Doctoral Thesis
Recent Submissions
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Control-based theories for credit assignment in neural networks and reinforcement learning
(2024)Understanding the human brain and developing artificial intelligence (AI) are among the most significant scientific endeavors of our time. Neuroscience and AI enjoy a symbiotic relationship: understanding the mechanisms of the human mind drives scientific discovery and inspires novel AI techniques, and conversely, AI offers valuable insights to conceptualize how the brain accomplishes specific tasks. This thesis leverages this relationship ...Doctoral Thesis -
High-throughput synthesis of chemical libraries and prediction of reaction outcomes
(2024)Doctoral Thesis -
Development and Application of Free-Energy Methods for Drug Discovery
(2024)Free energy is among the most fundamental quantities in natural sciences, revealing the direction, extent, and rate of physical and chemical processes. In this thesis, we examine the connections linking various categories of free-energy differences to protein dynamics and function, with a particular emphasis on applications in drug discovery. Our computational investigations are grounded on molecular dynamics simulations, which ...Doctoral Thesis -
Differentiable Approximation of Discreteness for Interpretable and Efficient Deep Learning
(2024)Introducing discreteness into otherwise continuous neural networks has its benefits. Motivated by the need to interpretably handle inherently algorithmic problems, we present methods for differentiable approximation of discreteness and demonstrate the utility of these approximations across a range of fundamentally discrete settings, including the learning of permutation programs, regular grammars, and logic gate networks. Observing ...Doctoral Thesis -
Skewed proportions: On the uneven changes in the precipitation distribution and the uneven distribution of climate risks
(2024)Precipitation is important. Not enough precipitation is dangerous for nature and society because food and water supply might be affected, and too much precipitation is dangerous for nature and society because flooding might destroy human and natural habitats. Precipitation is very variable in space and time, which means that, even without climate change, we have to shape society such that it is able to deal with large variations in ...Doctoral Thesis -
Smart Engineered Nanomaterials for Water Cleaning Applications: From Adsorption to Catalysis
(2024)Water scarcity and pollution pose a significant global challenge, demanding innovative solutions for sustainable water management and reuse. However, the presence of emerging contaminants, such as persistent organic pollutants (POPs), necessitates advanced treatment technologies for safe water reuse. This thesis explores the potential of smart nanomaterials for advanced water treatment technologies, particularly focusing on the removal ...Doctoral Thesis -
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Improving ultracold neutron statistics for the n2EDM experiment
(2024)The n2EDM experiment, currently being commissioned at the UCN source at the Paul Scherrer Institute, aims to search for the neutron electric dipole moment (nEDM) with a sensitivity of 1.1 × 10^−27 e ⋅ cm. This requires improving both the statistical and the systematic uncertainties, compared to the previous experiment. The n2EDM experiment is a Ramsey experiment with ultracold neutrons (UCN). The statistical sensitivity depends on the ...Doctoral Thesis -
Pupil-indexed arousal level dynamics during sleep and overnight changes in performance fatigability
(2024)If a lifetime were spent searching for the elixir of life, it would be overlooked every single night. Our mind and body spend one-third of our lives bathed in the elixir, restoring, regenerating, and consolidating the memories of our time spent away from it, all for the betterment of our mental health and our survival. The elixir is simply called sleep, but it is a complex, multidimensional continuum of brain and body states that dynamically ...Doctoral Thesis -
Advanced Kinematic Analysis and Material Optimization for Cervical Spine Disc Prosthesis
(2024)Doctoral Thesis -
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Beyond cell cycle control – the G1/S network regulates mitochondrial maintenance and mtDNA stability
(2024)Doctoral Thesis -
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Synthetic Strategies for Accessing Phosphorus-containing Polyesters
(2024)The work herein presented pertains synthetic strategies to access phosphorus-functionalized lactones and their use for production of polyesters via ring opening polymerization (ROP). Due to the literature scarcity in this area, we developed from the ground up an easy methodology for obtaining phosphorus-functionalized lactones via the phospha-Michael addition of secondary phosphine oxides and α, β-unsaturated lactones. A series of ...Doctoral Thesis -
Enabling Rich Lightweight Verification of Rust Software
(2024)Rust is a novel programming language that is rapidly gaining adoption in the software industry thanks to its performance and safety properties. Among its strengths, Rust's type system is designed to detect at compile time certain kinds of memory-related bugs, such as dangling pointers and null dereferences. However, the language does not aim to detect functional errors; how to do this efficiently is in general an open topic in the field ...Doctoral Thesis