Doctoral Examinations & Schedule

The Final Oral Examination (FOE) is the capstone experience of your doctoral studies. General information about the FOE is outlined in the SGS Calendar. The Final Oral Examination schedule (see calendar below) lists current thesis defenses, and is updated periodically.

Additionally, you may find helpful the Guidelines for the Doctoral Final Oral Examination (FOE), a document that outlines the responsibilities of the graduate unit, SGS, the Examination Committee, and the Chair of the Committee in the planning and conduct of a Final Oral Examination. Faculty and Staff can access additional resources on the SGS Final Examinations webpage.

Academic fees for continuously registered Ph.D. candidates in the final year of the program are pro-rated over the 12–month academic year, based on the date of the final approved thesis submission to SGS. Incidental fees are charged on a sessional (term) basis. More information on the pro-rated fees and schedules can be found in Graduate Fees and on the Student Accounts website under Current Fall–Winter Fee & Refund Schedules.


In-Person Examinations at the School of Graduate Studies

Requests to book the rooms at 63 St. George Street are covered by the following guidelines.

  • Exam rooms are available for blocks of up to three (3) hours between 9:30 AM and 4:30 PM ET, Monday to Friday.
  • Exam rooms have maximum capacities as indicated on the Book a Meeting Room website.
  • All participants should bring their laptop or tablet with them; the computer, camera, and microphone in the room can be used to provide a full room view for remote participants. The computer is currently configured for anyone to sign into their Zoom or Microsoft Teams account. Teleconference is also available for a maximum of two participants.
  • All signature files and forms will be administered electronically.
  • Please avoid the use of perfume, cologne, hairspray and other scented products when you visit the School of Graduate Studies. Refer to the University’s Guidelines on the Use of Perfumes and Scented Products.

Doctoral Examination Schedule

Exam DateStudent NameExam Information
(Thesis, Supervisor(s), Graduate Unit)
Nov 1Name: Lwanga Musisi Living on the Margins of the Centre called “Normalcy”: Autistic Children within a Neo- Colonial Uganda Education System
Supervisor(s): Prof. George JS Dei
Graduate Unit: Department of Social Justice Education
Nov 1Name: Andrew James Mocle Formation of Hippocampal Memory Engrams by Ensemble Allocation and their Role in Context- dependent Modulation of Hippocampal Output during Memory Recall
Supervisor(s): Prof. Sheena Josselyn
Graduate Unit: Department of Physiology
Nov 2Name: Margaret Truc Thanh Thi Ho Photoreceptor Transplantation to the Retina to Investigate Intercellular Communication
Supervisor(s): Prof. Molly Shoichet
Graduate Unit: Institute of Biomedical Engineering
Nov 2Name: Emma Jean Walker Across Scales of Time and Space: Long-term versus Short-term Ecological Impacts of Local and Regional Processes on Biodiversity
Supervisor(s): Prof. Benjamin Gilbert
Graduate Unit: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Nov 3Name: Ksenija Josipovic Universal Minimum Deviation Controller
Supervisor(s): Prof. Aleksandar Prodic
Graduate Unit: Edward S. Rogers Sr. Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engin.
Nov 3Name: Patrick Marshall State Violence, State Control: Costa-Gavras’s Cinematic Political Theory
Supervisor(s): Prof. Brian Price
Graduate Unit: Cinema Studies Institute
Nov 3Name: Annissa Malvoisin Through the Sahara, Across the Red Sea: Trade Networks of Meroitic Finewares and their Impact on Modern Museum Collections
Supervisor(s): Prof. Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner
Graduate Unit: Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
Nov 3Name: Janina Kowalski Fruitful Beginnings: Urban Food Trees Across Canada
Supervisor(s): Prof. Tenley Conway
Graduate Unit: Department of Geography and Planning
Nov 3Name: Bangtian Liu Optimizing Irregular Computations on Parallel Processors
Supervisor(s): Prof. Maryam Mehri Dehnavi
Graduate Unit: Department of Computer Science
Nov 3Name: Syed Nabeel Haider Shah Post-transcriptional Gene Regulation by Human C2H2-Zinc Finger Proteins
Supervisor(s): Prof. Jack Greenblatt
Graduate Unit: Department of Molecular Genetics
Nov 6Name: Elisabetta Campagnola Workers of the Trucks: Labour, Technology, and Repetitions along the Circuits of Transit Goods in Tanzania
Supervisor(s): Prof. Todd Sanders
Graduate Unit: Department of Anthropology
Nov 6Name: Dorothy Adanna Nze Anthony Job creation and Employment for the Biafra People: A Critical Analysis from an Indigenous Perspective
Supervisor(s): Prof. Njoki Wane
Graduate Unit: Department of Social Justice Education
Nov 6Name: Judy Ghalayini Revealing the Mechanism Underlying the Beneficial Effects of Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors in a Drosophila Alzheimers Disease Model
Supervisor(s): Prof. Gabrielle Boulianne
Graduate Unit: Department of Molecular Genetics
Nov 7Name: Alison Jee The Role of Corticosterone in the Early Response to Nevirapine Treatment in Mice: Implications for Idiosyncratic Drug-Induced Liver Injury
Supervisor(s): Prof. Jack Uetrecht
Graduate Unit: Department of Pharmacology
Nov 8Name: Laura Anne Crane Assessing Institutional Internationalization: Examining Three Formal Tools and their Representation by Universities
Supervisor(s): Prof. Ruth Hayhoe
Graduate Unit: Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education
Nov 9Name: Funing Lin Synthesis Small Molecules and Conjugates Against the ClpP Protease for the Development of Novel Antimicrobial and Anticancer Agents
Supervisor(s): Prof. Walid Houry
Graduate Unit: Department of Chemistry
Nov 10Name: Rayane Tabbara Investigating Factors Underlying the Ability of Reward-Paired Cues to Function as Conditioned Reinforcers
Supervisor(s): Prof. Paul Fletcher
Graduate Unit: Department of Psychology
Nov 13Name: Leeladarshini Sujeeun Pyrogenic Carbon Mitigation of Allelopathy in Native and Invasive Tree Species
Supervisor(s): Prof. Sean Thomas
Graduate Unit: Faculty of Forestry
Nov 13Name: Leeladarshini Sujeeun Pyrogenic Carbon Mitigation of Allelopathy in Native and Invasive Tree Species
Supervisor(s): Prof. Sean Thomas
Graduate Unit: Graduate Department of Forestry
Nov 13Name: Zhewei Sun Natural Language Processing for Slang
Supervisor(s): Prof. Yang Xu
Graduate Unit: Department of Computer Science
Nov 13Name: Michelle Heather Ann Bailey Informing the Next Generation: The Role of Diasporic Black Grandfathers and Elders in Knowledge Transmission to their Grandchildren
Supervisor(s): Prof. George JS Dei
Graduate Unit: Department of Social Justice Education
Nov 14Name: Talia Isaacson Tragic Tomorrows: Classical Reception in Twentieth Century Caribbean Literature
Supervisor(s): Prof. Mary Nyquist
Graduate Unit: Centre for Comparative Literature
Nov 14Name: Andrew Merrill Start-Up War: Venture Capital, Silicon Valley, the Pentagon and the Wars Yet-to-Come
Supervisor(s): Prof. Emily Gilbert
Graduate Unit: Department of Geography and Planning
Nov 15Name: Nicolette A Stogios Investigating the Effects of Antipsychotics on Brain Insulin Signaling: A Pilot Multi-Modality Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Study in Healthy Controls
Supervisor(s): Prof. Sri Mahavir Agarwal, Prof. Margaret Hahn
Graduate Unit: Institute of Medical Science
Nov 15Name: YiQing Lu Revealing Novel Regulators of Wildtype and Mutant p53 Stability
Supervisor(s): Prof. Daniel Schramek
Graduate Unit: Department of Molecular Genetics
Nov 16Name: Kenneth Jackson One-dimensional p-wave Contact
Supervisor(s): Prof. Joseph Thywissen
Graduate Unit: Department of Physics
Nov 16Name: Urfa Nadeem Arain Investigating the relationship between stem cell patterning and circuit assembly in the Drosophila medulla
Supervisor(s): Prof. Teddy Erclik
Graduate Unit: Department of Cell and Systems Biology
Nov 17Name: Taha Sheikh Multiscale Modelling and Experimental Characterization of Additively Manufactured Polymer and Polymer Nanocomposites
Supervisor(s): Prof. Kamran Behdinan
Graduate Unit: Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
Nov 17Name: Gregory Frank Gambino Contributions to the thermo-mechanics of ice-filled rock discontinuities for rock engineering design
Supervisor(s): Prof. John Paul Harrison
Graduate Unit: Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering
Nov 17Name: Malcolm Cecil-Cockwell An Evaluation of Concepts and Tools for Managing the Northern Hardwoods.
Supervisor(s): Prof. John Caspersen
Graduate Unit: Faculty of Forestry
Nov 17Name: Malcolm Cecil-Cockwell An Evaluation of Concepts and Tools for Managing the Northern Hardwoods.
Supervisor(s): Prof. John Caspersen
Graduate Unit: Graduate Department of Forestry
Nov 17Name: Amanda Li Ling Khoo Proteomic Biomarker Discovery for Improved Risk Stratification in Localized Prostate Cancer
Supervisor(s): Prof. Thomas Kislinger
Graduate Unit: Department of Medical Biophysics
Nov 17Name: Yu-Qian Mao The Functions of the Chaperone Complex R2TP in Human Health and Disease
Supervisor(s): Prof. Walid Houry
Graduate Unit: Department of Biochemistry
Nov 17Name: Eric Michael Armstrong Targeting the Vaginal Microbiota to Reduce HIV Susceptibility
Supervisor(s): Prof. Rupert Kaul
Graduate Unit: Institute of Medical Science
Nov 20Name: Alireza Arab Stochastic Methods to Manage Uncertainty in Power System Operation
Supervisor(s): Prof. Joseph Tate
Graduate Unit: Edward S. Rogers Sr. Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engin.
Nov 20Name: Pooja Bhalerao Modeling Supply and Demand of General Internists in Ontario
Supervisor(s): Prof. Michael Carter
Graduate Unit: Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
Nov 20Name: Emily Shae Puumala Exploiting Chemical Libraries to Identify and Characterize Novel Bioactives with Efficacy Against Pathogenic Candida Species
Supervisor(s): Prof. Leah Cowen
Graduate Unit: Department of Molecular Genetics
Nov 21Name: Mohamed Ashraf Kamal Hafez Adaptive Regulation: Modelling Cerebellum-Driven Processes
Supervisor(s): Prof. Mireille Broucke
Graduate Unit: Edward S. Rogers Sr. Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engin.
Nov 21Name: Subin Kim Structural and Magnetic Properties of α-RuCl3 Single Crystals.
Supervisor(s): Prof. Young-June Kim
Graduate Unit: Department of Physics
Nov 21Name: Artyom Gritsunov Investigation of genes involved in quinate and prephenate metabolism
Supervisor(s): Prof. Dinesh Christendat
Graduate Unit: Department of Cell and Systems Biology
Nov 21Name: Hadia Akhtar Khan For the Family, By the Family: Migration and Betterment in Rural Pakistan
Supervisor(s): Prof. Tania Li
Graduate Unit: Department of Anthropology
Nov 22Name: Bahareh Najafi Deep Learning Approaches for Modeling Spatio-Temporal Dynamics In Evolving Networks
Supervisor(s): Prof. Alberto Leon-Garcia
Graduate Unit: Edward S. Rogers Sr. Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engin.
Nov 22Name: Kevin Xue Elucidating the role and regulation of protocatechuate metabolism in Listeria monocytogenes and other Listeria species
Supervisor(s): Prof. Dinesh Christendat
Graduate Unit: Department of Cell and Systems Biology
Nov 22Name: Jason Shing-Yan Leung From the Ends of the Earth to the Edge of the Universe: New Tools for Overcoming the Extreme Environments of CMB Experiments
Supervisor(s): Prof. C. Barth Netterfield, Prof. J Richard Bond
Graduate Unit: Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Nov 22Name: Jason Shing-Yan Leung From the Ends of the Earth to the Edge of the Universe: New Tools for Overcoming the Extreme Environments of CMB Experiments
Supervisor(s): Prof. C. Barth Netterfield, Prof. Adam Hincks
Graduate Unit: Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Nov 22Name: Beth Ellen Rossen The Quest for Health Information Resources by Young Adults with Disabilities: Building Theory
Supervisor(s): Prof. Rebecca Renwick
Graduate Unit: Department of Public Health Sciences
Nov 22Name: Carol Louise Canzano-Hamala A View from the Frontlines: Understanding College to University Transfer in Ontario from a Street-Level Perspective
Supervisor(s): Prof. Leesa Wheelahan
Graduate Unit: Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education
Nov 23Name: Kelsey Gwen Smyth Microplastics Characterization in Stormwater: Pavement Source Evaluation and Treatment Efficiency of a Bioretention Cell
Supervisor(s): Prof. Elodie Passeport, Prof. Jennifer Anne Pauline Drake
Graduate Unit: Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering
Nov 23Name: Rajshree Ghosh Biswas The Development of Ex vivo and In vivo Multiphase NMR Spectroscopy
Supervisor(s): Prof. Andre Simpson
Graduate Unit: Department of Chemistry
Nov 23Name: June Y Shiraishi EXPLORING SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS’ PERSPECTIVES AND PRACTICES OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT (STSE) EDUCATION
Supervisor(s): Prof. Erminia Pedretti
Graduate Unit: Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning
Nov 23Name: Liz Bernadine Holder Towards Equity in STEM in K-Grade 12 Education
Supervisor(s): Prof. Nina Bascia
Graduate Unit: Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education
Nov 23Name: Brendan Innes Intercellular Signaling Networks of a Tissue from Single-Cell Transcriptomics
Supervisor(s): Prof. Gary Bader
Graduate Unit: Department of Molecular Genetics
Nov 24Name: Eric Benjamin Kopp A Framework for Automated, Unsupervised Control Synthesis in Noiseless Subspaces of Open Quantum Systems
Supervisor(s): Prof. Raymond Kwong
Graduate Unit: Edward S. Rogers Sr. Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engin.
Nov 24Name: Christopher Major Synthesis and Reactivity of Low-Coordinate Borocations
Supervisor(s): Prof. Douglas Stephan
Graduate Unit: Department of Chemistry
Nov 24Name: Elizabeth Ann Cox Cognition and Neural Communication Following Paediatric Brain Tumour: The Effects of Task Complexity and Potential for Community-led Exercise as Intervention
Supervisor(s): Prof. Donald Mabbott
Graduate Unit: Department of Psychology
Nov 24Name: Rysa Zaman Cardiac Macrophages in Organ Adaptation to Hypertensive Stress
Supervisor(s): Prof. Slava Epelman
Graduate Unit: Department of Immunology
Nov 27Name: Maneesha Amrita Rajora Supramolecular Structure-Enabled Delivery of Porphyrin to Glioblastomas Beyond the Blood-Brain Barrier
Supervisor(s): Prof. Gang Zheng
Graduate Unit: Institute of Biomedical Engineering
Nov 27Name: Tyler Ross McDonald Synthesis of Small Carbocycles using C1-Bisnucleophiles
Supervisor(s): Prof. Sophie Rousseaux
Graduate Unit: Department of Chemistry
Nov 27Name: Monica Altagracia Espaillat Lizardo Nationalist Symbols, Legal Practices, and the Making of Impossible Citizenship in the Dominican Republic
Supervisor(s): Prof. Melanie Newton
Graduate Unit: Department of History
Nov 27Name: Tavis Turner Smith Mountain biking and trail building: capability expansion, relationships, and social change in the contact zone
Supervisor(s): Prof. Simon Darnell
Graduate Unit: Department of Kinesiology (Graduate)
Nov 27Name: Michael Woolman Rapid Diagnosis of Paediatric Brain Cancers using Picosecond Infrared Laser Mass Spectrometry
Supervisor(s): Prof. Arash Zarrine-Afsar
Graduate Unit: Department of Medical Biophysics
Nov 27Name: Aisha Saleh Abdullah Al Naamani Validating SCAP as a Therapeutic Target for Colorectal Cancer
Supervisor(s): Prof. Rima Al-awar
Graduate Unit: Department of Pharmacology
Nov 27Name: Nishanth Lakshman Exploring the regulation of neural stem cell behaviour along the adult neuraxis
Supervisor(s): Prof. Cindi Morshead
Graduate Unit: Institute of Medical Science
Nov 27Name: Sarah Christina Jane Jorgensen COVID-19 during pregnancy and infant health outcomes
Supervisor(s): Prof. Jeff Kwong
Graduate Unit: Institute of Medical Science
Nov 28Name: Sean Kinney Development of methacrylic acid biomaterial-based therapeutic tissues for type 1 diabetes
Supervisor(s): Prof. Michael Sefton
Graduate Unit: Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry
Nov 28Name: Alexandra Dawn Bannerman Biomaterials and tissue engineered constructs for therapeutic strategies at the surface of the injured heart
Supervisor(s): Prof. Milica Radisic
Graduate Unit: Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry
Nov 28Name: Mohamed Shaaban Near-Ultraviolet Instrumentation and Cosmology in the New Space Era.
Supervisor(s): Prof. Miriam Diamond
Graduate Unit: Department of Physics
Nov 28Name: Yuhuai Wu Neural Networks for Mathematical Reasoning — Evaluations, Capabilities, and Techniques
Supervisor(s): Prof. Roger Grosse, Prof. Geoffrey Hinton
Graduate Unit: Department of Computer Science
Nov 28Name: Naomi Laura Neufeld Shipwrights and Shipbuilding in the Ancient Mediterranean 700-400 BC
Supervisor(s): Prof. Ben Akrigg
Graduate Unit: Department of Classics
Nov 28Name: Nikhil Mahajan TRANSIENT EMISSION PHENOMENA IN MILLISECOND PULSARS
Supervisor(s): Prof. Marten van Kerkwijk
Graduate Unit: Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Nov 28Name: Pamela Ann Kolopack Do Research Ethics Guidelines Promote Equitable Power Relationships Between Low-and-Middle Income Country Communities and High-Income Country Researchers?
Supervisor(s): Prof. Alison Thompson
Graduate Unit: Department of Public Health Sciences
Nov 28Name: Xinying Guo Regulation and function of Atypical Chemokine Rece ptor-1 (ACKR1/DARC) in primary endothelial cells
Supervisor(s): Prof. Warren Lee
Graduate Unit: Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology
Nov 29Name: Mehran Dadsetan Low-GHG Hydrogen Production using Microwave-Driven Methane Pyrolysis
Supervisor(s): Prof. Murray Thomson
Graduate Unit: Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
Nov 29Name: Kanksha Mahadevia Ghimire Disasters and Developing Countries: Self-critique as a Mechanism to Overcome Obstacles to Institutional Reform
Supervisor(s): Prof. Mariana Prado, Prof. Michael Trebilcock
Graduate Unit: Faculty of Law
Nov 29Name: Vivian Feng The Relationship Between Biomarkers of Gut Barrier Integrity and Cognition in Cognitively Vulnerable Adults
Supervisor(s): Prof. Krista Lanctot
Graduate Unit: Department of Pharmacology
Nov 30Name: Patrick Maung Soe Win H Loa Investigating factors influencing adoption of ride -sourcing and incorporating such choices into trav el demand model
Supervisor(s): Prof. Khandker Nurul Habib
Graduate Unit: Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering
Nov 30Name: Mary Johanna Macdonald The Meaning of Equality
Supervisor(s): Prof. Torrey Shanks
Graduate Unit: Department of Political Science
Nov 30Name: Bojian Zheng Automatic Compiler-based Optimizations for Deep Neural Networks
Supervisor(s): Prof. Gennady Pekhimenko
Graduate Unit: Department of Computer Science
Nov 30Name: Alexander Luscombe Digital footprints of the policing web: A Study of police economic crime investigation using natural language processing and machine learning
Supervisor(s): Prof. Akwasi Owusu-Bempah
Graduate Unit: Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies
Nov 30Name: Afreen Zaman Khan Effect of early neonatal administration of oral Lactiplantibacillus plantarum on stool iron content and iron status in newborns in Dhaka Bangladesh
Supervisor(s): Prof. Daniel Roth
Graduate Unit: Department of Nutritional Sciences
Nov 30Name: Julia Tomasi Genetic Investigation of Physiological Phenotypes to Understand Anxiety Mechanisms
Supervisor(s): Prof. James Kennedy
Graduate Unit: Institute of Medical Science