Yesterday, April 20, 2020, I successfully defended my doctoral research! In the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown, the defense was completely virtual (other than one of my co-advisors being in the room).
So, my final summer as a PhD student just wrapped up and I have to say I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. This summer led to a wide range of new experiences, projects, and results.
As the spring semester wraps up and the 2018-19 school year comes to a close. I am currently prepping for the LAST field season of my doctoral work! I am slated to graduate in May 2020, which means I will be defending my dissertation in February or March, most likely.
Well, the time has officially arrived! Next week, I will begin my preliminary exams to fulfill my requirements to move from a Ph.D student to a Ph.D candidate! This means that starting on Monday, I will start a week of written exams, one from each of my dissertation committee members.
As mentioned in the project description of my Aeromonas work, we are currently working with two different strains/genotypes of virulent Aeromonas hydrophila. Dealing with multiple strains of a bacteria can prove difficult with creating vaccines or administering antibiotics so we wanted to see how the temporal distribution of these two strains compared.