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Co-Creating and Evaluating Community-Based Kinship Navigator Programs for Our Use: Partnering with Lived Experience Experts of Informal Kinship Caregivers and Navigators to Profile Caregiving Challenges, Address Program Implementation, and Identify Mechanisms of Change in Caregiver Well-Being in Washington State
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2025Informal kinship caregivers comprise the majority of caregivers of maltreated children who cannot stay safely with their biological parents, especially grandparent-headed households (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023). Despite sharing similar challenges and service needs, informal kinship caregivers receive significantly less support and services compared to their formal counterparts (Denby, 2015; Lin, 2014; Pittman, 2023). The disparity persists in benefits and service opportunities between these two groups (Smith, 2018). However, kinship navigator programs can address this imbalance by catering to both formal, licensed kinship caregivers and informal, unlicensed caregivers. Kinship navigators help families negotiate complicated eligibility criteria, service gaps, and access barriers that exacerbate racial and class inequities (Gleeson, 2020). Consequently, kinship navigator programs possess the potential not only to support formal caregivers but also to reach informal caregivers who might not traditionally seek services. This approach aims to enhance community engagement and promote increased access to services, irrespective of the circumstances surrounding kinship care (Rushovich et al., 2021). To address the lack of research evidence concerning informal kinship care (Berrick & Hernandez, 2016) and the significance of prevention-related needs within informal kinship care as a strategy for preventing formal foster care placements (Brown et al., 2024), this mixed-methods dissertation study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the service needs and utilization patterns of informal kinship caregivers. Additionally, it seeks to examine the service delivery and program implementation of the kinship navigator program in Washington State through a secondary analysis of quantitative survey data, linked administrative data, and qualitative focus group data. These data were originally collected as part of a university-service agency partnership between the University of Washington and local service agencies using a community-engaged research (CEnR) approach. Specifically, this dissertation will 1) identify the distinct patterns of caregiving challenges in informal kinship placement, as well as significant sociodemographic variations in such patterns, and the role of KNP engagement in the association between these distinct groups and sociodemographic determinants; 2) explore the street-level program implementation of KNP from perspectives of informal kinship caregivers and navigators with lived experience expertise (LEE) within a RE-AIM framework (i.e. Reach, Efficacy/Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance); and finally, 3) examine the mechanism of change in caregiver well-being of informal kinship caregivers attending the enhanced Kinship Navigator Program intervention in Washington States with a focus on the roles of service utilization, and caregiver stress reduction. Collectively, research findings will inform policy change and tailor intervention to advance kinship first culture and future kinship-centered program implementation
afterarise (for soprano saxophone, piano, and amplified resonance)
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2025afterarise (written for saxophonist Antonio Jarvey) explores birdsong as a conduit for sonic and ecological reflection. Fragmented field recordings of blackbirds—with various time-stretching and spectral techniques applied—serve as the work’s primary “source”; not as mimetic material, but as a lens for creative transcription and recomposition, revealing micro-structural layers otherwise imperceptible. Extended moments of stillness situate the sparse musical statements in a shadow of sympathetic resonance, drawing connections to the harmonic world of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” (a favorite song of both myself and the dedicatee). Inspired by Pablo Picasso’s line drawings of birds, afterarise ultimately attempts to capture the essence of a natural phenomenon through a multiplicity of perspectives
Second-Generation Immigrants and Queer Identity
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2025The population of openly queer second-generation immigrants is rising and its increasingly necessary to understand their experiences and identity formation processes. Though several studies offer theories about second-generation immigrants or queer young adults, this intersection of identities is less understood, especially in more recent contexts. Thus, it is critical to examine how queer second-generation immigrants interact with competing and cross-border cultural frameworks now, given recent cultural and political shifts in U.S. culture. In this study, I ask: how do queer second generation immigrants navigate their sexuality or gender identity within the context of their immigrant families? Further, how does this cultural negotiation influence the processes and timing of acceptance of identity and coming out? To understand these questions, I completed 25 in-depth interviews with 14 queer Mexican second-generation immigrants and 11 queer non-second-generation immigrant participants for a comparison group. My study reveals three key themes that exemplify the competing tensions participants experience: 1) national political and cultural landscape; 2) nuclear family dynamics; and 3) the role of extended family. Ultimately, these findings indicate a certain level of cultural transnationalism among participants, and emphasize the need for social resources during young adulthood that are attuned to these cultural distinctions
Enhancing ADS-B Security through Hybrid Cryptographic and Band-Switching Techniques
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2025This thesis presents a comprehensive investigation of unidirectional broadcast communications, with a focus on Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) communication in aviation. Following a detailed survey of legacy surveillance systems and the principles of Mode-S Extended Squitter, it identifies the security vulnerabilities in open, unauthenticated ADS-B frames. To establish a reproducible experimental baseline, a low-cost receiver was designed using RTL-SDR and a Raspberry Pi, validating timing, pulse-shape, and framing assumptions and reproducing known attack scenarios. Complementing this, a MATLAB - based signal - generation framework was designed to synthesize fully compliant ADS-B waveforms and adversarial payloads. The core contribution, the Bit-Level Obfuscation with Band-Switching (BLOBS) technique, proposes a methodology involving bit-level scrambling and nanosecond range frequency switching to scramble 112-bit ADS-B messages across multiple channels while preserving backward compatibility with existing ground stations. Prototype implementation on a band-switchable transceiver IC confirmed error free reassembly and decoding, promising significant resilience to selective jamming, spoofing and passive tracking. Beyond aviation, the signal-generation tools and proposed BLOBS technique are generalized for future implementation in other broadcast-based communication schemes. Collectively, these contributions deliver both an open experimental platform and propose a physical-layer defense strategy, charting a clear pathway toward securing next-generation unidirectional broadcast communications without sacrificing their inherent simplicity, low latency, or wide-area coverage
Project Summary: FHL Parasite Showcase
No full textThis project is a preliminary look into the biodiversity of San Juan’s marine
invertebrate parasite populations. Numerous organisms from across several different
marine habitats around the island, and across the tree of life were cataloged for this
project with the hopes of keying and genotyping them for further analysis in relation to
species presence and diversity. By collecting, identifying, preserving, and
photographing marine invertebrate parasites, I hope to contribute to the knowledge
base of parasite species diversity in the San Juans, in addition to showcasing the
ecological and morphological wonders of parasitic taxa in the marine world
Seasonality and Discharge as Key Drivers of Headwater Stream Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the Landscape Carbon Budget
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2025Quantifying carbon losses from inland waters has emerged as an uncertainty in our understanding of the global carbon cycle. Streams and rivers are of particular interest because of their potential to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere with some estimates predicting riverine carbon emissions will alter the calculation of terrestrial net ecosystem exchange (NEE), the balance between how much carbon land ecosystems absorb and how much they release. Headwater streams, small tributaries of rivers at the highest end of a watershed, are especially important when quantifying these CO2 emissions and carbon losses because of their tight coupling to the terrestrial environment and high turbulence. Heterogeneity within headwater stream networks, both spatially and temporally, makes measuring and upscaling these emissions challenging because measurements of carbon dioxide in streams are often limited to a few monitoring points. In this dissertation, we sought to fill knowledge gaps regarding spatial and temporal variability in CO2 emissions across a range of biomes. In Chapter 2, we demonstrated how under high flow conditions, a stream network in the Pacific Northwest, can have much greater total carbon emissions than during low flow conditions (1.22 Mg C day−1 vs. 0.034 Mg C day−1). Increased stream network area, higher gas exchange, and greater terrestrial connectivity all contributed to these increased emissions in our stream network model. We found these carbon emissions during high flow in November accounted for a much larger percentage of NEE than during base flow in August (54% vs. 0.62%), emphasizing the need to better quantify carbon emission during flow events. In Chapter 3, we expanded this analysis by modeling carbon emissions from five headwater stream networks in different biomes, incorporating stream network extent to account for dynamic flow and a stream network model to account for spatial and temporal variations in CO2 emissions on an annual scale. We found that while accounting for the extent of the stream network due to drying does not change modeled annual emissions substantially (0.06-4.3%), it does change the timing and spatial distribution of emissions and CO2 concentrations. We found discharge was the main driver of emissions at all sites, with 50% of carbon emissions occurring in the top 3-29% of discharge conditions. Spatially, our analysis highlighted that first-order streams consistently produced higher areal emissions compared to higher-order streams, attributed to steeper slopes and connectivity to the source of pCO2, terrestrial soils and groundwater. Finally, in Chapter 4, we estimated CO2 emissions from a stream in an agricultural catchment, an understudied biome in regards to carbon dynamics. We found that in this low-lying catchment with high nutrient and organic matter inputs, the expected coupling between discharge and CO2 emissions was dampened because of a weaker relationship between slope and gas exchange velocity. Instead, we found the hydrologic regime regulated the magnitude of emissions by regulating the source, namely the higher in-stream metabolism contribution (46%) to emissions at a site with high nutrient and organic matter inputs. Across the three chapters, we demonstrate how the hydrologic regime of a stream network governs the timing, source, and magnitude of CO2 emissions. We also show that carbon dynamics in headwater streams vary across networks, influenced by differences in biome, topography, land use, and geology, highlighting the complexity of accurately quantifying carbon losses from these systems
"Maestra mia": Artemisia Gentileschi, Diana di Rosa, and Women Artists in Seventeenth-Century Neapolitan Workshops
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2025This thesis examines the artists Artemisia Gentileschi and Diana di Rosa to re-evaluate the fortunes of female painters in Naples during the first half of the seventeenth century. Using the methodology termed “Thinking from Women’s Lives,” the thesis aims to analyze previously known archival evidence and to address gaps within it concerning the lives and artistic education of these two women, particularly their role in teaching their daughters to paint. The thesis then challenges the persistent attribution of paintings to single artists in the context of the Neapolitan workshop. Based on the reconstruction of a highly familial and consolidated Neapolitan workshop structure, it appears likely that larger, multi-figure paintings were completed by many more artists than just the individual artists named or the occasionally noted “workshop” suggests. Through this examination, the thesis points to evidence for a proliferation of female artists in seventeenth-century Naples whose historical presence has been rendered absent by the structure of the archive and art history’s longstanding investment in the single-authored painting. The thesis concludes by calling for expanding methodologies to highlight the work and lives of these women
Assessing Gene-Environment Interaction in the Association Between Smoking and Leukocyte Telomere Length
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2025Telomere length is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, including smoking behavior. While smoking is associated with shorter telomeres, this association may vary by genotype. In a subset of the UK Biobank cohort (N = 360,909) with genetically inferred European ancestry, we analyzed 581,069 common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and average relative telomere length estimates derived from quantitative PCR (qPCR) to test whether the association between ever/never smoking status and telomere length differs by genotype. One SNP, rs4418881, reached genome-wide significance (P = 4.49e-8) in the 2 degrees of freedom gene-environment interaction joint test but did not reach significance in the overall genome-wide association study (P = 4.19e-7). Stratified analyses revealed that rs4418881 was genome-wide significant in ever smokers (P = 1.06e-8) but not in never smokers (P = 0.35), suggesting that this SNP may modify the effect of smoking on telomere length
Schrödinger Operators with Lattice Invariant Potentials
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2025We develop a systematic framework to study the dispersion surfaces of Schrödinger operators H = −∆+V, where the potential V is both periodic with respect to a lattice Λ and respects its symmetries. Our analysis relies on an abstract result, previously proven by Franz Rellich [Rel40] and which we prove using an alternative approach inspired by methods developed by Tosio Kato [Kat95]: if a self-adjoint operator depends analytically on a parameter, then so do its eigenvalues and eigenprojectors in a neighborhood of the real line. Using this and techniques from Floquet-Bloch theory and representation theory, we prove a series of results that can be used to analyze the operator H where the lattice Λ is arbitrary. As an application of this framework, we describe the generic structure of some singularities in the band spectrum of Schrödinger operators invariant under various two- and three-dimensional lattices. Specifically, we study the square, hexagonal, rectangular, simple cubic, body-centered cubic, face-centered cubic, and stacked hexagonal lattices, in the process reproducing results due to [Kel+18] and [FW12], and also proving a conjecture of [GZZ22]
The midbrain reticular formation in flexible visual decision-making
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2025A hallmark of mammalian behavior is the ability to rapidly remap actions in response to sensory stimuli depending on internal representations of the environment. Flexible visual decisions are thought to be computed within recurrent interactions across diverse brain circuitry in the frontal cortex, basal ganglia, and midbrain. However, the precise regions involved and their computations remain unclear. Previous work has found that a large and poorly understood structure of the midbrain, the midbrain reticular formation (MRF), contains similar task activity patterns to well-established decision regions and connects extensively with them. Open questions include whether the task dynamics in MRF reflect motor processing versus abstract task rules as well as how structure and function organize within the MRF. In this dissertation, we dissect the organization of MRF and demonstrate a role for MRF in abstract context computation using a novel flexible decision-making task, large-scale electrophysiological recordings, modeling of task behavior and neural population dynamics, and single neuron morphological reconstructions. In Chapter 1, we first review the approaches to studying flexible visual decision-making in the lab and the current understanding of the regions and computations involved. We then discuss what is currently known about MRF’s functional and anatomical characteristics and examine historical perspectives on its role in contextual processing. Next, we introduce our novel flexible decision-making task and show that mice achieved high levels of performance by integrating an abstract context belief variable with visual stimuli to remap stimulus-action associations (Chapter 2). We performed dense electrophysiological recordings within MRF and established nodes of the flexible-decision making circuitry and find that MRF, in a network with the superior colliculus (SC), secondary motor cortex (MOs), and caudoputamen (CP), maintained a baseline representation of context which putatively enabled flexible remapping by shifting action attractor dynamics between contexts (Chapter 3). In Chapter 4, we record from both trained and task-naive mice while passively presenting stimuli and find that task-specific visual stimulus representations appear throughout MRF as a result of task learning. Then, we examine the spatial distribution of context-coding neurons and cortical inputs across MRF, revealing that context-coding neurons and cortical axon terminals both contain non-uniform distribution patterns and are spatially aligned (Chapter 5). Altogether, our results establish MRF as a key node in the circuitry underlying flexible visual decisions and provide fundamental insights into how the brain processes contextual information to flexibly update responses to environmental stimuli. In Chapter 6, we integrate prior literature with the findings in this dissertation to update current theories of MRF and discuss future work to build upon and test these theories