ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest sincere gratitude to my advisors, Prof. Sharma Chakravarthy and Prof. Mohan Kumar, for giving me an oppor-tunity to work on this challenging problem and providing me great guidance and support through the course of this research work. I would also like to thank Prof. Hao Che for serving on my committee. I am also grateful to Shravan Chamakura and Manu Aery for maintaining a well-administered research environment and their commitment to work. Sincere appreciation is due to Raman Adaikkalavan, Ajay Eppili, Suchitha Joseph and all friends in ITLAB for their invaluable help and advice during the course of development of this system. This work was supported, in part, by NSF (grants IIS-0123730 and IIS-0326505). Last, but not the least, I would also like to thank my husband, parents and family members for their endless love and constant support throughout my academic career. Without their encouragement and endurance, this work would not have been possible