This presentation was given to satisfy MSU’s oral examination requirements for acquiring PhD candidacy. In our graduate program, we refer to this as the “First Committee Meeting”. The task is convince your guidance committee that you understand the motivation, background, and context of your own research plan for your dissertation. While the committee is the primary audience, the talk itself is generally available for the lab community to come watch and it is usually accompanied by a public flyer that is distributed around the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams. In my case, this talk was 30 minutes in length followed by 10 minutes of public questions and then a 30 minute closed-door session with just my guidance committee. It was an opportunity to showcase what I had been doing for the Ra EDM project in addition to what I had done in the past towards EDM3, and I was very excited to have a chance to talk about both of them at length, even though EDM3 is the primary focus of my dissertation.
– Aiden Boyer
First Guidance Committee Meeting: Time-Reversal Violation Using Pear Shaped Nuclei
