This calendar lists graduate thesis and dissertation events. Send all notices to the College of Graduate Studies at editor@ucf.edu
Human trafficking within and across nations is a pervasive, insidious global criminal enterprise that endangers human rights and impedes social justice. Sex and labor are two fundamental types of human trafficking, but both media and policies prioritize the former. Social work calls for empowering marginalized groups, and labor trafficking survivors—who are more likely to be women and immigrants of color—certainly …
Graduate Thesis and DissertationEmissions of greenhouse and toxic gases from current combustion processes significantly contribute to the global climate crisis. Recent policies worldwide have shifted focus towards combating these emissions using clean and renewable energy sources. However, achieving carbon neutrality while meeting modern energy needs will require alternative carbon-free fuel sources for power generation turbine cycles. Ammonia-hydrogen blends have shown potential as carbon-free …
Graduate Thesis and DissertationCatastrophic Forgetting continues to be a prevalent issue for any neural-based approach to learning. Without better understanding and solutions to solving catastrophic forgetting, learning performance and efficacy in autonomous agents, particularly deep learning-based agents will become drastically hindered. Current literature contains approaches to reduce the effects of catastrophic forgetting via task decomposition, rehearsal, and layered learning. However, critical agent knowledge …
Graduate Thesis and DissertationSupercritical CO2 (sCO2) has been proposed for a plethora of applications, such as power generation, air conditioning, and thermal management of electronic equipment. In proximity to critical conditions, the thermal and transport properties of the CO2 vary abruptly, promoting a significant heat transfer enhancement. Revealing the heat transfer processes associated with CO2 flows requires measuring fluid temperature, pressure, heat transfer …
Graduate Thesis and DissertationIn recent years, the space travel industry has grown exponentially, resulting in the need for a low-cost, efficient rocket engine fuel. As such, there has been renewed interest in utilizing liquid natural gas (LNG) as it is less likely to soot than kerosene-based fuels and has widespread availability and low cost of use as compared to the traditional RP-X and …
Graduate Thesis and DissertationThe purpose of this research was to improve osteological sex classification accuracies for the skull by combining morphological and metric variables into multiple models using decision trees and random forest (RF) modeling. The sample was derived from four U.S. based skeletal collections and consisted of 403 individuals of European American and African American population affinities. Twenty-one morphological traits and 21 …
Graduate Thesis and DissertationCritical infrastructures such as power grids, transportation networks, water systems, and others increasingly interact with each other for functional facilities. Therefore, coordinating these interdependent critical infrastructure networks has become paramount for synergistic operation. Since different infrastructures belong to different entities, this dissertation proposes decentralized optimization algorithms tailored to various coordination challenges. First, this dissertation proposes a decentralized framework for coordinating …
Graduate Thesis and DissertationThe successful transition to global clean energy is contingent upon meeting the increasing worldwide energy demand for power while simultaneously curbing greenhouse gas emissions. This study delves into the complexities of transitioning to cleaner energy sources and the challenges posed by utilizing hydrogen and hydrogen/natural gas mixtures as a potential fuel source alternative to traditional carbon-based combustion cycles. By addressing …
Graduate Thesis and Dissertation