PhD student 21 successfully defends

On Wednesday this week, my 21st PhD student had his oral exam. Stefan Hill is a scientist at SCION (previously NZ Forest Research Institute) in Rotorua and he carried out his research there and at the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne, using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and X-ray diffraction on radiata pine at various levels of drying. The results of his thesis show the crucial role of a very thin trapped water layer between the cellulose fibrils and the surrounding lignin and hemi-cellulose matrix, something which turns out to be of real value in undestanding the best conditions for wood drying.

The real supervision work for this thesis was carried out by two of my esteemed SCION colleagues, Roger Newman and Robert Franich. I was the link person to the University, providing overview advice and helping the process along to ensure it met the requirements of PhD. But strictly, I'll claim credit for this being number 21. The picture shows Stefan (left), Roger (middle) and me at my favourite "Galleria" cafe in the university, just before the exam. The oral defence (second picture) lasted just over 2 hours. Stefan was superb, fending a barrage of questions from New Zealand external examiner Philip Harris from the University of Auckland, and from local examiner Ken MacKenzie, who also passed on questions from overseas examiner Martin Mueller from Germany. All the examiners were very impressed with the work and Stefan passed his oral with flying colours. Stefan, of course, is a very experienced scientist himself, and now continues with SCION as an even more vauable member of the team.

Having a PhD student successfully defend brings a special pride to the supervisor, even in my case, where my role was a bit peripheral, but I'm especially pleased with Stefan, who is just just such a great guy, though he was responsible for once getting me horribly drunk in a bar in Aachen!

PS: To my delight, at the end of the oral exam Philip Harris (Professor of biological sciences at UoA), reminded me that he had first met me in 1970, when he was a Graduate Research Fellow at Oxford University, and I was a first year graduate student. We were both members of Wolfson College. That was 40 years ago!