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I wish to express my gratitude to my advisor Dr. Kathryn Huff, who guided me from my academic beginnings.
I would also like to thank Dr. Tomasz Kozlowski for his help and invaluable comments as the second reader of this thesis.
I wish to acknowledge Dr. Paul Fischer, Dr. Rizwan Uddin, and Dr. Caleb Brooks for their time and discussions helpful to this work.
% This work was possible thanks to the financial support of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Faculty Development Program (award NRC-HQ-84-14-G-0054 Program B) and the UIUC Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering Department.
% https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VybV0oMPiqpInTwgO0ICq0EC4AL_fGj-zbXGJAhRiVU/edit#gid=0

Besides the support from several faculty, this work was possible due to day-to-day motivation from my fellow group-mates Sam Dotson, Greg Westphal, Kip Kleimenhagen, Andrei Rykhlevskii, Gwen Chee, and Sun Myung Park.
I also much appreciate Nataly Panczyk's and Gavin Davis' help with proofreading my writing.
Finally, I want to acknowledge my family, who, even though we were more than five thousand miles apart, their support and encouragement were always present.
I also wanted to express my gratitude to Daniela Calero for her moral support throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.