A Sign of the End of Days

I saw in an e-mail that Oxford has given blanket approval for vivas (i.e., thesis defenses) by video conference.

Now we know that we've reached the end of days.

(That said, they were faster than UCLA for blanket approval.)

Congratulations to Dr. Martin Gould!

My Ph.D. student Martin Gould passed his dissertation defense (aka "viva") today, and it looks like he might not have to make any corrections at all. Thus far, Martin and I have coauthored a review article on limit order books, and several additional papers are in preparation. Martin's thesis was about limit order books. The Examiners were Doyne Farmer (internal) and Rama Cont (external).

CONGRATULATIONS, Dr. Gould!

Congratulations to Dr. Puck Rombach!

My Ph.D. student Puck Rombach passed her dissertation defense (aka "viva") today with "Minor Corrections". It appears to be a relatively large number of minor corrections, but they're all eminently doable and it won't take long to dot all of the i's and cross all of the t's. You can find some of Puck's work on my website, as we have coauthored several papers. Puck's thesis is on a mixture of topics from pure graph theory (equitable colorings in random graphs), networks (core-periphery structure and centralities), and a couple of things that interpolate between these two extremes. The Examiners were Colin McDiarmid (internal) on the pure side and Alex Arenas (external) on the applied side.

CONGRATULATIONS, Dr. Rombach!

Congratulations to Dr. Sumeet Agarwal!

My Ph.D. student, Sumeet Agarwal, recently pass his viva. He had some proverbial "minor corrections" to make, but he mentions that it should only take a couple of days, so he'll officially be "Dr. Sumeet Agarwal" very soon. Congratulations! (Apparently, his Ph.D. defense lasted a whopping 4.5 hours, which is quite the marathon!)

The title of Sumeet's doctoral thesis is "Networks in Nature: Evolution, Dynamics and Modularity in Biological Networks". It includes work on protein-protein interaction networks but also more general things on machine learning in networks.

Congratulations to Dr. Dan Fenn!

Dan Fenn, my first Ph.D. student, passed his thesis defense today with flying colors. (He has on the order of 2 hours worth of corrections that he needs to make.) His thesis concentrates mostly on topics in mathematical finance, with a focus on financial networks. He also developed some new theory related to community detection in networks.

You can find some of Dan's work in our coauthored papers that I've posted on my website (and 2 more of them will be posted very soon). Once all of the i's have been dotted and the t's have been crossed, I will post his dissertation per se.

CONGRATULATIONS, Dr. Fenn!

Congratulations to Dr. Felicia Gottmann!

On a few occasions, I like to highlight accomplishments from my friends in this spot. (And we all know that I spend too much time talking about myself anyway, so this is a welcome break from the usual deal.)

I just got back from the celebration for a successful D.Phil defense (a "viva") for one of my best friends---for one of the dearest, closest friends I have ever had or will ever have. And I try to do the best I can in return.

So that means it's time to pause and use this spot to express congratulations! Felicia passed with flying colors, which was not a surprise at all. (A foregone conclusion in fact, though it's obviously always better after the fact.)

I know Felicia through Somerville, and she studies French and history. The title of her thesis is "The eighteenth-century luxury debate: the case of Voltaire"---quite far from anything I can even pretend to know, but surely that is because all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds?

There were a lot of mathematicians at the pub, so ironically I was the one who knew other people. This resulted in our table getting recruited for charitable donations (one of the staff members left her job today and was celebrating the end of her job), and one of my students also dropped by to say 'hi'.

Anyway, it was all very excellent and fun, and now I am pretty tired. I should also mention that Felicia's mother (who flew in from Germany for the celebration) called me "an international phenomenon". Maybe I should adopt that as my tagline?

It's not every day that I get to celebrate an important day for one of my best friends, so today has been a good day.

CONGRATULATIONS, Dr. Gottmann.