Alliance One Tobacco (Malawi)
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Public Transit as Linkage to Care
No full textWith the growing housing crisis and shelters at capacity, many of those who are
unhoused turn to public transit for shelter, warmth, safety, and access to essential
services. Many transit agencies in the United States employ policing in response to
homelessness. This can include citations, fines, confiscation of property, arrests, and
involuntary psychiatric commitment. These responses perpetuate the homelessnessjail cycle, displacement, traumatic experiences, and limited access to services. The
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) will serve as a case study given
its operation in the Greater Boston area, which has some of the highest rates of
homelessness in the country. This thesis identifies specific non-police interventions
and the MBTA locations where these strategies could be utilized to respond to and
ensure the safety of unhoused persons navigating the system.Department of Urban Planning and Desig
Inquiring for Impact: Improving middle school outcomes in Fulton County Schools through cross-functional, inquiry-driven, continuous improvement
No full textFulton County Schools, the fourth largest school district in Georgia, serves a diverse student body, with notable performance disparities between schools in North and South Fulton. Despite gains in elementary and high school outcomes, middle schools in the district showed inconsistent performance across multiple measures, leading to the perception amongst employees that the district had a “middle school problem.” The “problem” was exacerbated by organizational challenges, including barriers to collaboration, fragmented interventions, and unclear definitions of the “middle school problem” to be solved.
Informed by relevant research and frameworks on continuous improvement, cross-functional collaboration, and organizing to learn, my strategic project focused on improving middle school performance and addressing organizational challenges within Fulton County Schools by establishing a cross-functional Middle School Core Team to engage in the Data Wise Improvement Process. The Middle School Core Team was tasked with engaging broader internal stakeholders to analyze a wide range of data sources to define the “middle school problem,” identify root causes at the learner and organizational level, and then develop actionable and impactful plans for improvement.
Through this work, the Middle School Core Team sought to align stakeholders across departments, foster shared ownership for middle school improvement, and develop a sustainable model for collaborative inquiry and action. In the process, factors for effective, district-wide continuous improvement were uncovered, including the need to push the team into the learning zone, to foster growth and innovation; to navigate the stages of team development, from storming to performing, to build effective, high-functioning teams; and, to attend to the authorizing environment, ensuring organizational support and alignment.
The implications of this project for Fulton County Schools include the importance of formally adopting a continuous improvement framework, prioritizing cross-functional stakeholder engagement to tackle complex organizational challenges, and empowering internal champions to continue and expand this work. Furthermore, the project also highlighted the need for the PK-12 education sector to match the speed of transformation with appropriate improvement processes, and to invest in job-embedded professional development on continuous improvement for school and district leaders, to truly drive change in American school systems.Educatio
Privacy in Online Social Networks: Theory and Practice
No full textAt the heart of online social networks (OSNs) lies a fundamental tension between user welfare and business profitability. Despite outwardly expressing a commitment to user safety, OSNs continue to grapple with persistent privacy leakages that threaten to disrupt people’s lives in catastrophic ways and bely their professed dedication to putting users first. The inability of privacy laws to adequately prevent violations motivates us to take an ethical lens to the data practices of social networks. Under the framework of contextual integrity, we prove that current data practices fall short of ethical standards because they undermine user interests for profit-oriented goals. It is necessary to appropriately recalibrate current practices to social values and user needs.
We first attempt to find a more conservative solution that would preserve the underlying structures of OSN business models. Current protections involve de-identifying user data (removing personal identifiers), but researchers have shown that de-identified data is susceptible to privacy attacks. We employ a local differential privacy model to directly privatize user survey data with the Gaussian mechanism and randomized response. We found that when the underlying population is normally distributed and follows the probit model, we can recover the original non-private probit regression techniques by conditioning on the observed noisy data. However, our method produces an inconsistent maximum likelihood estimator, suggesting that direct perturbation of data might be incompatible with prediction utility.
We then analyze the normative implications of the privacy-utility tradeoff and argue that it continues to allow profitability to be prioritized over social values and quality. Thus, differential privacy is not a sufficient guarantee of privacy in the context of OSNs. We advocate for a reimagined relationship between users and OSNs, emphasizing the need for enhanced transparency, accountability, and user-centric data practices.Computer Scienc
Training Energy-Based Models to Learn Gaussian Mixture Distributions via Langevin Dynamics
No full textEnergy-Based Models (EBMs) offer a flexible framework for modeling probability distributions through an energy function, avoiding the need for explicit density functions. Using toy distributions such as Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs). This thesis examines variations of Langevin Dynamics as a method for sampling and training EBMs, providing concrete implementations. We present the theoretical foundations and practical implementations of key EBM training algorithms, including Unadjusted Langevin Algorithm (ULA), Metropolis-Adjusted Langevin Algorithm (MALA), and adapting the Jarzynski Equality for sampling and training. Results demonstrate the benefits and limitations of these methods, highlighting how while the Jarzynski Equality offers a time-dependent perspective that accelerates the discovery of distribution modes, it introduces practical challenges, such as difficulty of implementation and instability during training. Future work involves refining the Jarzynski-based training procedure, exploring alternative loss functions like Fischer Divergence, and extending the compositional capabilities of EBMs for tasks in robotics and reinforcement learning.Computer Scienc
Mass Transit Pricing and Fare Caps in Bangkok: National Politics, Urban Economics, and International Comparisons
No full textThailand’s Pheu Thai-led national government had planned to cap Bangkok’s mass transit train fares at 20 baht for Thai citizens, beginning in October or November of 2025. The plan expands on a 2023 fare cap for some trains, and on then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s transit proposals from 2005-2006. Thus, the fare cap has been discussed for decades, and it resembles other Thaksin-era initiatives in offering a simple benefit for lower-income voters. Comparing normal transit fares and income measures across East Asia shows that there is merit to some fare reform: Bangkok’s train fares are among the highest in Asia, both in absolute terms and relative to the wages of the poorest residents, which hinders workers’ mobility. However, Bangkok’s transit system also remains underdeveloped compared to other major cities in Asia, with as much as a third of Bangkok’s population lacking easy access to mass transit trains. Lowering fares would have limited equity benefits for most residents, would not lead to stable transit revenues, and would likely make further transit expansion less affordable. Raising minimum fares, while reducing fares for some lines and interchanges, could improve Bangkok’s transportation and regional economy, while sustaining the transit system’s finances.Version of Recor
SpiroSniff: A Machine Learning Driven Breathalyzer for Lung Cancer Detection
No full textSpiroSniff is a portable, affordable breathalyzer designed to detect early-stage lung cancer by analyzing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath. Leveraging metal oxide chemiresistive sensors and machine learning algorithms, the device aims to provide a non-invasive, rapid, and accurate alternative to traditional diagnostic methods like CT scans and X-rays, which are often inaccessible and cost-prohibitive, especially in low-resource settings. With a production cost target of under $150 and a desired specificity and sensitivity of at least 80%, SpiroSniff is engineered for widespread use, including in underserved populations. The project addresses a critical need for early detection tools in light of the rising prevalence of respiratory diseases and the high mortality rate associated with undiagnosed lung cancer. By focusing on robust sensor selection, in-lab validation, algorithm development, and ethical deployment, SpiroSniff has the potential to transform global lung cancer diagnostics and improve public health outcomes.Mechanical Engineering S
Olmsted in Milwaukee: A Comparative Ethnography of Lake and Riverside Parks
No full textLake Park and Riverside Parks have a long history in Milwaukee from their creation to the present. In 1891, Frederick Law Olmsted designed these parks as part of a larger park system that was connected via the Newberry Boulevard greenway. Over a century later, Lake Park has retained most of its original elements and remains true to Olmsted’s original intention for the park, however, Riverside Park has drastically changed over the decades and has largely fallen into disrepair. This project aimed to investigate the reasons why Riverside Park has undergone significant changes while the structure of Lake Park has remained largely the same.
This project explores the literature pertaining to ecological anthropology and how it relates to each of these parks over time. Archival research was performed to explore Olmsted’s history as a landscape architect and examine his philosophy as it pertains to values and principles of park design. Extensive archival research was conducted to obtain historical information for each park and historical photographs were examined to make comparisons to the current conditions of specific park elements, and the Toolkit for the Ethnographic Study of Space (TESS) was used to identify the ways in which Lake and Riverside Parks were used. Ken Leinbach was interviewed and provided information on the history of Riverside Park and the Urban Ecology Center.
Findings indicated that Lake Park was primarily used for leisure activities, sports and recreation, as well as being a site for larger city events, whereas Riverside Park was primarily used as a site for nature-based activities, whether they be educational or
recreational. This project resulted in the ironic and revelatory finding that Riverside Park has surprisingly become a more accurate reflection of his philosophy and more closely represents vision. While the structure of Lake Park has remained truer to Olmsted’s original landscape design, Riverside Park has become a more accurate representation of that which Olmsted values in his philosophy of park design.Extension Studie
Pipes or People? An Analysis of Green Stormwater Infrastructure Co-benefits to Accelerate Regime Change
No full textGreen stormwater infrastructure (GSI) complements grey infrastructure to help prevent combined sewer overflows; however, studies show that it is rarely implemented at scale in North American cities (Croeser et al., 2021; Goulden et al., 2018; O’Donnell et al., 2021; Sarabi et al., 2019). For GSI to trigger a full infrastructure transition or regime change (Brown et al., 2009; Chini et al., 2017; Olsson, 2003), communities must actively participate in designing, constructing, and managing these decentralized systems, and public agencies must adapt by managing increasingly complex physical, social, and ecological networks. Like many infrastructure transformations, this shift is less about technology and more about navigating the social and spatial challenges of coproduction.
This study identified key factors influencing the shift toward decentralized green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) systems by connecting the physical dynamics that shape both networked and standalone infrastructure with the benefits of ecological restoration and social equity. I analyzed ten years of GSI projects, from 2011-2021, in two early adopter cities, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to distill the relationship between the physical structures and the social forces that affect GSI implementation. I hypothesized that (1) Co-produced GSI positively contributes to urban greenness, as measured with normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data, and some GSI technologies are more effective than others, and (2) GSI adoption has spatial trends that can be attributed to social-cultural factors such as agency capacity, social and economic factors, and community capacity.
Findings reveal that place-based factors, including GSI technologies and structures, contribute to regime change and that the use of remote sensing data and methods can enhance GSI management practices. The study also suggests that measuring co-benefits via remote sensing could bolster accountability regarding the social-cultural factors essential to sustainable city regimes, thereby solidifying new practices and reinforcing system values. The findings also indicate that a deeper understanding of physical and social-cultural factors can provide concrete recommendations to advance regime change. The interdependencies reinforce the multidisciplinary nature of regime change and the need for integrative approaches, the reinvention of urban typologies, and shifts in adaptive management to transition from a regime of pipes to one focused on people and places