On Tuesday my PhD student, Emma Suckling, had her viva voce examination for her PhD. After a few years of hard work, she had the opportunity to defend her thesis to the examiners, and determine whether or not she would get her PhD. I had little doubt that she would succeed, since her thesis was really excellent, but it's always a bit nerve-wracking to undergo the examination process, both from the student and supervisor point of view. I'm pleased to say that she passed, with some minor corrections needed before final printing and binding, and she can now call herself Dr Suckling.
Her thesis was on the effects of an often-neglected part of the nuclear interaction in a particular model on things like nuclear fusion and the structure of superheavy nuclei. She had to combine some pretty tricky mathematics to derive the equations to implement and some pretty advanced parallel computing to implement them, along with a good understanding of the relevant nuclear physics - no mean feat.
Well done, Dr Suckling!
