ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My foremost gratitude goes to my advisor Prof. Jun Ni. Without him, this dissertation would not have been possible. I thank him not only for his insights and valuable feedback that contributed greatly to this dissertation, but also for his understanding, support and guidance through the years. I would also like to thank Prof. Dragan Djurdjanovic, who introduced me into the research center of intelligent maintenance systems and helped to sharpen my research skills with his patience, encouragement and advices. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr. Elizabeth Latronico for offering me the internship opportunities to work at Robert Bosch Research and Technology Center as a research assistant. Her expert advices and experiences in automotive fault diagnosis inspired new ideas in my dissertation. I also would like to thank Prof. A. Galip Ulsoy and Prof. Minyan Liu for their valuable feedback that helped to improve the dissertation in many ways. My graduate studies would not have been the same without the friendship of Jianbo Liu, Jing Zhou, Yi Liao, Shiming Duan and many others. Together w