It has been an honor to be his student. I am very grateful for his patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge that, taken together, make him a great mentor. Since my first day at ISU, he supported me with his invaluable advice and enormous helps. I appreciate all his contributions of time, ideas, and funding to make my Ph.D. experience productive and stimulating. His advice on both research as well as on my career have been invaluable. I specially want to express my deepest

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... es to Professor Rodney O. Fox, whose support and guidance made my thesis work possible. I have been fortunate to have him patiently guiding and helping me through difficult periods of work. Without his helps and advice, I would not be able to complete my Ph.D. studies. I would like to express my thanks to my committee members Prof. Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, Prof. Ming-Chen Hsu and Prof. Shankar Subramaniam for their support, time and advice on various aspects of conducting research and the writing of this thesis. I am grateful of having wonderful and fun group members and colleagues who helped me through useful discussions. I would like to acknowledge the financial support of the National Science Foundation. This work has been partially supported by the Division Of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (ACI) of National Science Foundation under the award number SI2-SSE ACI-1440443 and department of mechanical engineering at ISU. Finally, I want to express my deepest love to my family and friends. In particular to my parents for devoting themselves to my life and career, and for their interminable and unconditional love and support, and to my sister and brother-in-law for being with me in frustrating times and sharing their love.