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Acknowledgements
The most remarkable thing ab out MIT is the p eople one meets here, and it is with
great pleasure that I nowhave the opportunity to thank those who have help ed me,
directly or indirectly, to complete my graduate studies with a Ph.D. First, I would like
to thank my thesis advisor, Tommaso Tooli, for taking me as a student and for giving
me nancial supp ort and the freedom to work on whateverIwanted. I would also like
to thank my thesis committee members Professors Edmund Bertschinger and Felix
Villars for the time they spent in meetings and reading my handouts. Professor Villars
showedakeen interest in understanding mywork by asking questions, suggesting
references, arranging contacts with other faculty members, and providing detailed
feedbackon my writing. I deeply appreciate the p ersonal interest he took in me and
my scientic development. Professor George Koster, who must have the hardest job
in the physics department, helped me with numerous administrative matters.
The Information Mechanics Group in the Lab oratory for Computer Science has
been a refuge for me, and its members have b een a primary source of strength. Special
thanks is due to Norman Margolus who has always b een eager to help whenever I
had a problem. He and Carol Collura have made me feel at home here by treating me
like family. Norm also blazed the thesis trail for me and my fellow graduate students
in the group: Jo e Hrgovcic, Mike Biafore, Milan Shah, David Harnanan, and Raissa
D'Souza. Being here gave me the opportunityto interact with a parade of visiting
scientists: Charles Bennett, Gerard Vichniac, Bastien Chopard, Je Yepez, PierLuigi
Pierini, Bob Fisch, Attilia Zumpano, Fred Commoner, Vincenzo D'Andrea, Leonid
Khaln, Asher Perez, Andreas Califano, Luca de Alfaro, and Pablo Tamayo. I also
had the chance to get to know several bright undergraduate students who worked
for the group including Reb ecca Frankel, Ruben Agin, Jason Quick, Sasha Wood,
Conan Dailey, Jan Maessen, and Debbie Fuchs. Finally,Iwas able to learn from an
eclectic group of engineering sta: Tom Cloney,David Zaig, Tom Durgavich, Ken
Streeter, Doug Faust, and Harris Gilliam. My gratitude goes out to the entire group
for making my time here interesting and enjoyable as well as educational.
Iwould like to express my appreciation to several members of the supp ort sta:
Peggy Berkovitz, Barbara Lobbregt, and Kim Wainwrightin physics; Be Hubbard,
Joanne Talbot, Anna Pham, David Jones, William Ang, NickPapadakis, and Scott
Blomquist in LCS. Besides generally improving the quality of life, they are the ones
who are really resp onsible for running things and have help ed me in countless ways.
I am indebted to Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam of Boston University for giving me
some exposure to the greater physics community.Hewas the driving force behind the
work on p olymers (chapter 5) which led to several papers and conference presenta-
tions. The collab oration also gave me the opp ortunitytowork with Yitzhak Rabin,
a p olymer theorist from Israel, as well as with Boris Ostrovsky and others in the
polymer center at Boston University.Yaneer has also shown me uncommon strength
and kindness which I can only hope to pick up.
My rst years at MIT were ones of great academic isolation, and I would have
dropped out long ago if it were not for the fellowship of friends that I got to knowat
the Thursday night coee hour in Ashdown House|it was an hour that would often
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