COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Suxia Cui TITLE: TRANSCENDING VON NEUMANN: PERFORMANCE AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS OF HYBRID IN-MEMORY AI ACCELERATOR FOR TRANSFORMER ABSTRACT: Deep learning has been revolutionized by Transformer-based AI models but remains computationally exhaustive owing to memory-bound operations and energy-hungry matrix multiplications. Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) and Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), which are conventional [...]

COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Mohamed Chouikha TITLE: ACHIEVING EQUITY IN COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING SYSTEMS THROUGH FAIR OPTIMIZATION AND PRIVACY-PRESERVATION ABSTRACT: Bias in machine learning systems continues to raise critical concerns about equity, accountability, and reliability-especially in socially consequential domains such as criminal justice, housing finance, and healthcare. While fairness-aware learning has introduced important metrics and mitigation techniques, [...]

COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Jerrel Moore TITLE A CAUSAL-COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RETENTION RATES AMONG PUBLIC LAND-GRANT UNIVERSITIES BASED ON CARNEGIE ENGAGEMENT CLASSIFICATION STATUS ABSTRACT: According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, in 2019–2020, public four-year institutions had a retention rate of 81.5%, compared to 68.8% at private, for-profit institutions. Public universities use such [...]

COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Gururaj Neelgund COMMITTEE CO-CHAIR: Dr. Raghava Kommalapati TITLE: COMBINED HYBRID CERAMIC MEMBRANES FOR ELIMINATING MICRO AND NANO PLASTICS FROM WASTEWATER ABSTRACT: A significant challenge in sustaining modern society is ensuring an adequate and high-quality water supply to meet the diverse needs of various specialized sectors. As a resolution to this challenge, the [...]

COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Patricia Miller TITLE: EXAMINING SCHOOL FACILITIES AND THEIR IMPACT ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT ABSTRACT: Facility management systems affect the quality of the environment, which in turn impacts the performance of students, teachers, and staff (How K-12 Facilities Impact Student Learning and Health 2022). Thus, it is likely that students attending healthy school buildings [...]

COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Annamalai Annamalai TITLE: DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF LOW-COST LORA MESH NETWORK FOR RELIABLE AND SECURED PRECISION AGRICULTURE ABSTRACT: Rural precision agriculture requires reliable, low-cost, and energy-efficient communication systems capable of covering large farmland areas. Traditional wireless technologies, such as Wi-Fi, cellular, and satellite communication, are either expensive, consuming too much power, or [...]

COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Cajetan Akujuobi TITLE: DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF ML-ASSISTED COOPERATIVE WIDEBAND ENERGY DETECTION FOR DYNAMIC SPECTRUM ACCESS IN 5G NETWORKS ABSTRACT: Dynamic spectrum access is a key strategy for enhancing the utilization of the increasingly congested wideband radio spectrum, particularly in 5G networks where traffic is bursty, users are heterogeneous, and spectral [...]

COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Gururaj Neelgund TITLE: SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE STRUCTURAL AND MAGNETIC PROPERTIES OF NEODYMIUM AND SAMARIUM MOLYBDATES ABSTRACT: Centrosymmetric oxides, characterized by an inversion symmetry and ordered atomic arrangements, exhibit diverse structural, magnetic, and electronic properties that make them promising for spintronic, magnetoelectric, and quantum technologies. In this work, phase-pure Nd2MoO6 and [...]

COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Patricia Miller TITLE: ROAPMAP TO SUCCESS: PERSPECTIVES OF BLACK FEMALES OVERCOMING BARRIERS IN A DOCTORAL PROGRAM AT A PREDOMINANTLY WHITE INSTITUTION (PWI) AND A HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY (HBCU) IN SOUTHEAST TEXAS ABSTRACT: This study employed a qualitative research design to investigate the experiences of 10 Black female doctoral students as [...]

COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Annamalai Annamalai TITLE: SECURE SHELL AS A CYBER-PHYSICAL SHIELD: DETECTING AND MITIGATING DENIAL-OF-SERVICE ATTACKS IN SMART POWER GRID ABSTRACT: The increasing integration of digital communication and control networks within the electric power grid has introduced unprecedented efficiency—yet simultaneously expanded the attack surface for cyber-physical disruptions. This dissertation investigates the use of the [...]