I would first like to thank my mentor, Dr. Arul M. Chinnaiyan, for his expert guidance, support, encouragement, and inspiration. I would also like to thank Dr. Debashis Ghosh for his continuous statistical support and great advice, Dr. David G. Beer, Dr. Jill A. Macoska, and Dr. Kerby A. Shedden for serving on my Doctoral committee and giving me valuable suggestions on this thesis work. I would like to thank Jindan Yu, Xiaoju Wang, Guoan Chen, Saravana Dhanasekaran, Daniel Rhodes, Scott A. Tomlins, and Sooryanarayana Varambally, who have contributed to most of the work described here. I would like to express my gratitude to all the members in the Chinnaiyan lab for their support. Without them, none of the work described here could have been completed. I would also like to thank William P. Worzel and Arpit A. Almal for their support on genetic programming project. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my wife and my love, Yipin, without whom I would be nowhere. Thanks for putting up with my late nights and giving me unconditional love and encouragement through my Doctoral study and the writing of this work. I would also like to thank my parents, my sister, and my grandparents for giving constant support and love. And last but not least, I would like to thank my friends and all whose support helped me completing this thesis in time. ii TABLE OF CONTENT
