Last friday, the d partement d’informatique et de recherche op rationnelle of Universit de Montr al, as represented by a jury composed of profs. Guy Lapalme (president), Esma A meur (advisor), Gilles Brassard (co-advisor), Marc Kaltenbach (jury member), and Tommaso Toffoli (external examiner, from Boston University) granted me a Ph.D. in Computer Science.
The room was chock full with students, professors, friends, and family members (the department director even had to sit on the floor!). I had to give a 45-minute talk summarizing my research contributions and to field questions from the jury and the audience.
I believe it went reasonably well. Several of my friends and family members were pleasantly surprised to find that they actually understood all of my presentation and the question/answer session that followed. I was really happy to see their faces in the room. Thanks to everyone for your support!!
I am extremely grateful to my advisors, who believed in me and had courage enough to let me go way off the beaten path while supporting and advising me every step of the way. THANK YOU!
Oh, and YULbloggers Karl Dubost and Ed Bilodeau showed up and very competently blogged the event. Both wrote that the experience of being there had made them enthusiastic about doing research. That’s cool!
Congratulations to S bastien for “piling it higher and deeper”. Although it is a bit unusual, particularly for a new Ph.D., to be comprehensible to such mere mortals as friends and family :), this bodes well for Seb’s future work.