My PhD Viva Voce (a.k.a PhD thesis defense)

Few months ago (in May) I had to face the most important point on my way to PhD – the viva voce (i.e., “thesis defense”).
I could not get myself around posting about that, mostly due to many activities related to our startup and to the final procedures related to the thesis itself.

Now, as my PhD thesis manuscript has reached the camera ready version, has been copy-edited (thanks Miechelle and Andrzej), printed, hard-bound (thanks Lukasz and Iza), and submitted (thanks Hilda for taking over from there), I can finally devote some free mind-cycles to a not-so-strictly-phd-related matters, e.g., taking care about my blog, which was not “watered” for quite some time.

As it was getting closer and closer to the this point in time, I felt like I had to finally let you all know how it went. So here is the story; I will take from where I left it in May, a week before the viva voce.

We (Ewelina was with me all the way to support and help me) flew in to Cork and then went up to Galway just before the weekend (May 16th-17th). I longed to see all our friends in Galway, but … first things first – I had to polish up my presentation for the viva (thanks Stefan for your valuable comments).
On Saturday we picked up Daniel Schwabe from the Shannon airport and visited the Bunratty Castle near Limerick. On Sunday, my second reviewer – prof. Henryk Krawczyk, arrived in Galway.

On the Monday morning, May 18th, 2009, we were all set for the viva.

At first there were only few people, including my reviewers.

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The presentation went smoothly;

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Ewelina claims I was not jabbering too much, and the timing was just right.
As for the reviewers and the audience, they did not seem to be too bored with it either.

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Then the questions came: first from the audience. However, there was only one from Maciej. I still wonder why? Were people afraid to ask difficult questions (if yes – thanks guys&gals) ? Or, was I talking rubbish all along ?

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And then, that was where the rubber actually hit the road (to be frank, what happened so far was just a pony-tail show) – reviewers (cross-)examination.

After a short break (for the committee to agree on the “roasting strategy”) …

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I was invited to answer many tough (and most often quite just) questions. But the result was as expected, although it gave me some sweat to get through to it anyway,

I have passed the PhD exam.

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The events that followed were all about saying “thank you” to those who supported me and showing how glad I was to have it all finished (well almost, do read on).

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There was also a side effect of my PhD viva voce: prof. Kraczyk, the president of the Gdansk University of Technology, Poland, visited DERI NUI Galway and met with all PhD students and interns that worked with me in the Corrib Cluster project I set up.

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Corrib project ran for few years based on the collaboration agreement between GUT and DERI NUI Galway. I have to confess it was a very nice wrap up of this project, and a chance to set foundations for the future collaboration.

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As the viva voce is not the last stage of the thesis (unlike, e.g., in Poland), my reviewers asked me to introduce some corrections to my manuscript before submitting the camera ready version to the Exams Office at NUIG. There were three requests:

• To update presented ontologies to reflect issues risen during the exam.
• To provide a section describing what changes (to the collection of ontologies and the proposed architecture of SemDL) are required to use semantic digital library system, e.g., JeromeDL, in a different domain – for example medical domain.
• To extend the conclusions chapter with questions that remained unanswered regarding the SemDL domain, and wrap them into a set of research topics that could be picked up by other PhD students, including those doing online PhD programs.

It was very encouraging to hear that the results of my research were so cool, and that I should make sure people will read about them in my manuscript (and the book that will be published afterwords).
Once I got to implementing these corrections and had the manuscript checked by the copy editor, the next thing I heard was “I left your hard-bound copy of the thesis manuscript with our secretary at DERI”

I would like to once again thank everyone who supported me, Stefan (my supervisor), Daniel and prof. Krawczyk (my reviewers), and the whole DERI team and my family.

I made it – eventually

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See more at the complete photo collection from the viva voce and after-party (thanks Adameq for your help).