2011 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my major advisor Dr. Ion M˘ andoiu and collaborators Dr. Alexander Zelikovsky and Serghei Mangul for their direct contributions to this thesis. Special acknowledgements go to professor Doru Popescu-Anastasiu, my high-school Computer Science teacher, who was a great inspiration for me and played a key role in me getting to UConn. I would also like t...

Acknowledgements I wish to thank Prof. Dan Halperin for his guidance and his help during the work on this thesis. I thank all the Cgal members in Tel-Aviv University for useful discussions and exchange of ideas.

............................................................................................................... iAcknowledgements ................................................................................................ iiiSummary of the thesis ............................................................................................. viiiReferences............................

.................................................................................................................... 1 LIST OF PAPERS .......................................................................................................... 4 RELATED PUBLICATIONS ....................................................................................... 5 ABBREVIATIONS ................................

Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 BioConstructs Innovation in the use of computation and digital fabrication methods Collaboration with scientific community Bio-inspired design and biofabrication Thesis structure Chapter 2: The Polypterus study 2.

........................................................................................................................... I SVENSK SAMMANFATTNING ....................................................................................... III LIST OF PAPERS ................................................................................................................ V Other Related Publications ...

I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. I authorize the University of Waterloo to lend this thesis to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. I authorize the University of Waterloo to reproduce this thesis by photocopying or other means, in total or in part, at the request of other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly resea...

................................................................................................................................... 4 Table of contents ...................................................................................................................... 6 List of figures ...............................................................................................................

Acknowledgements During my thesis work, I had support from many different people that I owe thanks. First of all, I have to thank my supervisors Prof. and Edgar for carefully reading my thesis and giving valuable hints for debugging it. A principle thank-you is entitled to my parents who supported me through my entire life and initially enabled me to write this thesis. I herewith declare that I...

..................................................................... ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................... iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES .......................................... v INTRODUCTION ................................................................ 1 MATERIALS AND METHODS ............................................... 33 RESULTS .................