# Acknowledgments

I thank my advisor, Prof. Neeraja Yadwadkar, for always pushing me to reach my full potential and for giving me the extremely rare trust and independence to pursue a dissertation guided purely by my own intellectual curiosity. I met Neeraja during her first semester teaching at UT. At the time, I was in the awkward position of having been admitted to a PhD program and completed all of my coursework, but still without an advisor or a clear plan for my dissertation. Through my coursework, I had developed just enough proficiency in machine learning and data compression to know that I was completely ignorant about both topics, and it seemed impossible that any dissertation I could propose would live up to the contributions of those who came before me, or be at all relevant to future generations. Until this point, I had always assumed that the barrier to my dissertation was more knowledge, more experience, and more technical proficiency. I am grateful that Neeraja pulled me aside one class after I pitched an idea for a project, and revealed through ardor, optimism, and generosity that my curiosities, embraced by my humility, would lead to worthy and enduring scientific contributions. Beyond that, Neeraja invested an unreasonable amount of time and energy teaching me how to channel these impulses into rigorous, wide-reaching, and exciting scientific research.

I thank my dissertation committee members, Professors Brian Evans, Hyeji Kim, David Harwath, and Jon Tamir, for expressing genuine confidence in the value of my dissertation. Their astute feedback, optimism, and belief in my endeavors motivated me to be more ambitious, present my ideas more clearly, and ensure they would have lasting impact.

I thank all of my teachers throughout my protracted twelve-year tenure at UT Austin. I thank Professors Brian Evans and Al Bovik for fostering an early fascination for signal processing and data compression as an undergraduate student through lectures and coursework whose depth and prescience I would only come to appreciate many years later. I thank Professors Alex Dimakis and David Harwath for their confidence to teach topics that were years ahead of their time, before most had any idea of the changes that generative modeling and self-supervised learning would bring to these fields. Their foresight led me to pursue research ideas that would eventually pay off years later, coming to fruition at a time when their impact could be most profound. I thank Professors Joydeep Ghosh, Gustavo de Veciana, Atlas Wang, and Hyeji Kim for immersing me, through both deliberate instruction and provocation for self-tutelage, in unfamiliar but fertile territory where I discovered the seeds of my dissertation.

I thank all of the colleagues that I had the privilege to teach alongside: Professors Brian Evans, Hazem Hajj, Vivek Telang, and Pedro Santacruz. Each helped me discover the joy and reciprocity of teaching, which proved to be an incredibly rewarding part of my studies.
```{margin} Coffee Hours
Prof. Evans invites all UT engineering students, alumni, staff and faculty for weekly coffee hours on Fridays 12–2pm during the fall and spring semesters. Coffee hours provide a comfortable space for students to talk about what's on their mind and help each other. Common topics include career goals, academic specializations, graduate studies, work-life balance, student organizations, finding internships and permanent positions, and undergraduate and graduate research. Coffee hours have been fostering social connections and well-being for 20 years, and as many as 20–30 students and alumni participate each week.
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Beyond his roles as a committee member and as a teacher, Prof. Evans's weekly "coffee hours" became the wellspring for advancing my research, engaging in mentorship, and making my graduate studies more fun, exciting, and rewarding than I could have imagined. I first attended as an undergraduate and continued through my PhD; the mentorship and collaboration I found there shaped how I think about and communicate my research.

I thank my mother, Amy, who cultivated an unwavering belief in my potential and who bestowed upon me the audacity to realize this vision. I thank my father, Michael, for teaching me the foundations of being a great scientist and engineer, begotten of legal philosophy: examining one's own beliefs, engaging in good faith argument, listening to others' perspectives and opinions, and communicating through compelling writing. I thank my brother, George, who preceded me as a doctoral student, imparted his wisdom, and demonstrated the potential to simultaneously enjoy life and make the most of challenging research and study. Finally, I thank my wife, Rita, who pushed me to never compromise on my principles, and gave me the confidence and support to transform my ambitions from delusions into reality.