Liwei Lin (Advisor)

The breakdown of organic substances to retrieve energy is a naturally occurring process in nature. Catabolic microorganisms contain enzymes capable of accelerating the disintegration of simple sugars and alcohols to produce separated charge in the form of electrons and protons as byproducts that can be harvested extracellularly through an electrochemical cell to produce electrical energy directly. Bioelectrochemical energy is then an appealing green alternative to other power sources. However, a number of fundamental questions must be addressed if the technology is to become...

The increasing demands for higher performance, advanced wireless and mobile communication systems have continuously driven device innovations and system improvements. In order to reduce power consumption and integration complexity, radio frequency (RF) microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) resonators and filters have been considered as direct replacements for off-chip passive components. In this dissertation, a new radio architecture for direct channel selection is explored. The primary elements in this new architecture include a multitude of closely-spaced narrowband filters (...

Substrate-based biophysical cues, which interact with cells through mechanotransductive pathways, influence many biological processes and cellular behaviors. By leveraging microfabrication techniques, this work aims to build biophysical stimuli into cellular substrates through discrete microtopographic features to study cellular responses. Here, uniform and gradient arrays of circular microposts have been geometrically tuned to change the apparent rigidity of a substrate and the placement of available cellular attachment sites. Three areas of cellular interaction with these micropost...