Approved

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Graduate school has been a very interesting experience for me, and has been a time filled with learning, unlearning and introspection. I wish to acknowledge the following people who certainly shaped my experience at Grad school: I'm very grateful to my advisor, Dr. Zhaoming He, without whose support and guidance this project would not have been possible, and whose expertise in the field of ventricular mechanics has helped me learn quite a lot in such an interesting, inter-disciplinary field. It has truly been a remarkable experience working with him. I would like to thank Dr. Yingying Hu, who got me familiarized with the methodology and with the software tools used for our research. I would also like to show gratitude to my lab-mates- Bo Gao, Dylan Smith, Kailiang Zhang and Shamik Bhattacharya for their invaluable support and encouragement. And, I would like to thank Ms. Anastasia Coles for reviewing the initial draft o