Doctoral Oral Exam Schedule
The Graduate Dean invites all graduate faculty to attend the final oral examinations for the doctoral candidates scheduled as follows:
Doctoral Oral Exams for October 26, 2026 – October 30, 2026
Mariam Asatryan, PhD., Linguistics.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026, 1:30PM, ILC N400.
Dissertation: “The Auxiliary as A Grammatical Hub: Agreement, Negation, and Imperfect in Armenian.” Rajesh Bhatt and Faruk Akkus, Co-Chairs.
Md. Anisur Rahman, PhD., Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Friday, October 30, 2026, 12:00PM, Gunness Student Center and via Zoom.
Dissertation: “Engineering Rough Colloids to Control Interfacial Pinning, Capillary Interactions, and Monolayer Behavior.” Peter J. Beltramo, Chair.
Ayana Whitmal, PhD., Linguistics.
Friday, October 30, 2026, 10:00AM, ILC N400 and via Zoom.
Dissertation: “Questioning on the African American Language Continuum.” Lisa Green, Chair.
Stefanos Stravoravdis, PhD., Microbiology.
Friday, October 30, 2026, 1:30PM, Skinner Hall 12.
Dissertation: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Investigation of Novel Cell Wall Recycling Mechanisms in Mycobacteria.” Sloan Siegrist, Chair.
Doctoral Oral Exams for October 19, 2026 – October 23, 2026
Kyle Sullivan, PhD., Physics.
Monday, October 19, 2026, 12:00PM, Conte A110.
Dissertation: “The Geometrically Frustrated Assembly of Soft, Colloidal Shells.” Gregory Grason, Chair.
M. Victoria Acevedo-Estupinan, PhD., Food Science.
Thursday, October 22, 2026, 10:30AM, Chenoweth Lab 210A.
Dissertation: “Lipid Oxidation of Oleosomes: The Importance of the Food Matrix.” Eric Decker, Chair.
Rumeng Li, PhD., Computer Science.
Thursday, October 22, 2026, 9:00AM, via Zoom.
Dissertation: “AI for Aging: Longitudinal Disease Risk Modeling from Clinical Data.” Hong Yu, Chair.
Doctoral Oral Exams for October 12, 2026 – October 16, 2026
Momin Khan, PhD., Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Friday, October 16, 2026, 10:30AM, Marcus Hall 201.
Dissertation: “Towards Security-Centric Safe AI.” Fatima Anwar, Chair.
Dhruv Agarwal, PhD., Computer Science.
Friday, October 16, 2026, 12:00AM, E400 and via Zoom.
Dissertation: “Epistemological LLMs for Search and Discovery Under Evolving Beliefs.” Andrew McCallum, Chair.
Doctoral Oral Exams for October 5, 2026 – October 9, 2026
Elahe Yahyapour Demouchali, PhD., Civil Engineering.
Friday, October 9, 2026, 11:00AM, Marston Hall 234.
Dissertation: “Trustworthy AI for Safety: Perception, Decision-Making and Explanation.” Chengbo Ai, Chair.
Doctoral Oral Exams for September 28, 2026 – October 2, 2026
Pracheta Boddavaram Amaranath, PhD., Computer Science.
Monday, September 28, 2026, 10:30AM, CSL E400 and via Zoom.
Dissertation: “The Interface of Simulation and Causal Modeling.” David Jensen, Chair.
David Pritchard, PhD., English.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026, 1:00PM, via Zoom.
Dissertation: “The Making of New Narrative: The Politics of Gay Liberation and the Poetics of Revolutionary Agency.” Ruth Jennison, Chair
Yu-Zhen Chen, PhD., Computer Science.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026, 12:00PM, CSL E239 and via Zoom.
Dissertation: “Toward Resource-Efficient Decision-Making for Networked Systems.” Donald Towsley, Chair.
Shradha Khanduja, PhD., Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Thursday, October 1, 2026, 11:00AM, LSL N410 and via Zoom.
Dissertation: “Engineering Next-Generation Bacterial Therapies for the Treatment of Solid Tumors.” Neil S. Forbes, Chair.
Connor Witt, PhD., Polymer Science and Engineering.
Friday, October 2, 2026, 9:00AM, Conte Polymer Research Building A110/A111.
Dissertation: “From Bottlebrush Polymers to Ordered Carbon: Bottlebrush Self-Assembly, Templating Strategies, and Advanced Carbonization Techniques.” Gregory N. Tew and James Watkins, Co- Chairs.
Roxana Popescu, PhD., Astronomy.
Friday, October 2, 2026, 9:00AM, LGRT 1033.
Dissertation: “Measuring Dust in Galaxies of Different Metallicities and Within Various Environments at Cosmic Noon.” Alexandra Pope, Chair.
Cruz David, PhD., Philosophy.
Friday, October 2, 2026, 1:00PM, South College E301.
Dissertation: “Truly Biased: Getting Licit Bias from Nature’s Proclivities.” Hilary Kornblith, Chair.