BY

I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Frank Kulacki for providing me with the opportunity to pursue graduate education, for his continued support of my research interests, and for the guidance under which I have developed over the past two years. I am similarly grateful to Professor Sean Garrick for the generous use of his computational resources, and for the many hours of discussion that have been fundamental to my development as a computationalist. Professors Kulacki, Garrick, and Joseph Nichols have generously served on my committee, and I appreciate all of their time. Additional acknowledgement is due to the professors who have either provided me with assistantships, or have hosted me in their laboratories: Professors Van de Ven, Li, Heberlein, Nagasaki, and Ito. I would finally like to thank my family and friends for their encouragement