Proposal Defense

I did my PhD proposal denfense yesterday and now I am one more step closer to finish it. It took a week to just prepare the talk. The talk was long and have 45 slides. However, there are only about 8 slides for each project, since there are 4 projects. The talk lasts about 45 minutes. Because it is so long, everytime I practiced it, I almost lost my voice after I finished. We used a new system that can connect skype and regular phone and we can hear everyone clearly. However, background noise came from time to time and this interrupted my talk several times (quite annoying). During the talk, members in my committees asked many questions. This is probably the best opportunity for them to ask whatever questions they have. And I am glad they did that. For some questions, I did not think I answered them well. The good thing is that most of work was done in collaboration with one of the committee members and they joined in, in helping me to answer when my answer was not satisfying or convincing.I should improve in this aspect.

After the talk, we had some discussion. Then, my advisor was proposing to have a private discussion (without me) while Rajeev said there was nothing that was confidencial. And thus, they continued the discussion while I was still sitting there. By the end, they agreed to let me pass the proposal defense. Thanks everyone in my committee.

For the dissertation, there are several measurements need to be done and the majority will be dissertation writing. Looking forward, there are lots of work need to be done. We are planning for a USENIX ATC submission by the end of Jan. and a TridentCom submission in the middle of Feb. Happy Christmas and then keep hard-working!