VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A computational approach to criminal justice reform

In recent years, activists and policymakers have become increasingly concerned about the use of data and algorithms in criminal justice settings, fearing that their use will reinforce demographic disparities and perpetuate punitive policies. This dissertation demonstrates how the careful application of such approaches also has the potential to reduce disparities and incarceration in a series of real-world applications. I begin by reviewing a collection of analytic techniques to identify unnecessary and discriminatory police stop practices. Next, I review two new prosecutor-oriented algorithms to aid the decision to charge or dismiss a case after an arrest has occurred. I subsequently review a group of algorithms and analyses intended to reduce the use of incarceration, including risk assessment instruments, pretrial behavioral nudges, and post-prison re-entry programs. I conclude the dissertation by discussing the larger context surrounding these approaches, including some risks and limitations. Overall, my dissertation demonstrates that computational approaches are a valuable tool to advance reform in the criminal justice system

Keywords: Management Science and Engineering.
Advisor: Goel Sharad
Ugander Johan
Nyarko Julian
Computational frameworks for decarbonizing urban water supply systems

Major countries around the world have set ambitious timelines to reach 'Net Zero' in the next few decades. Such policy push is steadily tightening regulations on carbon emission and increasing the operating costs for sectors that are slow in decarbonizing their supply chains. Supplying clean water to urban areas is energy-intensive and has a significant carbon footprint. With population growth and the depletion of readily available freshwater resources, it is becoming increasingly common to utilize water resources that are deeper from the surface, more distant from the demand, and more saline. The transport and purification of such unconventional water resources will likely further intensify the energy use for water supply and increase the upstream carbon emission associated with power generation. Consequently, the water supply sector, especially the urban water supply systems (UWSS), must actively seek ways to decarbonize their electricity consumption in order to reduce their operating cost (e.g., energy cost) and prepare for a more stringent regulatory environment. Motivated by the need to better inform UWSS in their decarbonization efforts, we introduce several computational frameworks that aim to aid the UWSS operators in identifying, quantifying, and operationalizing the opportunities of decarbonizing their water supply. Chapter 2 demonstrates a flow backtracking algorithm that can be applied to trace energy flows embedded in water flows in a UWSS. More importantly, we introduce a new metric called 'marginal energy intensity' (MEI) of water supply in this chapter, which paves the way for the following studies. Following Chapter 2, Chapter 3 quantifies the temporally averaged MEI values of individual consumers in a single-source UWSS and demonstrates the energy-saving benefit of using MEI values to inform the siting of decentralized wastewater recycling (a form of raw water conservation). Building upon the flow backtracking algorithm introduced in Chapter 2, Chapter 4 shows a high-resolution carbon accounting framework that traces the embedded carbon footprint of water supply. In addition, we demonstrate the scalability of the flow backtracking algorithm in the water supply system serving a coastal city with a population of nearly 100,000. In Chapter 5, we propose an optimization framework that guides water utilities of different risk tolerance levels on DR participation. This optimization framework also introduces a novel convex relaxation technique that is invented to accelerate the computation of the rigorous mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model. Chapter 6 applies a bottom-up approach to assess the DR potential of drinking water treatment plants (DWTP) across the entire U.S. with high spatio-temporal resolution. In this assessment, we analyze data of all major DWTPs in the U.S. from the Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) and multiple energy use surveys of UWSS

Advisor: Mauter Meagan
Jain Rishee
Rajagopal Ram
Computational methods for multi-scale biological modeling and imaging

Advances of microscopic technologies and imaging instrumentation have enabled several major discoveries in biology, many of which would have been impossible without the assistance of computational techniques. On the other hand, while the resulting images carry abundance of information for human eyes, even more insights might be revealed by using advanced analysis or images-based modeling, which are made possible by computational approaches. In this dissertation, we demonstrate how computational methods can assist biological studies with multi-scale tools by presenting a series of projects that utilize computational tools to enhance, make use of, or extract information from images. We first propose a computational imaging method that is capable of combining diffraction and lens-based images to deliver images with higher resolution. We then discuss how a diffusion-reaction model can help us reveal the extraordinary capacity of nutrient acquisition of surface layers, a family of crystalline proteins that are found in many bacteria and most of archaea. Finally, we report a machine learning pipeline that can build an atomic protein model into a cryogenic electron microscopy map in a fraction of a minute. Taken together, these methods demonstrate how the interplay of imaging, modeling and machine learning can enable new discoveries for structural biology, and pave paths toward more automatic and efficient structure determination

Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: Wakatsuki Soichi
Howe Roger Thomas
Pianetta Piero
Van den Bedem Henry
Confident and reliable statistical predictions in changing environments

A complete machine learning pipeline typically spans three distinct phases: first data collection, then model selection and training, and finally model validation, evaluation and eventual failure detection. While a large part of the statistical machine learning literature discusses the second of these tasks, the last one arguably becomes more central as the decisions we trust our statistical models with, whether it be in healthcare, transportation systems, finance or policies, turn increasingly critical, which is why in this thesis we focus on that particular aspect. We propose novel algorithms that quantity the uncertainty of predictions and construct reliable end-to-end predictive pipelines, even allowing them to leverage weaker forms of data supervision in the process. We additionally focus on a model's behavior after its release, and make sure to guarantee adequate performance even when future test distributions vary from the initial available ones; in particular, we design algorithms that are capable of detecting and localizing potential failure modes of our model, with the end goal of improving it on specific ``hard" slices of our data. Each of our methods typically builds on top of any black-box predictive model and comes with tunable and quantifiable guarantees, allowing the practitioner some flexibility when designing their model. Additionally, we present empirical results of our methodology on real-world data sets (including ImageNet, Covid-19, PovertyMap); we design experiments suggesting that in realistic scenarios our methods behave consistently with our initial expectations and hypotheses

Keywords: Statistics.
Advisor: Duchi John
Candès Emmanuel J. (Emmanuel Jean)
Liang Percy
Connecting California : agents of U.S. imperial expansion, 1783-1848

This dissertation investigates how California became part of the United States. It traces the long story of U.S. imperial expansion into Alta California from the inception of the United States in 1783 to the close of the U.S.-Mexican War in 1848. A cartographic, political, and military history, the dissertation tracks the imperial project of connecting California to the United States conducted by U.S. statesmen over multiple presidential administrations and field agent surveyors, diplomats, and military officials. U.S. field agents employed three main strategies to acquire California----mapping, diplomacy, and use of force----which eventually overlapped and sometimes worked at cross purposes. "Connecting California" offers three key findings. First, the imperial race for control of North America did not end with the American Revolution but rather continued with the United States as a new imperial power. Second, U.S. expansion was slow, uneven, and driven by agents on the ground who had governmental authority but lacked clear and timely directions for how to execute their goals. These U.S. agents traveled west by land and by sea in order to build out U.S. cartographic and diplomatic infrastructure that would facilitate U.S. commercial expansion through Pacific ports. Third, although U.S. statesmen modified their views of California between 1783 and 1848, U.S. leaders intended to prevent European empires, specifically Britain, from controlling California for geostrategic reasons. San Francisco Bay offered a rare deep-water port on the Pacific Coast that could facilitate the expansion of U.S. commerce into the Pacific Ocean. By controlling Alta California, U.S. leaders intended to cut Britain out as the middleman in the China and India trades and establish a base on the Pacific Coast for the U.S. Navy ships protecting American merchants and American whaling vessels in the Pacific Ocean. Despite the repeated, scholarly emphasis on the ideology of manifest destiny to explain U.S. imperialism, settlement for an expanding population that overcrowded Eastern cities was not the driving force of U.S. expansion into Alta California. Rather, U.S. control of California----specifically California ports including San Francisco Bay----was a means for securing Pacific trade and rivaling Britain in global commerce

Keywords: History.
Advisor: Gienapp Jonathan
Chang Gordon H.
Olivarius Kathryn Meyer McAllister
Conscientizar—The Development and Enactment of Sociopolitical Consciousness and Critical Hopefulness in Salinas Youth Activists

In March 2020, a photo of two elementary-aged girls working alone outside of a Taco Bell in Salinas, California went viral. The girls used the franchise location’s wi-fi to complete their online schooling, as a result of initial stay-at-home orders, because they did not have internet access at home. In response, the youth of Salinas rallied around them, collecting funds to provide for the girls’ internet and those of other children in similar situations. After several weeks of coverage by the media, both locally and nationally, and push from local youth who were consistently and constantly representing this clear inequality in access to basic technology at community meetings, the issue was brought up to Salinas’ school board members who created a network of hotspots in safe areas around the city for students in need to use when needed.
This honors thesis analyzes the work of Salinas youth activism during quarantine and the immediate aftermath through the lens of critical consciousness and collective action to understand the drivers pushing youth to engage in change-making collective action in an era of tremendous upheaval, uncertainty, and marginalization. Additionally, I show how youth’s formation of their critical analysis informed their demands and strategies. Drawing on 12 interviews with youth and an extended community ethnography of La Cosecha, a high school youth organizing group in Salinas, I found that youth’s activism was informed by critique engendered by participation in activism. Furthermore, I illustrate how various factors: quarantine shifts, adult actions, and group practices greatly impacted the capacity of youth to engage in collective action for change. This study contributes to the literature on the origins of motivation and hope within youth activists, as well as which organizational structures facilitate or impede youth activism.

Keywords: Youth movements > Political activity
critical consciousness
collective action
quarantine schooling
Hope
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Thesis
A construction robot evaluation framework

Robots are increasingly being deployed in unstructured environments like construction sites. However, innovators in construction do not have a consistent method to evaluate on-site robots for a given project, taking up to ten months to assess promising robots. This thesis proposes a Robot Evaluation Framework (REF) for innovators in construction that compares the robot with the traditional performance for a chosen project. The framework was developed through a literature review of comparison variables and evaluation methods in construction robotics and manufacturing and the practical insights from three case studies. The REF studies the feasibility between the robot and the Product, Organization, and Process variables on a project. Second, it measures the impact on the Safety, Quality, Schedule, and Cost to recommend robot adoption using the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) multi-criteria decision-making method. To validate the usefulness of the REF and the consistency of recommendations it helps generate, and the effort required, I used the framework in ten more comparative cases carried out by two graduate students with a General Contractor and a robot manufacturer or start-up. The comparison cases utilized more than 80% of the suggested REF variables. The REF use for ten cases showed consistent recommendations when two different evaluators analyzed the same robot, with an average effort of 20 hours. Furthermore, the REF offered insights into the Safety, Quality, Schedule, and Cost impacts of 13 robots in eight countries. Finally, an off-site framing robot case study highlights the limitations of the REF in addressing factory and transportation logistics, long-term customer relationships, and business models of construction robots in prefabrication. This thesis makes two main contributions to the fields of construction robotics and project management: First, it introduces a consistent framework to compare on-site robotic and traditional construction methods. Second, this research shares a consistent analysis of the application of 13 robots compared to traditional construction methods

Advisor: Fischer Martin
Fruchter Renate
Khatib Oussama
Contemporary Indigeneity in Latin America: Sustainability and Climate Action through Entrepreneurship and Collaborative Partnerships

Our planet is experiencing environmental change and loss of biodiversity at never-before-seen rates, and indigenous peoples are paying the highest price. By analyzing case studies from Peru and Mexico, this paper discusses how indigenous peoples in Latin America are leveraging entrepreneurial and collaborative methods to support sustainable action in this fight against climate change and loss of biodiversity. The paper discusses two different approaches towards sustainable climate action, ecotourism lodges and slow ecological fashion, and provides an overview of the social, economic, and environmental benefits which an effective adoption of either approach can offer, whilst aiming to distinguish between greenwashing and effective forms of sustainable climate action. It urges us to consider what can be learnt from these collaborative systems, and provides the call to action that we should learn from indigenous strategies of environmental protection, conscious consumption and development of sustainable products and be position ourselves as allies who understand the importance of indigenous autonomy and empowerment in decision-making, entrepreneurial and collaborative positions, if we are to avoid irreversible consequences for our Earth’s climate and biodiversity.

Keywords: Sustainability
Climate change mitigation
Indigenous peoples
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Thesis
Copper and iron zeolites : their active sites and contributions to reactivity

Copper and iron exchanged zeolites have been shown to selectively convert methane to methanol at low temperatures. This one-step, selective conversion of methane to methanol is extremely difficult and further understanding is required to create materials that could perform this controlled reaction at a larger scale. This thesis presents advancements in the spectroscopic and computational characterization of these unique active sites as well as the requirements for their formation. This work builds off concepts from bioinorganic to define the contributions from the first and second coordination sphere of zeolites that contribute to this reactivity. The first part of this thesis focuses on copper active sites and describes the structural assignments of a new binuclear active site and a mononuclear active site. This enables an evaluation of the effects of nuclearity on reactivity. The second part of this thesis focuses on iron zeolites and presents the structural assignments of the alpha-Fe(II) precursor and the alpha-O active site that takes methane to methanol at room temperatures. Included are the formation of the alpha-Fe site in the zeolite lattice, the reactivity of alpha-O with benzene in the Fe-*BEA lattice, and a comparison of the reaction of alpha-O with methane in the large channel Fe-*BEA and small pore Fe-CHA zeolite lattices. The last study demonstrates that lattice topology can control the reactivity

Keywords: Chemistry.
Advisor: Solomon Edward I.
Hodgson K. O. (Keith O.)
Karunadasa Hemamala
Crafting illiberal Europe. Legitimation, mobilization, and mass influence in the Soviet and Nazi occupied Baltic States, 1939-53

From 1939 to 1953, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany took turns occupying the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. This dissertation investigates how the Soviets and Nazis legitimized their rule and mobilized hundreds of thousands of ordinary Balts for their state-building and war effort. The Baltic context offers a unique setting for a comparison of the Soviet and Nazi polities at a time when both states sought to revise the interwar European order and remake the continent after their own images. Soviet and Nazi expansion to the Baltic States has usually been studied in its destructive capacities. This dissertation argues that it is equally important to explore the regimes' "constructive" facets: how the two regimes succeeded in genuinely legitimizing their rule, sealing alliances, even positing the Baltic region as a model for all of Europe. Instead of approaching the regimes as sui generis entities, the dissertation explores their entanglement with each other and the linkages they built with local societies, highlighting the agency and participation of the local population. In particular, the dissertation scrutinizes the Soviet and Nazi fixation on mass influence, the shaping and transforming of local attitudes and behavior. It contrasts the Soviet maximalist practice of "mass political upbringing" with the "looser" Nazi notions of "war propaganda." The Soviets sought not only to bombard the audiences with political propaganda but to transform them into disciplined consumers of political education. The Nazi "war propaganda, " by contrast, relied heavily on local participation, leaving local ethnic majorities vast opportunities for self-expression and nation-building, a wartime home front culture that continues to inform Baltic memory to this day

Keywords: History.
Advisor: Weiner Amir
Kollmann Nancy Shields
Naimark Norman M.
Press Steven
Cross-boundary design work : ethnographies of co-design across knowledge and organizational boundaries in professional engineering practice

In a world of boundaries, silos, and division, engineers have been called to address so-called "wicked" design challenges such as energy insecurity and inequity that are ill-structured, complex, and tied to multiple groups of stakeholders and potential contributors. As engineers, we are typically untrained in facilitating meaningful engagement with people beyond our knowledge group and organizational boundaries—engaging members of other groups as design contributors, not just as design consultants or recipients of designs. This thesis works to build theory on how designers within organizations and potential design contributors within and outside those organizations span their knowledge group and organizational boundaries as they co-design together. The findings are based on inductive grounded theory analyses of ethnographic fieldwork over two-five years, some of which was collected by a team of researchers, in partnership with design firms in the energy and automotive industries. The main contributions of the thesis are twofold. Firstly, I build theory on how product development professionals engage with objects and each other to support collaborative inquiry, discovery, and design across knowledge group boundaries. Secondly, I build theory on how co-creative capacity is developed or diminished between a firm and an open online community. This work answers recent calls from within the design research community to move toward "theory-driven" research. I build directly upon theories from organization studies, namely "absorptive capacity" and "objects of collaboration." Additionally, the work contributes to a sparse but growing literature that uses a multi-year ethnographic approach with practicing engineers in design organizations in contrast to studies with students or based on surveys, interviews, or controlled experiments that provide only snapshots in time or are divorced from professional design contexts. Taken together, the findings have practical implications for how those engaged in product development can build co-creative capacity, use objects of collaboration, and engage across knowledge group and organizational boundaries to co-design a better world

Keywords: Mechanical Engineering.
Advisor: Hinds Pamela
Sheppard S. (Sheri)
Yang Maria C.
Crosslinking strategies for 3D bioprinting of engineered hydrogels

3D bioprinting has demonstrated potential for spatially patterning cells and materials together to create structures that recapitulate native tissue. By mimicking these structural features, bioprinted constructs can serve as in vitro models for basic research or can be implanted into the body for regenerative medicine applications. However, this technique is limited by a lack of suitable soft materials for use as bioinks since it remains challenging to design materials that are both printable and can support cell culture. In addition, as matrix material properties are known to influence cell phenotype and behavior, it is becoming increasingly important to tailor the bioink's properties to each individual cell type in order to create more complex, functional printed structures. In this thesis, I explore how engineered, tunable hydrogels can be used to address the current limitations of 3D bioprinting and then develop crosslinking strategies to control the mechanical, biochemical, and dynamic behavior of bioink materials before and after printing

Keywords: Chemical Engineering.
Advisor: Dunn Alexander Robert
Heilshorn Sarah
Myung David