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Home » For Authors & Researchers » Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Theses and dissertations produced by students as part of the completion of their degree requirements often represent unique and interesting scholarship. Universities are increasingly making this work available online, and UC is no exception. Find information related to open access theses and dissertations below.

UC has an open access policy for theses and dissertations, but procedures and specifics vary by campus

Several UC campuses have established policies requiring open access to the electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) written by their graduate students. As of March 25, 2020, there is now a systemwide Policy on Open Access for Theses and Dissertations , indicating that UC “requires theses or dissertations prepared at the University to be (1) deposited into an open access repository, and (2) freely and openly available to the public, subject to a requested delay of access (’embargo’) obtained by the student.”

In accordance with these policies, campuses must ensure that student ETDs are available open access via eScholarship (UC’s open access repository and publishing platform), at no cost to students. By contrast, ProQuest, the world’s largest commercial publisher of ETDs, charges a $95 fee to make an ETD open access. Institutions worldwide have moved toward open access ETD publication because it dramatically increases the visibility and reach of their graduate research.

Policies and procedures for ETD filing, including how to delay public release of an ETD and how long such a delay can last, vary by campus. Learn more about the requirements and procedures for ETDs at each UC campus:

• UC Berkeley: Dissertation Filing Guidelines (for Doctoral Students) and Thesis Filing Guidelines (for Master’s Students)
• UC Davis: Preparing and Filing Your Thesis or Dissertation
• UC Irvine: Thesis/Dissertation Electronic Submission
• UCLA: File Your Thesis or Dissertation
• UC Merced: Dissertation/Thesis Submission
• UC Riverside: Dissertation and Thesis Submission
• UC San Diego:  Preparing to Graduate
• UCSF: Dissertation and Thesis Guidelines
• UC Santa Barbara:  Filing Your Thesis, Dissertation, or DMA Supporting Document
• UC Santa Cruz: Dissertation and Thesis Guidelines (PDF) from the Graduate Division’s Accessing Forms Online page

Open access can be delayed in certain circumstances

Some campuses allow students to elect an embargo period before the public release of their thesis/dissertation; others require approval from graduate advisors or administrators. Visit your local graduate division’s website (linked above) for more information.

Common copyright concerns of students writing theses and dissertations

Students writing theses/dissertations most commonly have questions about their own copyright ownership or the use of other people’s copyrighted materials in their own work.

You automatically own the copyright in your thesis/dissertation  as soon as you create it, regardless of whether you register it or include a copyright page or copyright notice (see this FAQ from the U.S. Copyright Office for more information). Most students choose not to register their copyrights, though some choose to do so because they value having their copyright ownership officially and publicly recorded. Getting a copyright registered is required before you can sue someone for infringement.

If you decide to register your copyright, you can do so

• directly, through the Copyright Office website , for $35
• by having ProQuest/UMI contact the Copyright Office on your behalf, for $65.

It is common to incorporate 1) writing you have done for journal articles as part of your dissertation, and 2) parts of your dissertation into articles or books . See, for example, these articles from Wiley and Taylor & Francis giving authors tips on how to successfully turn dissertations into articles, or these pages at Sage , Springer , and Elsevier listing reuse in a thesis or dissertation as a common right of authors. Because this is a well-known practice, and often explicitly allowed in publishers’ contracts with authors, it rarely raises copyright concerns. eScholarship , which hosts over 55,000 UC ETDs, has never received a takedown notice from a publisher based on a complaint that the author’s ETD was too similar to the author’s published work.

Incorporating the works of others in your thesis/dissertation – such as quotations or illustrative images – is often allowed by copyright law. This is the case when the original work isn’t protected by copyright, or if the way you’re using the work would be considered fair use. In some circumstances, however, you will need permission from the copyright holder.  For more information, please consult the Berkeley Library’s guide to Copyright and Publishing Your Dissertation .

How to find UC Dissertations and Theses online

All ten UC campuses make their electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) openly accessible to readers around the world. You can view over 55,000 UC ETDs in eScholarship , UC’s open access repository. View ETDs from each campus:

• Santa Barbara

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Dissertations in art history : a guide: databases.

• UCB Dissertations
• Foreign Dissertations
• Subject Biblographies

Both bibliographic databases ceased in 2015 but are freely available through INIST-CNRS. FRANCIS indexes over 3,000 journals, books, dissertations, and other European sources covering the humanities and social sciences (1972-2015). PASCAL offers bibliographic indexing of core scientific literature, and provides multidisciplinary and multilingual coverage for science, technology, and medicine with special emphasis on European content (1984-2015).

The PASCAL-FRANCIS Archive will become progressively enriched with other document types and with records of partners having previously cooperated with PASCAL and FRANCIS.

• Next: UCB Dissertations >>
• Last Updated: Aug 12, 2024 3:42 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/arthistorydissertations

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Thesis Writing and Filing

The following guidelines are only for master’s students. If you are pursuing a doctoral degree, please see the Dissertation Filing Guide .

Filing your master’s thesis at the Graduate Division is one of the final steps leading to the award of your graduate degree. Your manuscript is a scholarly presentation of the results of the research you conducted. UC Berkeley upholds the tradition that you have an obligation to make your research available to other scholars. This is done when the Graduate Division submits your manuscript to the University Library.

Your faculty committee supervises the intellectual content of your manuscript and your committee chair will guide you on the arrangement within the text and reference sections of your manuscript. Consult with your committee chair early in the preparation of your manuscript.

The specifications in the following pages were developed in consultation with University Library. These standards assure uniformity in the degree candidates’ manuscripts to be archived in the University Library, and ensure as well the widest possible dissemination of student-authored knowledge.

Research Protocols

Eligibility, fall and spring semesters, summer filing, formatting your manuscript, special page formats, organizing your manuscript, procedure for filing your thesis, permission to include previously published or co-authored material, inclusion of publishable papers or article-length essays, withholding your thesis, changes to a thesis after filing, diploma, transcript, and certificate of completion, certificate of completion, common mistakes, mixed media guidelines, definitions and standards, electronic formats and risk categories, frequently asked questions.

If your research activities involve human or animal subjects, you must follow the guidelines and obtain an approved protocol  before you begin your research.   Learn more on our website   or contact the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects ( http://cphs.berkeley.edu/  or 642-7461) or the Animal Care and Use Committee ( http://www.acuc.berkeley.edu/  or 642-8855).

In addition to the considerations explained below, your Expected Graduation Term (EGT) must match the term for which you intend to file. EGT can be updated at any time using an eForm available in CalCentral.

To be eligible to file for your degree, you must be registered or on approved Filing Fee status for the semester in which you file. We encourage you to file your thesis as early in the semester as you can and to come in person to our office to submit your supporting documents. If you cannot come to our office, it is helpful if you have a friend bring your documents. The deadline to file your thesis in its final form is the last day of the semester for your degree to be awarded as of that semester.

Filing during the summer has a slightly different set of eligibility requirements. If you were fully registered during the immediately preceding Spring semester, and have not used Filing Fee already, you may file your thesis during the summer with no additional cost or application required. This option is available for both Plan I master’s degree students filing a thesis and Plan II students completing a capstone. Summer is defined as the period from the day after the Spring semester ends (mid-May) until the last day of the Summer Sessions (mid-August).

International students completing degree in the Summer must consult Berkeley International Office before finalizing plans, as in some cases lack of Summer enrollment could impact visa status or post-completion employment.

If you have already used Filing Fee previously, or were not registered the preceding Spring semester, you will need to register in 1.0 unit in Summer Sessions in order to file.

Theses filed during the summer will result in a summer degree conferral.

You must be advanced to candidacy, and in good standing (not lapsed), in order to file.

All manuscripts must be submitted electronically in a traditional PDF format.

• Page Size : The standard for a document’s page size is 8.5 x 11 inches. If compelling reasons exist to use a larger page size, you must contact the Graduate Division for prior approval.
• Basic manuscript text must  be a non-italic type font and at a size of 12-point or larger. Whatever typeface and size you choose for the basic text, use it consistently throughout your entire manuscript. For footnotes, figures, captions, tables, charts, and graphs, a font size of 8-point or larger is to be used.
• You may include color in your thesis, but your basic manuscript text must be black.
• For quotations, words in a foreign language, occasional emphasis, book titles, captions, and footnotes, you may use italics. A font different from that used for your basic manuscript may be used for appendices, charts, drawings, graphs, and tables.
• Pagination:   Your manuscript is composed of preliminary pages and the main body of text and references. Page numbers must be positioned either in the upper right corner, lower right corner, or the bottom center and must be at least ¾ of an inch from the edges. The placement of the page numbers in your document must be consistent throughout.

Be Careful!   If you have any pages that are rotated to a landscape orientation, the page numbers still need to be in a consistent position throughout the document (as if it were printed and bound).

• Do not count or number the title page or the copyright page. All other pages must have numbers. DO NOT SKIP PAGE ” 1 “.
• The remaining preliminary pages may include a table of contents, a dedication, a list of figures, tables, symbols, illustrations, or photographs, a preface, your introduction, acknowledgments, and curriculum vitae. You must number these preliminary pages using   lower case Roman numerals  beginning with the number “i” and continue in sequence to the end of the preliminary pages (i, ii, iii, iv, v, etc.).
• An abstract is optional, but if you chose to include one, your abstract must have  Arabic numeral  page numbers. Start numbering your abstract with the number “1” and continue in sequence (1, 2, 3, etc.)
• The main body of your text and your references also use Arabic numerals. Start the numbering of the main body with the number “1” and continue in sequence (1, 2, 3, etc.), numbering consecutively throughout the rest of the text, including illustrative materials, bibliography, and appendices.

Yes! The first page of your abstract and the first page of your main text both start with ‘1’

• Margins:   For the manuscript material, including headers, footers, tables, illustrations, and photographs, all margins must be at least 1 inch from the edges of the paper. Page numbers must be ¾ of an inch from the edge.
• Spacing:  Your manuscript must be single-spaced throughout, including the abstract, dedication, acknowledgments, and introduction.
• Tables, charts, and graphs   may be presented horizontally or vertically and must fit within the required margins. Labels or symbols are preferred rather than colors for identifying lines on a graph.

You may choose to reduce the size of a page to fit within the required margins, but be sure that the resulting page is clear and legible.

• Guidelines for Mixed Media:   please see Appendix B for details.

Certain pages need to be formatted in a very specific way. Links are included here for examples of these pages.

Do not deviate from the wording and spacing in the examples, except for details applicable to you (e.g. name, major, committee, etc.)

• As noted in the above section on pagination, the abstract is optional but if included must be numbered  separately  with arabic numerals starting with ‘1’
• IMPORTANT: A physical signature page should no longer be included with your thesis. Approvals by your committee members will be provided electronically using an eForm.
• The title page does not contain page numbers.
• Do not bold any text on your title page.
• The yellow bubbles in the sample are included for explanatory purposes only. Do not include them in your submission.
• If you are receiving a joint degree, it must be listed on your title page ( Click here for sample with joint degree )

The proper organization and page order for your manuscript is as follows:

• Copyright page or a blank page
• Dedication page
• Table of contents
• List of figures, list of tables, list of symbols
• Preface or introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Curriculum Vitae
• References or Bibliography

After you have written your thesis, formatted it correctly, assembled the pages into the correct organization, and obtained verbal approval from all members of your committee, you are ready to file it with UC Berkeley’s Graduate Division.

Step 1:  Convert your thesis to a standard PDF file.

Step 2: Log into your CalCentral account. Under Student Resources in your Dashboard find Submit a Form and choose Final Signature Submission .

Step 3:  Complete the eForm in its entirety and hit submit once all  required documents are submitted:

• Attach the PDF of your thesis and
• Attach a copy of the approval letter for your study protocol from the Committee for Protection of Human Subjects, or the Animal Care and Use Committee if your research involved human or animal subjects. 

(Step 4): Congratulations you’re done! The traditional lollipop will be mailed to you following the end of the semester. Please be sure to update your mailing addresses (especially the diploma mailing address).

Important Notes: 

• DO NOT SUBMIT A DRAFT. Once your thesis has been submitted, you will not be allowed to make changes. Be sure that it is in its final form!
• Check your email regularly. Should revisions be necessary the eForm will be “recycled” to you and you will be notified via email. To resubmit your thesis, go back to Student Resources in your CalCentral account find Manage Your Forms and select Update Pending Forms . Here you can search for your submitted Final Signature form and make necessary updates and/or attach your revised thesis.
• After your thesis has been approved by Graduate Division, it will be routed to the listed committee members for electronic approval. Once all members have provided approval you will be notified.
• The review of your thesis may take up to four business days.

Important note for students in a Concurrent Degree Program (e.g. Landscape Architecture & City Planning):

• If you are filing a thesis to satisfy both master’s degrees, do not submit two eForms. Please select one plan only on the eForm and the Graduate Division will update your record accordingly.

If you plan use of your own previously published and/or co-authored material in your manuscript, your committee chair must attest that the resulting thesis represents an original contribution of ideas to the field, even if previously published co – authored articles are included, and that major contributors of those articles have been informed.

Previously published material must be incorporated into a larger argument that binds together the whole thesis. The common thread linking various parts of the research, represented by individual papers incorporated in the thesis, must be made explicit, and you must join the papers into a coherent unit. You are required to prepare introductory, transitional, and concluding sections. Previously published material must be acknowledged appropriately, as established for your discipline or as requested in the original publication agreement (e.g. through a note in acknowledgments, a footnote, or the like).

If co-authored material is to be incorporated (whether published or unpublished), all major contributors should be informed of the inclusion in addition to being appropriately credited in the thesis according to the norms of the field.

If you are incorporating co-authored material in your thesis, it is your responsibility to inform major contributors. This documentation need not be submitted to the Graduate Division. The eform used by your committee chair to sign off on your thesis will automatically include text indicating that by signing off they attest to the appropriateness and approval for inclusion of previously published and/or co-authored materials. No addition information or text needs to be added.

Publishable papers and article-length essays arising from your research project are acceptable only if you incorporate that text into a larger argument that binds together the whole dissertation or thesis. Include introductory, transitional, and concluding sections with the papers or essays.

Occasionally, there are unusual circumstances in which you prefer that your thesis not be published immediately.  Such circumstances may include the disclosure of patentable rights in the work before a patent can be granted, similar disclosures detrimental to the rights of the author, or disclosures of facts about persons or institutions before professional ethics would permit.

The Dean of the Graduate Division may permit the thesis to be held without shelving for a specified and limited period of time beyond the default, under substantiated circumstances of the kind indicated and with the endorsement of and an explanatory letter from the chair of the thesis committee.  If you need to request that your manuscript be withheld, please consult with the chair of your committee, and have him or her submit a letter requesting this well before you file for your degree. The memo should be addressed to the cognizant Associate Dean, in care of Graduate Services: Degrees, 318 Sproul Hall.

Changes are normally not allowed after a manuscript has been filed.  In exceptional circumstances, changes may be requested by having the chair of your thesis committee submit a memo to the cognizant Associate Dean, in care of Graduate Services: Degrees, 318 Sproul Hall.  The memo must describe in detail the specific changes requested and must justify the reason for the request.  If the request is approved, the changes must be made prior to the official awarding of the degree.  Once your degree has been awarded, you may not make changes to the manuscript.

After your thesis is accepted by Graduate Services: Degrees, it is held here until the official awarding of the degree by the Academic Senate has occurred.  This occurs approximately two months after the end of the term.  After the degree has officially been awarded, the manuscripts are shipped to the University Library.

Posting the Degree to Your Transcript

Your degree will be posted to your transcript approximately 3 months after the conferral date of your degree.  You can order a transcript from the Office of the Registrar (https://registrar.berkeley.edu/academic-records/transcripts-diplomas/).

Diploma Your diploma will be available from the Office of the Registrar approximately 4 months after the conferral date of your degree.  For more information on obtaining your diploma, visit the Registrar’s website .  You can obtain your diploma in person at the Office of the Registrar, 120 Sproul Hall, or submit a form to have it mailed to you. Unclaimed diplomas are retained for a period of five (5) years only, after which they are destroyed.

If you require evidence that you have completed your degree requirements prior to the degree being posted to your transcript, request a “ Certificate of Degree Completion “.

Please note that we will not issue a Certificate of Completion after the degree has been posted to your transcript.

• The most common mistake is following a fellow (or previous) student’s example. Read the current guidelines carefully!
• An incorrect committee — the committee listed on your title page must match your currently approved committee. If you have made any changes to your committee since Advancement to Candidacy, you must request an official change from the Graduate Division. Consult your departmental adviser for details.
• Do not use a different name than that which appears in the system (i.e. the name on your transcript and Cal Central Profile). Students are allowed to use a Lived Name, which can be updated by self-service in CalCentral.
• Page numbers — Read the section on pagination carefully. Many students do not paginate their document correctly.
• Page rotation — some pages may be rotated to a landscape orientation. However, page numbers must appear in the same place throughout the document (as if it were bound like a book).
• Do not include the signature/approval page in your electronic thesis. Signatures will be provided electronically using the eForm.
• Do not include previous degrees on your title page.

In May, 2005, the Graduate Council established new guidelines for the inclusion of mixed media content in theses.  It was considered crucial that the guidelines allow theses s to remain as accessible as possible and for the longest period possible while balancing the extraordinary academic potential of these new technologies.

The thesis has three components: a core thesis, essential supporting material, and non-essential supplementary material.

Core Thesis.   The core thesis must be a self-contained, narrative description of the argument, methods, and evidence used in the thesis project.  Despite the ability to present evidence more directly and with greater sophistication using mixed media, the core thesis must provide an accessible textual description of the whole project.

The core thesis must stand alone and be printable on paper, meeting the formatting requirements described in this document. The electronic version of the thesis must be provided in the most stable and universal format available—currently Portable Document Format (PDF) for textual materials. These files may also include embedded visual images in TIFF (.tif) or JPEG (.jpg) format.

Essential Supporting Material.   Essential supporting material is defined as mixed media content that cannot be integrated into the core thesis, i.e., material that cannot be adequately expressed as text.  Your faculty committee is responsible for deciding whether this material is essential to the thesis.  Essential supporting material does  not  include the actual project data.  Supporting material is essential if it is necessary for the actual argument of the thesis, and cannot be integrated into a traditional textual narrative.

Essential supporting material  must  be submitted in the most stable and least risky format consistent with its representation (see below), so as to allow the widest accessibility and greatest chance of preservation into the future.

Non-essential Supplementary Material.   Supplementary material includes any supporting content that is useful for understanding the thesis, but is not essential to the argument. This might include, for example, electronic files of the works analyzed in the thesis (films, musical works, etc.) or additional support for the argument (simulations, samples of experimental situations, etc.).

Supplementary material is to be submitted in the most stable and most accessible format, depending on the relative importance of the material (see below). Clearly label the CD, DVD, audiotape, or videotape with your name, major, thesis title, and information on the contents. Only one copy is required to be filed with your thesis.  A second copy should be left with your department.

Note . ProQuest and the Library will require any necessary 3rd party software licenses and reprint permission letters for any copyrighted materials included in these electronic files.

The following is a list of file formats in descending order of stability and accessibility. This list is provisional, and will be updated as technologies change. Faculty and students should refer to the Graduate Division website for current information on formats and risk categories.

Category A:

• TIFF (.tif) image files
• WAV (.wav) audio files

Category B:

• JPEG, JPEG 2000 (.jpg) image files
• GIF (.gif) image files

Category C:

• device independent audio files (e.g., AIFF, MIDI, SND, MP3, WMA, QTA)
• note-based digital music composition files (e.g., XMA, SMF, RMID)

Category D:

• other device independent video formats (e.g., QuickTime, AVI, WMV)
• encoded animations (e.g., FLA or SWF Macromedia Flash, SVG)

For detailed guidelines on the use of these media, please refer to the Library of Congress website for digital formats at  http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/index.shtml .

Q1: Can I file my thesis during the summer?

A1: Yes. There are 2 ways to file during the summer:

1)     If you have never used Filing Fee before AND you were registered during the immediately preceding spring semester, you can file your thesis during the summer with no further application or payment required. Simply submit your thesis as usual and the Graduate Division staff will confirm your eligibility. If you are an international student, you must consult the Berkeley International Office for guidance as this option may have visa implications for you.

2)     If you weren’t registered in spring, you can register for at least 1.0 unit through Berkeley Summer Sessions.

Q2: If I chose that option, does it matter which session I register in during the summer session?

A2: No. You can register for any of the sessions (at least 1.0 unit). The deadline will always be the last day of the last session.

Q3: If I file during the summer, will I receive a summer degree?

A3: Yes. If you file before the last day of summer session, you will receive an August degree. If you file during the summer, remember to write “Summer” on your title page!

Q1: I’ve seen other theses from former students that were / that had  __________, should I follow that format?

A1: No. The formatting guidelines can be changed from time to time, so you should always consult the most current guidelines available on our website.

Q2: I want to make sure that my thesis follows the formatting rules. What’s the best way to do this?

A2: If you’ve read and followed the current guidelines available on our website, there shouldn’t be any problems. You are also always welcome to bring sample pages into the Graduate Degrees Office at 318 Sproul Hall to have a staff member look over your manuscript.

Q3:  Does my signature page need to be printed on some special paper?

A3: Signatures are now an eForm process. A physical signature page is no longer required.

Q1: I’m away from Berkeley. Is there any way to file my thesis remotely?

A1: Yes! The whole process is done remotely.

Q2: Can I have a friend file my thesis for me?

A2: No. You will need to CalNet authenticate in order to file.

Q3: What’s a Receipt of Filing? Do I need one?

A3: The Receipt of Filing is an official document that we produce that certifies that you have successfully filed your thesis on the specified day and that, if all other requirements are met, the date of the degree conferral.

Some students may need the receipt in order to prove to an outside agency that they have officially filed their thesis. Many students simply keep the receipt as a memento. Picking up your receipt is not required.

Q4: What’s the difference between a Receipt of Filing and a Certificate of Completion?

A4: A Receipt of Filing is automatically produced for all students upon successful filing of their thesis. However, it only certifies that the thesis has been accepted. The Certificate of Degree Completion  must be requested. It will state that all requirements  have   been met and notes the date that the degree will be conferred. This is a useful document for students who file early in the semester and need some verification of their degree in advance of its conferral (note: degrees are only conferred twice each year).

Q5: How to I know if I’m eligible for a Certificate of Completion?

A5: In order to be eligible to receive a Certificate of Completion, you must:

1) Successfully file your thesis

2) Have a completed (satisfied) Academic Progress Report. Your department can assist you with this if you have questions.

3) Pay all of your registration fees. If you have a balance on your account, we may be unable to provide a Certificate of Completion.

Q6: I’m supposed to submit my approval letter for research with human subjects or vertebrate animals, but it turns out my research didn’t use this after all. What should I do?

A6: If you’re research protocol has changed since you advanced to candidacy for your degree, you’ll need to ask you thesis chair to write a letter to the Graduate Division explaining the change. It would be best to submit this in advance of filing.

Q7: My thesis uses copyrighted or previously published material. How to I get approval?

A7: The policy on this has recently changed. There is no need to for specific approval to be requested.

Q9: I found a typo in my thesis that has already been accepted! What do I do?

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Ming Wu Lab

• Ph.D. Theses
• Low-loss and Nonlinear Silicon-based Integrated Photonic Circuits Jean-Etienne Tremblay [2020]
• Co-planar Optoelectrowetting (OEW) Device for Droplet Manipulation Jodi Loo [2020]
• Monolayer Transition Metal Dichalcogenide NanoLEDs: Towards High Speed and High Efficiency Kevin Han [2019]
• FMCW Lidar: Scaling to the Chip-Level and Improving Phase-Noise-Limited Performance Phillip Sandborn [2017]
• Integrated Nanoscale Antenna-LED for On-Chip Optical Communication Seth Fortuna [2017]
• Highly Scalable Silicon Photonic Switches Based on Waveguide Crossbar with Movable Waveguide Couplers Sangyoon Han [2016]
• Metal Optics Based nanoLEDs: In Search of a Fast, Efficient, Nanoscale Light Emitter Michael Eggleston [2015]
• Optofluidic Devices for Droplet and Cell Manipulation Shao Ning Pei [2015]
• Ultra-low energy photoreceivers for optical interconnects Ryan Going [2015]
• Low Noise, Low Power Cavity Optomechanical Oscillators Alejandro Grine [2014]
• Optical Whispering-Gallery Mode Resonators for Applications in Optical Communication and Frequency Control Karen Grutter [2013]
• Engineering Optical Antenna for Efficient Local Field Enhancement Tae Joon Seok [2012]
• Linear, Low Noise Microwave Photonic Systems using Phase and Frequency Modulation John Wyrwas [2012]
• Metal-optic and Plasmonic Semiconductor-based Nanolasers Amit Lakhani [2012]
• Light-induced Electrokinetics: A path to a versatile micro total analysis system Justin K Valley [2011]
• MEMS Lens Scanners for Free-Space Optical Interconnects Jeffrey Chou [2011]
• Photopatterned polyacrylamide gels enable efficient microfluidic protein assays Chenlu Hou [2011]
• Optoelectronic Manipulation, Assembly, and Patterning of Nanoparticles Arash Jamshidi [2009]
• SIlicon Photonic Devices for Optoelectronic Integrated Circuits Ming-Chun Tien [2009]
• Optofluidic Devices for Cell, Microparticle, and Nanoparticle Manipulation Aaron Takami Ohta [2008]
• Tunable Optical Microresonators with Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System (MEMS) Integration Jin Yao [2007]
• High-Speed Modulation of Optical Injection-Locked Semiconductor Lasers Erwin K Lau [2006]
• Strong Optical Injection Locking of Edge-Emitting Lasers and Its Applications Hyuk-Kee Sung [2006]
• Massively Parallel Optical Manipulation of Single Cells, Micro- and Nano-Particles on Optoelectronic Devices Pei-Yu Chiou [2005]

Publications

• Journal Articles
• Book Chapters
• Masters Reports
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UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations

• UC Berkeley Previously Published Works
• UC Berkeley Recent Work

Digital Twins as Testbeds for Iterative Simulated Neutronics Feedback Controller Development

• Ong, Theodore Kay Chen
• Advisor(s): Peterson, Per F

Before a new nuclear reactor design can be constructed and operated, its safety must bedemonstrated using models that are validated with integral effects test (IET) data. However, because scaled integral effects tests are electrically heated, they do not exhibit nuclear reactor feedback phenomena. To replicate the nuclear transient response in electrically heated IETs, we require simulated neutronics feedback (SNF) controllers. Such SNF controllers can then be used to provide SNF capabilities for IET facilities such as the Compact Integral Effects Test (CIET) at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). However, developing SNF controllers for IET facilities is non-trivial. To expedite development, we present the use of Digital Twins as testbeds for iterative SNF controller development. In particular, we use a Digital Twin of the Heater within CIET as a testbed for SNF Controller Development. This Digital Twin with SNF Capabilty is run as an OPC-UA server and client written almost entirely in Rust using Free and Open Source (FOSS) code. We then validate the Digital Twin with experimental data in literature. We also verify the transfer function simulation and Proportional, Integral and Derivative (PID) controllers written in Rust using Scilab. Moreover, we demonstrate use of data driven surrogate models (transfer functions) to construct SNF controllers in contrast to using the traditional Point Reactor Kinetics Equations (PRKE) models with the hope that they can account for the effect of spatially dependent neutron flux on reactor feedback. To construct the first surrogate models in this work, we use transient data from a representative arbitrary Fluoride Salt Cooled High Temperature Reactor (FHR) model constructed using OpenMC and GeN-Foam. Using the Digital Twin as a testbed, two design iterations of the SNF controller were developed using the data driven surrogate model. Compared to the potential development time taken in using physical experiments, using the digital twin testbed for SNF controller development resulted in a significant time saving. We hope that the approaches used in this dissertation can expedite testing and reduce expenditure for licensing novel Gen IV nuclear reactor designs.

The Legal Nature of the Legislative Process

• Barroso da Graca, Luis Otavio
• Advisor(s): Gould, Jonathan S.

In this text, I argue that the legislative process has a legal nature, as opposed to its more apparent political facet, and that breaches of procedural lawmaking rules are incompatible with such a characterization. To defend such a viewpoint, I approach the topic in three parts.The first part addresses legislatures’ procedural rules’ force of law, navigating through U.S. and Brazilian cases. Against views that take legislative procedural rules as non-mandatory and merely coordinating tools, I develop my argument upon Hans Kelsen’s and H.L.A. Hart’s theorizations and state that these provisions belong to (hard) law. Hence, though legal interpretation challenges may blur the distinction between the political and legal facets, I affirm that legislative procedures have the force of law and, as such, are binding. The second part deals with justification and overseeing mechanisms. I argue that there are several reasons why lawmakers should abide by the legislative procedural rules. First, it is a matter of the rule of law, meaning that the participants in the lawmaking process have the right to play according to the pertinent provisions. Second, compliance with the established procedures safeguards participation and the flow of diverse opinions and, thus, democratic representativeness. Third, rules’ observance fosters transparency, shedding light on a bill and its motives. Finally, I state that compliance with procedural rules should result from enforcing tools managed by legislators and third parties, such as non-partisan officers in legislatures and, under some restraints, the judiciary. The third part addresses a specific situation: the enactment of executive decrees, provisional measures, directives, or anything similar, with the force of law, to address emergencies. I defend that the misuse or abuse of these expedited lawmaking instruments is incompatible with the legal nature of the legislative process. First, I analyze the ancient Roman Republic’s approach to the circumvention of serious menaces and the theories of John Locke, Carl Schmitt, and Santi Romano in this regard. Then, I assess how governments in Brazil, Italy, and the United States usually take advantage of those instruments not to address threats but to bypass the burdens of ordinary legislative procedures. To avoid such an outcome, I argue that legislatures should enhance their oversight capacity under emergencies or pressing situations while simultaneously providing the judiciary with more specific reviewing standards.

Hydride-Supported Actinide–Transition Metal Complexes

• Ye, Christopher
• Advisor(s): Arnold, John

Chapter 1. The field of f-block–transition metal hydride chemistry is introduced and summarized. Key properties of these compounds such as small molecule activation chemistry and H2 uptake and release are outlined. The dearth of actinide–transition metal species despite their potential for fundamental bonding insight and novel reactivity is highlighted, and the motivations for studying these compounds are stated.

Chapter 2. Reaction of K[Cp*IrH3] with actinide halides led to multimetallic actinide–transition metal hydrides U{(μ-H)3IrCp*}4 and Th{[(μ-H)2(H)IrCp*]2[(μ-H)3IrCp*]2}, respectively. These complexes feature an unexpected, significant discrepancy in hydride bonding modes; the uranium species contains twelve bridging hydrides while the thorium complex contains ten bridging hydrides and two terminal, Ir-bound hydrides. Use of a U(III) starting material with the same potassium iridate resulted in the octanuclear complex {U[(μ2-H)3IrCp*]2[(μ3-H)2IrCp*]}2. Computational studies indicate significant bonding character between U/Th and Ir in the tetrairidate compounds, the first reported evidence of actinide-iridium covalency. In addition, these studies attribute the variation in hydride bonding between the tetrairidate complexes to differences in dispersion effects. This work establishes a novel route to synthesizing actinide–transition metal polyhydrides with close metal–metal contacts.

Chapter 3. Conversion of Cp*OsH5 to K[Cp*OsH4] with KBn, followed by reaction with tetravalent actinide halides results in the synthesis of uranium– and thorium–osmium heterometallic polyhydride complexes. Through these species, An–Os bonding and the reactivity of An–Os interactions are studied. These complexes are formally sixteen-coordinate, the highest observed coordination number for uranium and thorium. Computational studies suggest the presence of a significant bonding interaction between the actinide center and the four coordinated osmium centers, the first report of this behavior between osmium and an actinide. Upon photolysis, these complexes underwent intramolecular C–H activation with the formation of an Os–Os bond, while the thorium complex was able to activate an additional C–H bond of the benzene solvent, resulting in a μ-η1,η1 phenyl ligand across one Th–Os interaction. These results highlight the unique reactivity that can arise from actinide and transition metal centers in proximity, and expand the scope of actinide photolysis reactivity.

Chapter 4. The third Cp*-supported transition metal polyhydride – Cp*ReH6 – was shown to be a competent partner to actinide hydrides. The synthesis of actinide tetrarhenate complexes completed a series of iridate, osmate, and rhenate polyhydrides, allowing for structural and bonding comparisons. Computational studies examine the bonding interactions, particularly between metals, in these complexes. Several factors affect metal–metal distances and covalency for the actinide tetrametallates, including metal oxidation state, coordination number, and dispersion effects. The osmium and rhenium octametallic U2M6 clusters are reported as well, with similar analysis of structure and electronics.

Chapter 5. Reaction of the potassium iridate K[Cp*IrH3] with a bulky uranium(III) metallocene yielded a heterobimetallic U(III)–Ir species. Reactivity of this complex with CS2 is described, resulting in the novel ethanetetrathiolate fragment, as produced via hydride insertion and C–C coupling. This demonstrates the ability to combine the hydride insertion chemistry of transition metal hydrides with C–C coupling observed in U(III) compounds by bringing both metal centers in close proximity.

Safe and Trustworthy Decision Making through Reinforcement Learning

• Li, Jinning
• Advisor(s): Tomizuka, Masayoshi

The advent of advanced computational technologies and artificial intelligence has ushered in a new era of complex systems and applications, notably in the realms of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and robotics. These systems are increasingly required to make decisions autonomously in dynamic and uncertain environments. Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as a pivotal technique in this context, offering a framework for learning optimal decision-making strategies through interactions with the environment. However, ensuring safety and trustworthiness in these decisions remains a critical challenge, especially in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving.

This dissertation addresses the aforementioned challenge by proposing innovative RL-based approaches, and is structured into three distinct but interconnected parts, each focusing on a unique aspect of RL in the context of safe and trustworthy decision-making.The thread of this dissertation is based on the exploration and advancement of RL techniques to ensure safety and reliability in autonomous decision-making systems, particularly in complex, dynamic environments.

We first establish the foundational aspects of RL in decision-making, particularly in uncertain and dynamic environments. The focus here is on enhancing RL to deal with real-world complexities, such as interacting with unpredictable agents, e.g., human drivers in AV scenarios, and handling distributional shifts in offline RL settings. This sets the stage for understanding and improving the decision-making capabilities of autonomous systems under uncertainty.

Building on the first part, we then explore the integration of hierarchical planning with RL. The emphasis is on creating frameworks that combine different levels of decision-making, balancing immediate, low-level safety concerns with high-level strategic objectives. The approach aims to address the limitations of traditional RL in complex, multi-agent environments and long-duration tasks, demonstrating improved adaptability and efficiency in real-time decision-making.

The final part represents a forward-looking approach to RL, focusing on the integration of offline and online learning methodologies. This part addresses the challenge of training RL agents in a manner that is both safe and effective, particularly in contexts where exploration can be costly or dangerous. By combining the strengths of large-scale offline data (expert demonstrations) with online learning, we present a novel framework for enhancing the safety and performance of RL agents in practical, real-world applications.

Exploiting Electron Magnetron Motion in a Penning-Malmberg Trap to Measure Patch Potentials, Misalignment, and Magnetic Fields

• Christensen, Andrew Jordan
• Advisor(s): Fajans, Joel

A sequence of electron clouds is extracted from an electron plasma reservoir. These clouds are highly reproducible and their E x B drift motion is nearly identical to that of a single particle, making them useful for measurements of electric and magnetic fields. First, by weakening the trapping potential confining the clouds we observe that they move off-axis, and we use this to measure the electric field due to patch potentials. Next, we measure the total charge of these clouds using small shifts in their magnetron frequencies. The misalignment between the trap electrodes and the external magnet is measured by imaging the clouds from different axial locations in the trap. By combining electron cyclotron resonance with the patch potential measurement procedure, we can measure the magnetic field strength up to a millimeter away from the trap axis. Finally, a new magnetometry technique called electron magnetron phase imaging (EMPI) is used to measure the rapidly changing magnetic field involved in observing the effect of gravity on antihydrogen. In EMPI, the magnetron frequency is measured precisely, and then we observe small changes to the magnetron frequency as the magnetic field decreases. In the process of analyzing the experimental data from each of these measurements, subtleties in the motion of electron clouds are revealed. Some of these measurement techniques help us to understand systematic errors in the ALPHA collaboration's test of the weak equivalence principle. Other techniques are used to inform experimental procedures and help explain the behavior of ALPHA's Penning-Malmberg traps. Most of these ideas could be applied to many Penning-Malmberg traps, provided that they have the ability to image charged particles. Unknown magnetic fields, patch potentials, and misalignment pose difficulties for many experiments, so implementing these cloud-based measurements could benefit other research groups.

Distortions in Wearable Optics: Comfort, Perception, and Adaptation

• McLean, Iona
• Advisor(s): Cooper, Emily

Many people have had the experience of viewing the world through optics, such as when wearing corrective spectacles or using augmented and virtual reality devices (AR/VR). The purpose of the optical lenses present in spectacles and devices is to bring images into focus, but they also produce unwanted distortions such as magnification and minification that change the retinal image size or shape of an object. Surprisingly, small changes in retinal image size or shape can have substantial perceptual and physical consequences. While spectacles have been around for centuries, there remains a large gap in the literature on how optical distortions affect the viewer. This dissertation contains experimental investigations related to how optical distortions affect perception and comfort, and how these effects change over time. Chapter 1 establishes a fundamental understanding of the onset of perceptual and physical symptoms produced by optical minification. Chapter 2 investigates how people adapt over time to a specific type of monocular distortion that alters depth and shape perception. Chapter 3 investigates how the visual system interprets the geometry of objects when faced with perceptual disruptions caused by optical distortions. Together this research provides a much-needed foundational understanding of optical distortions from multiple domains.

Risk-Aware Algorithms for Learning-Based Control With Applications to Energy and Mechatronic Systems

• Kandel, Aaron Isaac
• Advisor(s): Moura, Scott J

This dissertation leverages and develops the powerful out-of-sample safety certificates of Wasserstein ambiguity sets to create a suite of data-driven control algorithms that help solve safety-critical industrial problems. This work is motivated by the ongoing relevance of robustness and safety when applying data-driven decision making in the real world. For example, lithium-ion batteries are driving transitions to renewable energy sources. Optimizing their performance and longevity is of the utmost importance, but highly difficult due to their complex, nonlinear, and safety-critical electrochemical dynamics. While data-driven control can dramatically improve the performance of systems like lithium-ion batteries, certifying system safety remains an open challenge. This dissertation explores certifying learning-based controllers via distributionally robust optimization (DRO). We focus on Wasserstein ambiguity sets, DRO methods that draw worst-case realizations of random variables under relatively permissive assumptions. This makes them ideal for learning-based control, where data can be highly limited and the controller is likely encounter new experience unaccounted for in its training data.

In Chapter 2, we begin by presenting simple mathematical arguments that extend an existing reformulation of Wasserstein DRO to cases where dependence on decision variables x and random variables R can be nonconvex as long as x and R are separable. By cleverly modeling stochasticity in model uncertainty, we augment nonconvex optimal control problems with Wasserstein ambiguity sets to obtain idealized probabilistic safety certificates.

The remaining chapters extend this theoretical result across the range of model-based and model-free reinforcement learning. Chapter 2 explores offline model-based reinforcement learning within a latent state-space, with application to real-time fast-charging of li-ion batteries using electrochemical information. By leveraging the results of Chapter 2, we can hedge against model and data errors to probabilistically guarantee safe distributional data-driven control.

Chapter 4 presents an end-to-end framework for safe learning-based control using nonlinear stochastic MPC. We focus on scenarios where the controller is applied directly to a system of which it has highly limited experience, toward safety during tabula-rasa learning-based control as a challenging case for validation. We validate findings with case studies of extreme lithium-ion battery fast charging and autonomous vehicle obstacle avoidance using a basic perception system.

Finally, in Chapter 5, we apply the same DRO architecture to value-based RL. We describe a structure for deep Q-learning within the framework of constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs). By characterizing the uncertainty of constraint cost functions based on their temporal-difference errors, we augment relevant constraints with tightening offset variables based on DRO theory of Chapter 2.

In our concluding remarks, we discuss the broader relevance of our findings and map directions for future work.

The Method of Distributions for Random Ordinary Differential Equations

• Maltba, Tyler Evan
• Advisor(s): Evans, Steven N ;
• DeWeese, Michael R

Random ordinary differential equations (RODEs) describe numerous physical and biological systems whose dynamics contain some level of inherent randomness. These sources of uncertainty enter into dynamics in two forms: (a) externally imposed or internally generated random excitations, i.e., noise, and/or (b) probabilistic representations of uncertain coefficients and initial/boundary data. Such systems admit a distribution of solutions, which is (partially) characterized by the single-time joint probability density function (PDF) of system states. If the random excitations correspond to Gaussian white noise, it is relatively straightforward to derive a closed-form deterministic partial differential equation (PDE) known as the Fokker-Planck (or Kolmogorov’s forward) equation, which governs the evolution of the joint PDF. However, most plausible noise sources are correlated (colored). In this case, the resulting PDF equations require a closure approximation. Via the method of distributions, we propose two methods for closing such equations: (a) modified large-eddy-diffusivity closures, and (b) a data-driven closure relying on sparse regression to learn relevant features. In the realms of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics and computational neuroscience, the closures are tested in a head-to-head comparison against Monte Carlo simulations for colored-noise sources such as Ornstein-Uhlenbeck and sine-Wiener processes. Additionally, the approaches’ algorithmic complexities are thoroughly discussed.

Implementing the method of distributions for high-dimensional systems of RODEs is challenging due to the computational burden of solving the high-dimensional PDE associated with the joint PDF of states. Although recent advancements in numerical integration techniques for high-dimensional PDEs have been made, they are often tailored to specific applications and lack generality for large numbers of states/dimensions. However, for many applications, only a low-dimensional quantity of interest (QoI) from the underlying high-dimensional system is desired. In these cases, it is sufficient to study a reduced-order PDF (RO-PDF) equation, i.e., a low-dimensional PDE for the QoI’s PDF, allowing classical integration techniques to be employed. Moreover, unclosed coefficients in the RO-PDF equations can be rewritten as conditional expectations, which we directly estimate from data via nonparametric regression. When the RODE exhibits strong nonlinearities and/or stiffness, it is usually necessary to supplement the learned reduced-order PDE with a data assimilation method to account for model misspecification that may occur from regression discrepancies. We propose nudging (a.k.a., Newtonian relaxation) and deep neural networks for this task, which are successfully tested for uncertainty quantification of stochastically forced oscillators and transmission failures in electrical power grids.

Essays on the Responses to Taxation by US Firms

• Love, Michael
• Advisor(s): Auerbach, Alan

Business taxation, by affecting the costs of certain behaviors of firms, owners, or their counterparties, can trigger potentially substantial changes in real activity, such as changes in inputs or production processes. But it can also prompt avoidance responses---such as legal restructuring or changes in tax reporting---that may have important effects on efficiency and distribution. Understanding such responses is thus critical for enacting efficient and well-informed tax policy.

In this dissertation I investigate the real and avoidance responses at the intersection of several important topics in businesses taxation, namely capital taxation, taxation of passthrough entities, international taxation, and corporate taxation. My research sheds new light on our understanding of US business taxation by employing a variety of empirical methods to (1) develop new explanations for persistent puzzles in the literature, (2) fill knowledge gaps in the current body of business tax research, and (3) draw attention to new issues that have so far received little attention by public finance economists.

In Chapter 1, I investigate financing and investment responses by corporations to a change in capital taxation, presenting results that help resolve an existing conflict among empirical findings in the public finance literature. I estimate that dividend taxes, by impacting the cost of equity financing, have large effects on the financing, investment, and real outcomes of many US public firms. But---in contrast with economists' longstanding focus on capital investment outcomes---I find these responses are mostly from smaller, cash-constrained firms through “non-capital” investment channels: R&D and operating expenditures. Exploiting a quasi-experiment that tracks financing and expenditure responses to the 2003 dividend tax cut, I estimate a large, immediate, and sustained increase in average equity financing (+86% ± 11%) by these firms, reflecting a high elasticity to the cost of capital. Responsive firms put the cash substantially toward operating expenditures and R&D, rather than tangible investment. I also find higher job growth and long-run sales among the responsive firms. These results make sense, reconciling mixed evidence in recent research: because dividend taxes affect the cost of equity financing, the firms impacted most are those that actually rely on equity financing---smaller, often unprofitable, less capital-intensive firms who invest heavily in "non-capital" pathways.

In Chapter 2, I describe and estimate tax avoidance behavior that uses complex entity structures involving partnerships and tax havens to exploit discrepancies in tax treatment of capital income across jurisdictions. I also address a significant missing piece of knowledge in the public finance literature: where partnership income goes. Partnerships are the fastest growing class of business entity in the United States and represent over one third of reported business income, but due to their legal complexity, data quality, and opaque nature economists have not yet been able to identify where a sizeable portion of this income goes. In this paper, I use US federal tax records from 2005-2019 to compile a comprehensive analysis covering 99% of the income flowing to the owners of partnerships. I find that a much larger portion goes to foreign owners than previously thought, and that most of this amount goes to tax havens---over $1 trillion since 2011. The majority of these flows likely face zero tax in either the US or in the tax haven. The evidence I present suggests a prevalent use of entity arrangements by investment firms that shield investors from tax and reporting through "blocker structures," predominantly in the Cayman Islands. Evidence also suggests a substantial increase in income reported after the enactment of Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).

In Chapter 3, I investigate the degree to which corporations can manipulate their accounting of expenses to avoid taxes, and what effects this has on the corporate tax base. The investigation exploits a unique corporate tax reform in Texas that replaced a 4.5% profits tax with a broader 1% gross revenue tax and that eliminated almost all deductions, but still permitted corporations to deduct one of two categories of expenses: cost of goods sold (COGS) or total worker compensation. Data from federal corporate income tax returns makes it possible to estimate the effects of the reform, as data are consistent across years and harmonized across states. Strong evidence reveals a very large avoidance response for COGS but not for compensation: corporations reduced the tax base roughly 4% by reclassifying non-deductible expenses into COGS (with a large elasticity of roughly -5 ± 1), but there is little reclassification into compensation. These findings reveal the potentially very large but also highly context-specific nature of accounting reclassification responses. Given that numerous states have some form of gross receipts tax and that there is currently wide discussion of measures to broaden corporate tax bases by incorporating accounting measures, these findings offer important considerations for policymakers and tax authorities when designing, scoring, and enforcing corporate tax changes.

More than Mere Deadweight: The Variety of Regulatory Imaginaries that Shape How Regulators, Innovators, and Entrepreneurs Coproduce Disruptive Technological Innovation

• Posch, Konrad Edward Ian
• Advisor(s): Ansell, Christopher K.

Disruptive technological innovation is the contemporary face of innovation and a dominant force in society. Change is occurring faster and upsetting existing scientific and technical policy systems. Entrepreneurs and innovators, drawing on a folk economic model of regulation, often believe that regulation cannot keep up with the pace of change and therefore policy makers should stay out of their way. Like many folk models, this perception of regulation-as-intrinsic-impediment-to-innovation may sometimes be true but it is not always true. Worse yet, this folk perception of regulators-as-impediment leads entrepreneurs and innovators to ignore opportunities to co-create beneficial regulations and instead create their own bad outcomes by prompting regulators to craft draconian regulations in response to entrepreneurs’ malicious non-compliance.Innovators thus oppose regulation not because they’ve had bad experiences but because they think they will in the future. A popular version of this folk economic model of regulation brandishes the word “disrupt” while storming the halls of stodgy industries and regulatory agencies. Despite this contemporary disruptive innovation narrative, substantial technological change is not a recent invention (though it may be accelerating). The reified economic rhetoric of the folk economic model has convinced disruptive entrepreneurs that regulation is a dirty word synonymous with state inadequacy. Although never perfect and sometimes inadequate, regulators have invariably adapted to technological change. This project explains how regulators have before, are now, and can again become allies of innovators when entrepreneurs look past limiting preconceptions. Regulatory scholars who study actually-existing regulation will recognize the folk economic model as an extreme version of “capture” within “command and control” regulation (c.f. Carpenter and Moss 2014b; Slayton and Clark-Ginsberg 2018). They have repeatedly demonstrated the deceptive inadequacy of totalizing catch-all models of regulation. Nevertheless, scholars who do not study actually-existing regulation often use this folk economic capture baseline to judge all work on regulation which hinders scholarly understanding of relationships between regulation and innovation (c.f. Dal Bó 2006; Carrigan and Coglianese 2015). With these scholarly limitations, lay entrepreneurs’ misperceptions are no surprise. Contrary to the folk model, I argue regulators have been, are now, and can again be so much more than merely a deadweight loss to innovation if only innovators and entrepreneurs can be guided past self-limiting imaginaries such as the folk economic model of disruptive innovation. To develop this argument, I derive a deductive typology of regulatory imaginaries and discuss how we can use this typology to understand the variety of relationships between regulators, entrepreneurs, and innovators that can lead to better or worse effects on innovation. I then specify my novel methodological approach of Bayesian Type Validation (BayesTV) which combines deductive typological theory with logical Bayesian analysis. Finally, I employ BayesTV to inductively verify my typology using three technological cases in the United States and European Union: autonomous vehicles (AVs), gene editing (GE), and electronic health records (EHR). The Folk Economic Model imaginary is but one of seven possible regulatory imaginaries of the proper relationship between regulators, entrepreneurs, and innovators. Regulatory imaginaries, based on the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff 2015a), are collectively held, publicly performed conceptions of desirable relationships between regulation and technological innovation which actors believe are (or should be) institutionalized within regulatory agencies. Where the Folk Economic Model imaginary sees regulation as only an impediment to be minimized, the other six imaginaries see other potential effects such as moderation, constraint, and catalyst. Critically, my deductively derived and empirically validated typology also demonstrates that regulatory imaginaries are plural, diverse, and malleable. In presenting three empirical chapters covering multiple imaginaries, I demonstrate that there are plural actually-existing imaginaries around well know technologies. In presenting both similarities and differences in the US and EU implementations of regulation for each disruptive technology, I demonstrate that there is meaningful diversity among regulatory imaginaries in conceptual derivation, expected effect on innovation, and empirical implementation. Finally, in the application of BayesTV to the empirical cases, I demonstrate that regulatory imaginaries are malleable through policy. This project focuses on regulatory imaginaries because they shape the perceptions of what is possible and desirable about the relationship between regulators, entrepreneurs, and innovators around disruptive innovation. While future studies should build on this focus on imaginaries by exploring their origins and how contending imaginaries shape the outcomes of the policies that are built around them, this project focuses on the imaginaries themselves in order to demonstrate that we need not limit ourselves to the Folk Economic Model which sees regulation, as a rule, as merely deadweight.

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Open Access Dissertations

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Electronic-Photonic Co-Design of Silicon Photonic Interconnects

Eecs department, university of california, berkeley, technical report no. ucb/eecs-2017-208, december 13, 2017, http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/techrpts/2017/eecs-2017-208.pdf.

Silicon photonic interconnects hold great promise in meeting the high bandwidth and low energy demands of next-generation interconnects. System-level driven electronic-photonic co-design is the key to improving the bandwidth density and energy efficiency. In this study, a comprehensive co-optimization framework is developed for high-speed silicon photonic transmitters utilizing compact models and a detailed optical simulation framework. Given technology and link constraints, microring and Mach-Zehnder transmitter designs are optimized and compared based on a unified optical phase shifter model. Non-return-to-zero (NRZ) and pulse-amplitude-modulation-4 (PAM-4) modulation schemes are analyzed and compared for microring-based transmitters. Using the co-design approach, a monolithic 40Gb/s optical NRZ transmitter based on microring modulators is designed and demonstrated in zero-change 45nm CMOS SOI process. Electronic-photonic co-design with the high swing driver enables this transmitter to achieve total energy efficiency of 330fJ/b and the photonics and modulator driver area bandwidth density of 6.7 Tb/s/mm2. This dissertation also discusses the design and demonstration of the first full silicon photonic interconnect on a 3D integrated electronic-photonic platform. These results make the microring-based silicon photonic transceivers an attractive solution for the next-generation inter and intra-rack photonic interconnects. Finally, a short-reach laser-forwarding coherent link architecture is proposed to further improve the energy efficiency of silicon photonic interconnects. The key concepts of the proposed architecture are verified experimentally with microring-based silicon photonic transmitters. The architecture saves the laser power by 6-7.5x and could enable complex modulation schemes for the future short-reach optical links.

Advisors: Vladimir Stojanovic

BibTeX citation:

EndNote citation:

Anatol Klass

Phd candidate, east asia: china.

I study the institutional and intellectual development of Chinese foreign policy across the twentieth century. My research ranges from the education and professionalization of China's diplomatic corps during the Republican Period (1911-1949) to the experiences of Chinese representatives in international organizations during subsequent decades. My  dissertation focuses on the campus experiences and subsequent careers of students in the Diplomacy Department at the Central Political Institute ( zhongyang zhengzhi xuexiao ), the Kuomintang's party school for civil service training. The project follows these young bureaucrats from the classroom into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as they encountered new theories of international politics and then attempted to realize those ideas by transforming the institutions and practices of Chinese diplomacy. Although party school students were trained by the KMT, many of them stayed in Mainland China after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. My dissertation traces the parallel careers of these former classmates on either side of the Taiwan Strait during the first decades of the Cold War as they put their shared training into practice in two very different political contexts. I conducted the research for this project as a Fulbright fellow in Taiwan and then spent the 2022-2023 academic year at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center as a May Fellow  in History and Public Policy  I am spending the 2023-2024 academic year at Harvard's Fairbank Center as the Hou Family Predoctoral Fellow in Taiwan Studies. My primary research language is Chinese (modern and classical), but I also work with sources in Japanese and French. In addition to my academic work, my writing has also appeared in  The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Los Angeles Review of Books, ChinaFile,  and  SupChina. 

Research Interests

• History of International Law and International Organizations
• Global History
• Cold War History
• Institutional History

Publications

"The Peking Formula: International Law, the United Nations, and Chinese Sovereignty during the Korean War,"   The International History Review,  Volume 43, Issue 6 (2021), 1217-1237.

"'China marching with India': India's Cold War advocacy for the People's Republic of China at the United Nations, 1949-1971," Cold War History, published online on June 25, 2023. 

Awards & Fellowships

Harvard Fairbank Center Hou Family Predoctoral Fellow in Taiwan Studies (2023-2024)

Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies Summer Research Grant (Summer 2023)

Berkeley Institute for the Study of Societal Issues Mini-grant (Spring 2023)

Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center (2022-2024)

Wilson Center History and Public Policy Program Chun and Jane Chiu Family Foundation Fellow in Taiwan Studies (Summer 2022)

UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation Dissertation Fellowship (2021-2022)

Fulbright Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Taiwan (2021-2022)

Ezra Vogel Memorial Fellowship (2021)

Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies Graduate Fellowship (2020-2021)

Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) award--Japanese (2019-2020)

Schwarzman Scholar Fellowship at Tsinghua University (2017-2018)

Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize (2017)

[email protected]

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The theses in UWSpace are publicly accessible unless restricted due to publication or patent pending.

This collection includes a subset of theses submitted by graduates of the University of Waterloo as a partial requirement of a degree program at the Master's or PhD level. It includes all electronically submitted theses. (Electronic submission was optional from 1996 through 2006. Electronic submission became the default submission format in October 2006.)

This collection also includes a subset of UW theses that were scanned through the Theses Canada program. (The subset includes UW PhD theses from 1998 - 2002.)

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