Viva

Excited to share that I successfully passed my PhD viva two days ago! The process took almost four hours! I believe this is quite long for a UK PhD defense, but we went through the thesis chapter by chapter and explored all the main research questions and ideas, so I’m very happy with how it went. I got minor corrections, which should mostly entail (1) providing additional context in the beginning of the thesis for the motivation of the whole work, and (2) thinking how to better fit the chapter on new non-machine-learning applications of crossbar arrays with the rest of the thesis (which is mostly about machine learning) or whether to include it at all.

I want to thank the examiners—Eleni Vasilaki of the University of Sheffield and Miguel Rio of University College London (UCL)—for carefully going through my work and for asking great questions during the viva. I am also incredibly grateful to my amazing supervisor Adnan Mehonic, the whole memristor group at UCL, my collaborators, the colleagues and staff at our department, and, of course, my friends and family!

It’s a great conclusion to the four years of research work, but I don’t think it changes much of anything. I’m just happy that academic spam emails I receive will now be more accurate.