Acknowledgements
I am indebted to my supervisor, Professor John W. Valvano, for encouraging me
to pursue the thesis. I thank my Mom, Suguna Nataraj, and my Dad, Rajendran
Alagirisamy for their love and support. I admire their hard work in raising my
sister Sneha and I, and for seeking better opportunities for us. I cannot imagine the
sacrifices they have made so I could pursue a good education and have a stable future.
I am sincerely grateful I could rely on my parents when times were difficult.
I thank Dr. Josh T. Beckham for mentoring and motivating my research inter-
est as an undergraduate in the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI). I devoted three
semesters and two summers working under his guidance on drug discovery in the
Virtual Drug Screening (VDS) stream. Dr. Beckham taught me the soft skills and
hard skills of research and I hope one day, I can transfer those skills to the next
generation. During my sophomore and junior undergraduate years, I worked in Dr.
John X.J. Zhang’s laboratory, where I became good friends with Dr. Yu-Yen Huang.
Dr. Huang graciously invited and hosted me on a short vacation in Santa Barbara in
summer 2016. It was a much needed break.
I am very fortunate to have learned electrical engineering from excellent lectur-
ers at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Hao Ling taught me introductory
electromagnetic field theory and was my primary reference on my graduate school
application. Professors John Pearce and Henry Rylander sparked my interest in
biomedical instrumentation. In graduate school, I had the privilege of being the
teaching assistant in their courses. Professor Nan Sun introduced me to the world of
analog/mixed-signal circuit design. I admire his excitement in teaching circuits and
I enjoyed our discussions in office-hours. Dr. Ranjit Gharpurey introduced me to
high-frequency circuit design. Dr. Jack Lee helped cement my knowledge of device
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