an objective function. They arise in operations research, scheduling, resource allocation, circuit design, and many other fields. Many problems in combinatorial optimization (including satisfiability and network design) are NP-hard. Traditionally, researchers have built approximate solvers that return near- optimal solutions efficiently by developing increasingly sophisticated heuristics and meta- heuristics. Deep learning has provided new opportunities for improving combinatorial solvers by leveraging neural guidance to prune the search space. Traditional neural networks have distinct drawbacks in this context: separate training and …

Computer Vision Methods For Rfi Segmentation In Radio Astronomy, Yechan Kweon

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) increasingly contaminates the radio astronomy spectrum, often exceeding astronomical signal amplitudes by 50–70 dB. Reliable detection and mitigation are therefore essential for studies of faint transient phenomena such as pulsars and fast radio bursts (FRBs). Existing practical methods including Spectral Kurtosis (SK), Median Absolute Deviation (MAD), and SumThreshold perform well in many settings but depend on assumptions about the RFI environment and data statistics, limiting their effectiveness for weak, broadband, or nonstationary interference.

We develop a transform based RFI detection method that requires no prior knowledge of the RFI origin or type. The method operates on …

Development And Validation Of A Multi-Output Neural Network-Based Virtual Temperature Sensor For Electric Vehicle Thermal Management, Dalton Michael Wiggins

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) rely on accurate thermal management to ensure component performance, efficiency, safety, and long-term durability. Critical propulsion system components, including electric motors and high-voltage battery packs, are commonly monitored using physical temperature sensors. However, these sensors increase system cost, introduce additional hardware complexity, and may be impractical for directly measuring temperatures at critical internal locations. Virtual temperature sensors (VTSs) provide a software-based alternative by estimating component temperatures using readily available vehicle operating data.

This research presents the development and validation of a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network-based virtual temperature sensor capable of simultaneously estimating the motor …

Nuclear Aurka-Driven Early Dissemination Of Breast Cancer Uncovers Opposing Roles Of Hif-1a And Hif-1b In Metastasis, Abha Maskey

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

ABSTRACT

Nuclear AURKA-driven early dissemination of breast cancer uncovers opposing roles of HIF-1A and HIF-1B in metastasis.

Abha Maskey

Metastatic progression is the primary cause of mortality in the majority of solid tumors, including breast cancer (BC). The triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most aggressive BC subtype with the highest recurrence rates within 1-3 years post-diagnosis, and worst overall survival outcomes. Early distant recurrence of cancer is enabled by early disseminated tumor cells (eDTCs), yet the mechanisms of early dissemination remain poorly defined. Hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF1) is a transcription factor normally induced under hypoxia to enable cell survival. …

Development Of Novel Methods For Investigative Leads In Firearm And Explosive Related Incidents, Addio Joseph Fiordigigli Jr.

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Criminal outbreaks and gun violence persist as a multifaceted global crisis, marked by escalating rates of homicide, suicide, and terrorism that destabilize communities and strain public resources. The proliferation of illicit firearms and homemade explosive devices, along with the complexity of modern criminal networks, necessitates innovative scientific tools to strengthen preventive intelligence operations and ensure that the legal process is grounded in physical evidence. More efficient detection of traces left behind at a crime scene can help prevent further harm or injury from follow-up attacks. This study aims to develop and evaluate new triage methods for characterizing gunshot residues (GSR) …

Assessment Of Emissions Factors For Produced Water And Other Atmospheric Liquid Storage Tanks On Natural Gas Sites, David Glenn Childs

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

As the US natural gas (NG) sector continues to grow, concerns have increased regarding the effects and increasing volume of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. While NG is a cleaner burning fuel than diesel and gasoline, unburned methane (CH₄) has a global warming potential (GWP) 27-30 times that of carbon dioxide (CO₂). To better quantify CH₄ emissions on NG sites, the US Department of Energy (DOE) granted West Virginia University (WVU) funding to collect direct measurements at well sites and compressor stations.

In this work, a total of 18 sites, including controlled and uncontrolled …

Multi-Timescale Monitoring And Modeling For Resilient Smart Grids: Pmu Anomaly Detection And Battery Digital Twins, Muhammad Imran Hossain

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Modern power systems face failures at very different timescales. Cyber-physical disturbances may emerge within seconds, while battery degradation develops over hundreds of operating cycles. Both monitoring problems share the same underlying difficulty: power systems produce measurement data in abundance, but reliably labeled examples of abnormal or degraded operation are scarce. Rare grid events are difficult to label, and battery degradation data are heterogeneous across cells, cycling protocols, and chemistries. This thesis addresses these challenges through two complementary domain-informed learning frameworks that constrain representation learning using information specific to each physical problem.

First, at the system level, T-BiGAN, a Transformer-augmented bidirectional …

Effect Of Yoga On Non-Invasive Measures Of Cardiovascular Functioning And Health, Alexis Nicole Thrower

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Introduction: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) has been the number one cause of death worldwide and within the United States (US) for decades. Effective and practical prevention modalities are needed to reduce the burden of this often-preventable condition. Physical activity is an effective and modifiable behavior for CVD risk management; however, only one in four adults meet current physical activity guidelines. Some types of yoga, including vinyasa yoga, are a form of physical activity, and vinyasa yoga efficiently incorporates moderate-intensity aerobic activity, muscular-strengthening movements, and flexibility components. Yet, minimal rigorous research evaluates yoga’s effects on health. The purpose of this dissertation is …

Multiphysics Modeling Of Microwave-Assisted Calcination Of Soec Perovskite Precursors, Hongwei Liu

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The calcination of precursor powders is a critical step in the synthesis of solid oxide electrolysis cells (SOECs), where phase purity and microstructural control directly influence electrochemical performance. Conventional calcination methods are energy-intensive and time-consuming, often requiring prolonged high-temperature processing. In this thesis, microwave-assisted calcination is investigated as an alternative approach to enable rapid, energy-efficient processing of SOEC per- ovskite precursor powders. Microwave heating offers distinct advantages, including volumetric and selective heating, reduced processing times, and improved energy utilization compared to con- ventional thermal methods. A multiphysics modeling framework is developed, which integrates electromagnetic wave propagation, governed by Maxwell’s equations, …

Real-Time Lidar-Based Vehicle Detection Using Pointpillars For Connected And Automated Vehicle Applications, Jared Townsend Behr

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This work explores the implementation of a real-time LiDAR processing model for autonomous vehicle design. Automotive perception systems are becoming increasingly important as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) technologies continue to progress toward higher levels of autonomy. Reliable perception is paramount for autonomous features, such as adaptive cruise control (ACC), where identifying and tracking a lead vehicle is a safety critical task.

Many production ADAS perception systems primarily rely on radar and camera sensors for object detection and sensor fusion. These sensors work well to achieve classification and accurate distance detections; however, they are …

Multi-Sensor Fusion For Manual Wheelchair State Estimation, Kathylee Pinnock Branford

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Kathylee Pinnock Branford Manual wheelchairs are essential to mobility and independence, yet accurately characterizing wheelchair motion in real-world environments remains challenging. Inertial measurement units (IMUs) provide a practical means of estimating wheelchair kinematics, but existing trajectory-reconstruction studies have largely been limited to short, controlled trials. This report developed and evaluated a four-IMU framework comprising one sensor on each rear wheel and two sensors on the wheelchair frame. Three orientation algorithms (VQF, Mahony AHRS, and Madgwick AHRS), two accelerometer ranges (±2 g and ± 4 g), and calibrated and uncalibrated sensor data were evaluated during indoor motion-capture trials and a outdoor …

The Coal Mining Kids: Constructing A Working-Class Gay World In West Virginia (1900-2001), Hannah Ford

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Located in southwestern West Virginia, Bluefield has been the site of Bluefield State University, the Norfolk & Western Railway headquarters, the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, and the Shamrock Bar. The Shamrock was a gay bar opened by Helen Compton, in operation from the late 1960’s until 2001. Bluefield’s early industrial success in coal mining and the railroad quickly urbanized the space between 1900 and 1930, facilitating a diverse, working-class cultural foundation for Bluefield’s gay world. In the 1960’s, urban renewal efforts initiated by the War on Poverty, in combination with public awareness of homosexuality induced by the Lavender Scare, set the …

Graft: Graph-Augmented Framework With Vision Transformers For Multi-Label Classification, Ghazaleh Mirzaee

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Multi-label classification of thoracic diseases from chest X-ray images poses a distinctive challenge: patients rarely present with a single isolated pathology, and automated systems must identify multiple co-occurring conditions simultaneously from a single radiograph. Standard classification architectures treat each disease label as an independent binary decision, failing to capture the statistical co-occurrence patterns, spatial anatomical relationships, and visual feature similarities that characterize multi-disease presentations in clinical data. Class imbalance and incomplete labels compound these problems. In NIH ChestX-ray14, the rarest pathological class has only 227 training instances, and many co-occurring conditions go unlabeled because radiologists focus their reports on the …

Physics-Informed Machine Learning Methods To Predict Heavy-Duty Diesel Engine Performance And Emissions, Sandeep Guguloth

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The development of internal combustion engines for increased efficiency and reduced emissions demands improved design tools that are cost-effective, fast, and easy to integrate into existing engineering workflows. Low-dimensional physically based engine models serve this role by reducing the need for iterative experimental prototyping but historically rely on empirical correlations that sacrifice fidelity compared to CFD. Machine learning (ML) approaches, conversely, achieve high predictive accuracy but lack interpretability and generalize poorly beyond their training data. Physics-informed machine learning (PIML) bridges this gap by constraining the solution space to physically feasible predictions, offering a more reliable way to model in-cylinder phenomena. …

Analysis Of Battery Degradation Effects On Optimized Torque Splitting In Dual-Motor Electric Vehicles, Homer E. Butcher

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Battery electric vehicle performance depends on both powertrain efficiency and battery-health. In dual-motor all-wheel-drive battery electric vehicles, driver-requested torque can be distributed between front and rear electric drive units, creating an opportunity to reduce electrical energy demand through torque allocation. However, lithium-ion battery aging changes the electrical behavior of the energy storage system through capacity fade and internal resistance growth. Capacity fade reduces the usable energy and vehicle range, while resistance growth increases voltage drop, current-related losses, and battery electrical loading. This thesis evaluates how these degradation effects influence the energy consumption, simulated range, and battery electrical behavior of optimized …

‘She Dared Not’: Authority In The Monasteries Of The Diocese Of Lincoln, 1400-1540, Morgan Mcminn

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Within monastic life, the Benedictine Rule prioritized the role of the abbot, and much of the everyday running of the house was left to his discretion. He was the elected father of the community, the pastor of the flock, the educator who instructed by word and example. He should discipline firmly but be loved and not feared, and he should play no favorite but rather adapt to the situation at hand. His brethren should obey him without question as the representative of Christ in the monastery, their self-will and earthly possessions submitted to him. These elements are also present in …

Revival Through Resilience In The Post-Mined Landscape: Demonstrating The Socio-Economic Context Of Appalachia And Exploring How Community Infrastructure And Cultural Tourism Can Be Catalysts For Economic Regeneration In Appalachian Communities, Azita Tasnim Ritu

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Post-industrial communities across Appalachia continue to experience economic and environmental challenges following the decline of coal mining and related industries. Towns such as Smithers and Montgomery, West Virginia, reflect these conditions through economic stagnation, population loss, aging infrastructure, and degraded landscapes, creating an urgent need for sustainable redevelopment strategies.

The Appalachian Regional Commission emphasizes economic diversification, infrastructure investment, and community revitalization as critical components for improving regional quality of life. However, many former mining communities continue to struggle with underutilized heritage assets, degraded landscapes, and limited economic alternatives. Cultural landscapes and local identity remain significant but often overlooked resources that …

Walking In The Footsteps Of My Ancestors: A Deep Map Of Cherokee Forced Removal, Deborah Lyn Kirk

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In this study of the place of Cherokee forced removal, I use a Third Space approach to blend Indigenous Methodologies, Deep Mapping, Geospatial mapping and analysis, and 3D Geography. Using a hybrid platform that provides a mélange of media types, storytelling forms, and interactive tools, I reimagine and retell the story of the Cherokee “Trail of Tears.”

In accordance with Cherokee philosophies of duyuktv, harmony, and “a good mind” I first sought out Cherokee sponsorship from community respected and culturally knowledgeable Cherokee citizens; partnered with the National Trail of Tears Association (NTOTA); submitted my research proposal to the Cherokee …

Cell-To-Pack Modeling Of Lithium-Ion Batteries: From Bayesian Parameterization To Pack-Level Optimization, Derek Slack

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

One of the major hurdles for electric or hybrid aviation is the comparative energy density between lithium-ion batteries and jet fuel. To help obtain maximal power-to-weight ratio in electric or hybrid powertrains the battery pack design should be optimized to be as light as possible while meeting thermal safety and power requirements. The proposed solution is an optimization routine beginning with a cell-level parameter estimation of lithium-ion battery cells, where data driven Bayesian Gaussian Processes replace empirically or analytically derived parameters in a first principles electrochemical model in PyBaMM, as functions of the transient state of the cell. The resulting …

Innovative Strategies For Stabilizing Zinc Anodes: From Molecular Design To Practical Zinc-Ion Batteries, Nhat Anh Thi Thieu

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) have become increasingly attractive as grid-scale energy storage solutions due to their safety, low cost, and environmental friendliness. However, the anode-electrolyte interface in AZIBs is prone to instability due to severe dendrite growth, self-corrosion, parasitic water-induced side reactions, and hydrogen evolution reactions (HER), which collectively lead to poor cyclability. To date, various interfacial engineering strategies have been investigated to address these challenges and improve the stability of Zn metal anodes. This dissertation presents a unified strategy for regulating Zn deposition through synergistic electrode and electrolyte design in laboratory-scale coin cells and then applies these concepts to …

Swarm Of One: Self-Organization In Multicellular Robots, Trevor Riley Smith

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Designing robots traditionally relies on centralized, top-down methods that constrain adaptability and resiliency, producing systems optimized for specific tasks. However, such systems often fail in complex environments, such as extraterrestrial, disaster, or natural settings, where designers cannot foresee every scenario a robot may encounter. Achieving autonomy in these contexts requires robots that are resilient and capable of adapting to the unknown. Multicellular organisms exhibit this adaptability through self-organization, where complex structures and behaviors emerge from local interactions among their cells. Such organisms can be viewed simultaneously as a single entity and a swarm of cooperating cells, i.e., a Swarm-of-One.

This …

Energy Partition And Heating Mechanisms In Asymmetric Antiparallel Magnetic Reconnection, Aleksandra Abova-Volkova

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental plasma physics process whereby a change in magnetic field connectivity drives the conversion of magnetic energy into energy of the surrounding plasma, often explosively. One of the many settings where it occurs is at the dayside magnetopause of Earth and other planets, where the magnetic field, number density, and/or temperature in the plasmas on the two sides upstream of the reconnection site are asymmetric. How the incoming magnetic energy gets partitioned into outgoing energies during asymmetric reconnection remains an outstanding question; of special interest is the fraction that gets converted into internal energy of ions …

Process Optimization And Quality Control In Manufacturing Of Frp Composites By Vartm, Mohamed Emadeldin Omar Abdelhadi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Railroad tank cars, being one of the most used means of transportation of hazardous material across the country, have not been structurally upgraded for a long time. Thus, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), a United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) agency, released a rule for safer transportation of highly hazardous and flammable liquids by railroad to enhance the design specifications of both the new and existing tank cars in May 2015. A multifunctional composite jacket is proposed as a new material to structurally enhance the railroad tank cars to withstand any accidents that could happen en route. …

Multimodal Representation Learning For Face Understanding: From Caption Supervision To Foundation Model Adaptation, Md Mahedi Hasan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The rapid advancement of intelligent surveillance systems and the increasing demand for reliable biometric identification in border security, public safety, and digital forensics require robust face understanding under unconstrained conditions, including low resolution, pose variation, and occlusion. While Vision Transformer (ViT)-based foundation models have greatly improved visual representation learning, their patch-based tokenization and lack of spatial inductive bias limit their ability to capture fine-grained details in low-resolution inputs. This dissertation investigates multimodal representation learning for face understanding through natural language supervision, large-scale face-caption pre-training, and parameter-efficient foundation model adaptation. It hypothesizes that textual supervision provides complementary semantic cues that improve …

Do Transdiagnostic Factors Predict Emotion Recognition?, Grace L. Wheeler

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

While emotion recognition deficits have been found in several anxiety and related disorders (e.g., social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive), consistent results have not been established. To clarify the relationship between emotion recognition abilities and anxiety, the current study tested if transdiagnostic factors related to anxiety are predictors of emotion recognition abilities. Data was analyzed from participants (N = 188) recruited via CloudResearch; they completed measures of three transdiagnostic factors related to anxiety (e.g., anxiety sensitivity, intolerance of uncertainty, and rumination), followed by an emotion recognition task. Multiple regression analyses revealed higher levels of anxiety sensitivity predicted worse recognition for anger, disgust, …

Exploring The Intersectionality Of Sociodemographic Factors And Adverse Childhood Experiences That Impact College Performance, Taylor June Brown

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Success in higher education is influenced by a range of social and economic factors that do not affect all students equally. This thesis examined how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), socioeconomic status (SES), first-generation college status, minority status, and geographic isolation independently and multiplicatively relate to academic outcomes. Using data from 775 first-year students at a large public university in rural Appalachia, this study assessed whether these factors independently and/or multiplicatively predicted first-year GPA and odds of dropping out. ACEs linearly predicted first-year cumulative GPA and odds of dropping out. A significant ACE x Race interaction emerged for predicting first-year cumulative …

Electronic Cigarettes Increase Blood-Brain And Blood-Tumor Barrier Drug Efflux In A Preclinical Lung Cancer Model Of Brain Metastasis, Cullen Parker Wolford

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation (a) provided a comprehensive review of the known therapeutic challenges in nicotine delivery system users with lung cancer and (b) investigated the impact of electronic cigarettes on blood-brain/blood-tumor barrier function and efficacy of small molecule KRAS inhibitors in a syngeneic lung cancer brain metastasis model. The blood-brain barrier is a physiochemical barrier that limits systemic delivery of therapeutics into brain. When tumors invade the central nervous system, the blood-brain barrier is disrupted and subsequently forms a blood-tumor barrier. Despite the inherent leakiness and variable permeability of the blood-tumor barrier, it continues to restrict anti-cancer drugs from accumulating at …

Constructing The 'Other': A Cda Of Social Actor Representation And Agency Attribution In The New York Times Reporting On Palestine And Israel (2023–2025), Faithlyn H. Graham

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Media organizations play a central role in shaping public understanding of international conflict. Following the publication of a leaked internal editorial memorandum from The New York Times in 2024 advising reporters to avoid terms such as "genocide," "ethnic cleansing," and "occupied territory," questions emerged regarding institutional influence and ideological framing in coverage of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. This study examined how The New York Times discursively constructed the conflict between October 7, 2023, and October 10, 2025, using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) informed by KhosraviNik's (2010) three-level analytical framework. A purposive sample of 119 hard-news articles was analyzed using …

A Mixed Methods Study Of The Transition To Adult Health Care For Sexual Minority Young Adults With Chronic Pain: Understanding The Impact Of Stigma, Cecily Newel Conour

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Sexual minorities with chronic pain are likely to experience stigma stemming from their sexual identity and chronic pain. Pain stigma and sexual minority stigma are associated with increased health disparities and differences in health care utilization, particularly for adults. The transition to the adult health care system appears to be a critical point to understand the impact of stigma on health care utilization to then improve outcomes. With a sample of 48 sexual minority young adults with chronic pain, the current study investigated transition experiences using an explanatory, sequential mixed-methods design that was both observational and cross-sectional. Participants completed quantitative …

Disaster Exposure, The Perception Of Physiological Pain, And Psychological Distress Across Adulthood, Esha Azhar

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Climate change brings with it an increase in the occurrence of natural disasters, such as hurricanes, wildfires, severe storms, etc. In the aftermath, afflicted individuals may suffer adversely, especially in their physical and mental health. Previous research has found older adults to be faring better after experiencing a disaster compared to younger adults, which has been attributed to their better mental health associated with aging and gaining experience with adversities (Strough et al., 2023; 2025). The current study examined the psychological distress and physiological pain of individuals across the adult lifespan after experiencing a disaster. Participants were part of the …