ANU Panel Member

At the ANU, each PhD student has a panel of (at least) three:

  • The chair, who holds the formal/organizational responsibility for the PhD/panel,
  • The primary supervisor (often the same person as the chair),
  • Associate supervisors, who might be actual co-supervisors, i.e., being involved in research and publications, but in most cases they are just additional panel members to check on the current progress and take part in regular milestone meetings.

Below, I list all students for which I've been acting as an associate supervisor while primarily acting as a "panel member" without being involved in research.

  • Xiaodi Zhang (August 2021 ongoing; submission planned 2025)
  • Chunjie Liu (March 2024, ongoing)

ANU Confirmation of Candidature

Every PhD student has several milestones that need to be achieved. One of them is passing the Confirmation of Candidature (CoC) milestone after 9 to 12 months after commencing, where the entire PhD plan (and current progress towards it) gets reviewed. Every PhD panel has an additional CoC chair. This person is in charge of chairing that milestone meeting and acting as yet another, independent observer. He/she will be in charge of making a final recommendation based on everybody's feedback.

I have been or will be a CoC chair for the following students:

  • Mengqi H.
  • Shu Z.
  • Yuanchu L. (Abbreviated last names for anonymity)

Examiner of PhD Theses

At the ANU, the examiner of a PhD thesis is different from the panel and, in fact, has to be conflict-free to any of the panel members. In contrast, in Germany (as well as in many other countries), the main supervisor is always the primary examiner. (Whereas at the ANU examiners are even anonymous unless they voluntarily declare their identity.)

Below, I list all PhD theses that I reviewed/examined in the past:

  • Jakub Med, Czech Technical University in Prague. So far, I have only been the primary examiner for the ``thesis proposal review'', a half-time intermediate assessment.