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: Xiang Ren Analyzing System Performance and Automating Performance Diagnosis
Supervisor(s): Prof. Ding Yuan
Graduate Unit: Edward S. Rogers Sr. Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engin.
Nov 1Name: Joshua Agostino Palumbo Liquid-Cooled Heat Sinks Fabricated Using Wire-Arc Additive Manufacturing Techniques
Supervisor(s): Prof. Sanjeev Chandra
Graduate Unit: Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
Nov 1Name: Christine Chan Suicide ideation in Ontario: associations with health service utilization, suicide attempts, and suicide
Supervisor(s): Prof. Peter Donnelly
Graduate Unit: Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation
Nov 1Name: Yifei Yan Substrates for Plasma Sprayed Solid Oxide Cell with Better Longevity and Air Permeability
Supervisor(s): Prof. Olivera Kesler
Graduate Unit: Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
Nov 1Name: Osholene Oshobugie Upiomoh Kemetic Initiation: Articulating the African Rites of Passage as Revealing of African Indigenous Knowledge for its Sacredness in the Triumphant Birth of High-Quality Human Beings and Society
Supervisor(s): Prof. Njoki Wane
Graduate Unit: Department of Social Justice Education
Nov 1Name: Timothy Cheung Protected Zwitterionic Polymers for Delivery of Therapeutic Macromolecules
Supervisor(s): Prof. Molly Shoichet
Graduate Unit: Department of Chemistry
Nov 4Name: Sayan Nag Advancing Effective Brain Connectivity Estimation for task-fMRI using Dynamic Casual Modeling
Supervisor(s): Prof. Kamil Uludag
Graduate Unit: Department of Medical Biophysics
Nov 4Name: Muchun Han Effects of ketamine enantiomers and their hydroxynorketamine metabolites on synaptic transmission and long-term potentiation in mouse hippocampal slices
Supervisor(s): Prof. Graham Collingridge
Graduate Unit: Department of Physiology
Nov 4Name: Robert Aaron Zimmerman Copulas: New Theory and Methods
Supervisor(s): Prof. Radu Craiu
Graduate Unit: Department of Statistical Sciences
Nov 4Name: Carin Elizabeth McLean Cultivating Strong Student Character in Post Secondary Education
Supervisor(s): Prof. Richard Volpe
Graduate Unit: Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development
Nov 5Name: Umair Afzal Majid How do Hospitals Walk the Talk Exploring the Connection between Hospital Goals and Patient and Family Engagement Practices
Supervisor(s): Prof. Kerry Kuluski, Prof. Carolyn Steele Gray
Graduate Unit: Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation
Nov 6Name: Daniel Foster The Economic and Educational Impacts of Universal Early Childhood Education and Care Programs: A Meta-Analytic and Quasi-Experimental Approach
Supervisor(s): Prof. Jennifer Jenkins
Graduate Unit: Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development
Nov 6Name: Dorothy Lee Promoting endogenous enteric neural crest cells migration through collagenase matrix metalloproteinase 2 and chemoattractant glia cell derived neurotrophic factor stimulation as novel Hirschsprung disease therapeutics
Supervisor(s): Prof. Agostino Pierro
Graduate Unit: Department of Physiology
Nov 6Name: Mohammad Kaviul Khan Generalized Variable Importance Metric: An approach to identify important predictors from learning models
Supervisor(s): Prof. Rafal Kustra
Graduate Unit: Department of Public Health Sciences
Nov 6Name: Emma Schmiedecke A Study of the Composer-Performer Relationship in the Music of Joan Tower
Supervisor(s): Prof. Robin Elliott
Graduate Unit: Faculty of Music
Nov 7Name: Logan Doyle Chunking in Visual Working Memory Implicates Long-Term Memory Representations
Supervisor(s): Prof. Susanne Ferber
Graduate Unit: Department of Psychology
Nov 8Name: Chris Brimacombe On the eEffectiveness of Analysing Ecological Communities as Networks
Supervisor(s): Prof. Marie-Josee Fortin
Graduate Unit: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Nov 11Name: Haidy Giratallah Big Data Genomic Approaches for Understanding Nicotine Metabolism and Associated Phenotypes
Supervisor(s): Prof. Rachel Tyndale
Graduate Unit: Department of Pharmacology
Nov 11Name: Justin Beland Bayesian Optimization Algorithms for High-Dimensional Problems and Robust Design
Supervisor(s): Prof. Prasanth Nair
Graduate Unit: Institute for Aerospace Studies
Nov 11Name: Samantha Kadee Murray Leveraging GaN Integrated Circuits for In-Situ Device Monitoring and High-Density Power Converters
Supervisor(s): Prof. Olivier Trescases
Graduate Unit: Edward S. Rogers Sr. Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engin.
Nov 12Name: Jazlyn Borges Mechanism and targeting of NINJ1-mediated lytic cell death
Supervisor(s): Prof. Benjamin Steinberg, Prof. Benjamin Steinberg
Graduate Unit: Department of Physiology
Nov 12Name: Joshua Morgan Graham Electrophilic Cyanation of Alkenyl Tosylates, Ketones and Amines using Disubstituted Malononitriles
Supervisor(s): Prof. Sophie Rousseaux
Graduate Unit: Department of Chemistry
Nov 12Name: Elisabeth Lange “Hoping without Hope”: Positive Pessimism in the Literary Texts of Marlen Haushofer and Sibylle Berg
Supervisor(s): Prof. Angelica Fenner
Graduate Unit: Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures
Nov 12Name: Oliver Limoyo Generative and Self-Supervised Learning for Robotics Problems
Supervisor(s): Prof. Jonathan Kelly
Graduate Unit: Institute for Aerospace Studies
Nov 12Name: Aloys Auguste Anatole Nahas Organisms as Agents: Beyond the Artifact Model of Teleology
Supervisor(s): Prof. Denis Walsh
Graduate Unit: Inst. for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology
Nov 13Name: Heng Kang Yao Implications of Cellular Changes in Depression on Human Cortical Microcircuit Activity
Supervisor(s): Prof. Etay Hay
Graduate Unit: Department of Physiology
Nov 13Name: Esther Matus Development of Bispecific Proteins for Applications in Immunotherapy
Supervisor(s): Prof. Jean Gariepy
Graduate Unit: Department of Medical Biophysics
Nov 13Name: Ambika Tenneti Community Engagement in Urban Forestry: Exploring Barriers and Strategies for Inclusion of Recent Racialised Immigrants in Toronto’s Urban Forest
Supervisor(s): Prof. Shashi Kant, Prof. Nicole Klenk
Graduate Unit: Faculty of Forestry
Nov 13Name: Ambika Tenneti Community Engagement in Urban Forestry: Exploring Barriers and Strategies for Inclusion of Recent Racialised Immigrants in Toronto’s Urban Forest
Supervisor(s): Prof. Shashi Kant, Prof. Nicole Klenk
Graduate Unit: Graduate Department of Forestry
Nov 14Name: Juny Yoon An Expectation-Maximization Approach to Unsupervised Parameter Learning for Trajectory Estimation
Supervisor(s): Prof. Tim Barfoot
Graduate Unit: Institute for Aerospace Studies
Nov 15Name: Yee Kei Kiki Chan Micronutrient Premix Granules: Characterization, Failure, Analysis, and Application in Fortified Bouillon Cubes
Supervisor(s): Prof. Yu-Ling Cheng, Prof. Levente Diosady
Graduate Unit: Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry
Nov 15Name: Bowen Cheuk Hong Chan The Spectrum of Virtue: From the Decent to the Excellent
Supervisor(s): Prof. Thomas Hurka
Graduate Unit: Department of Philosophy
Nov 15Name: Sonia Ebemen Evans Control of Substrate Supply to the Chloroplast 2-C-methyl-D-erythritol-4-phosphate Pathway
Supervisor(s): Prof. Michael Phillips
Graduate Unit: Department of Cell and Systems Biology
Nov 15Name: Daniele Laudadio A Seat at the Table: Food and National Belonging in Contemporary Postcolonial Italy
Supervisor(s): Prof. Luca Somigli
Graduate Unit: Department of Italian Studies
Nov 15Name: Cinthya Guzman Recentering Boredom: A Sociological Exploration of Emotions Before and During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Supervisor(s): Prof. Daniel Silver
Graduate Unit: Department of Sociology
Nov 15Name: Maxime Perron The Contextual Involvement of the Speech-Motor System in Speech Perception
Supervisor(s): Prof. Claude Alain
Graduate Unit: Department of Psychology
Nov 18Name: Silviu Pitis Leveraging Structure to Represent Tasks in Sequential Decision Making
Supervisor(s): Prof. Jimmy Ba
Graduate Unit: Department of Computer Science
Nov 18Name: Mickael Dang Drug delivery strategies to overcome chronic ocular hypertension
Supervisor(s): Prof. Molly Shoichet
Graduate Unit: Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry
Nov 18Name: Kimanzi Muthengi Democratic Student Councils and Secondary Schools in Kenya: An Explanatory Study
Supervisor(s): Prof. Francine Menashy
Graduate Unit: Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education
Nov 18Name: Victoria Riccio Analysis of targeting and function of dual localized peroxisome and mitochondria membrane proteins
Supervisor(s): Prof. Angus McQuibban, Prof. Peter Kim
Graduate Unit: Department of Biochemistry
Nov 19Name: Whitney Laurel Mon-Nga Quong What it Means to Have a Scar: Measuring the Scar Experience with the SCAR-Q
Supervisor(s): Prof. Joel Fish
Graduate Unit: Institute of Medical Science
Nov 19Name: Xiangyue Hu Elucidating Mechanisms by which Loss-of-Function and a Human Missense Variant of Integrin-Linked Kinase Control Murine Renal Development
Supervisor(s): Prof. Norman Rosenblum
Graduate Unit: Institute of Medical Science
Nov 19Name: Neel Dipesh Choksi Ultra-Narrow Optical Features Using Polarization-Dependent Gain in Elliptically Birefringent Fibers
Supervisor(s): Prof. Li Qian
Graduate Unit: Edward S. Rogers Sr. Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engin.
Nov 19Name: Holly Boyne Pain Sensitivity as a Longitudinal Risk Factor for Nonsuicidal Self-injury
Supervisor(s): Prof. Chloe Hamza
Graduate Unit: Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development
Nov 20Name: Cory Richman The Characterization of Chromosmoe 1q Gains in Ped iatric Posterior Fossa Ependymoma
Supervisor(s): Prof. Michael Taylor
Graduate Unit: Department of Medical Biophysics
Nov 21Name: Anthony Antunes Assimilation to God in Plato’s Republic
Supervisor(s): Prof. George Boys-Stones
Graduate Unit: Department of Classics
Nov 21Name: Erik Alfred Etzler Traffic noise as a source of acoustic interference in Orthopterans
Supervisor(s): Prof. John Ratcliffe, Prof. Darryl Gwynne
Graduate Unit: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Nov 22Name: Ruo Xi Zhang Elucidating the Function of Novel Components of Extracellular Contractile Injection Systems (eCIS)
Supervisor(s): Prof. Alan Richard Davidson
Graduate Unit: Department of Molecular Genetics
Nov 22Name: Aaron Klein Distributed shape derivatives for level-set topology optimization and their applications to robust topology optimization
Supervisor(s): Prof. Masayuki Yano, Prof. Prasanth Nair
Graduate Unit: Institute for Aerospace Studies
Nov 22Name: Pallavi Pilaka Investigating Mechanisms Dictating Tissue-Specific Alternative Splicing Patterns in C. elegans
Supervisor(s): Prof. John Anthony Calarco
Graduate Unit: Department of Cell and Systems Biology
Nov 22Name: Travonne Edwards Interrupting Anti-Black Racism: Examining Physical Abuse Allegations Against Black Families Navigating Ontario’s Child Welfare System
Supervisor(s):
Graduate Unit: Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work
Nov 25Name: Bryan Wang Human-AI Systems for Creating, Consuming, and Interacting with Digital Content
Supervisor(s): Prof. Tovi Grossman
Graduate Unit: Department of Computer Science
Nov 25Name: Jing ze Wu Control of Phagosome Resolution by Ion Fluxes and Phosphoinositides
Supervisor(s): Prof. Sergio Grinstein, Prof. Spencer Freeman
Graduate Unit: Department of Biochemistry
Nov 25Name: Piriththiv Dhavarasa Investigating Intracellular and Extracellular Biology Using Genome-Wide CRISPR/Cas9 Screening
Supervisor(s): Prof. Shana Kelley
Graduate Unit: Department of Biochemistry
Nov 26Name: Jason Lequyer Zero-shot Image Restoration for Biological Imaging
Supervisor(s): Prof. Laurence Pelletier
Graduate Unit: Department of Molecular Genetics
Nov 26Name: Mayana Slobodian Fixing Canada: A Century of Indigenous-Targeted State Commissions of Inquiry
Supervisor(s): Prof. Mariana Valverde
Graduate Unit: Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies
Nov 26Name: Evan Yifan Wang Integrative genomic analysis of WNT medulloblastom a
Supervisor(s): Prof. Michael Taylor
Graduate Unit: Department of Medical Biophysics
Nov 27Name: Pouya Shati Interpretable and Constrained Machine Learning via Combinatorial Optimization
Supervisor(s): Prof. Sheila McIlraith, Prof. Eldan Cohen
Graduate Unit: Department of Computer Science
Nov 27Name: Michael Yin Chak Chong Bayesian Approaches to Demographic and Health Estimation
Supervisor(s): Prof. Monica Alexander
Graduate Unit: Department of Statistical Sciences
Nov 27Name: Ahmed Shariful Alam High-Speed and Power Efficient Integrated Electro-Optic Modulators
Supervisor(s): Prof. J Stewart Aitchison
Graduate Unit: Edward S. Rogers Sr. Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engin.
Nov 28Name: Wenfu Bao Behavioral and Neurophysiological Correlates of Auditory Attention in Monolinguals and Bilinguals
Supervisor(s): Prof. Monika Molnar
Graduate Unit: Rehabilitation Sciences Institute
Nov 28Name: Alicia Battaglia Design of Polymer Binders for Organic Electrodes
Supervisor(s): Prof. Dwight Seferos
Graduate Unit: Department of Chemistry
Nov 28Name: Jerry Ng Comparing Deep learning Against Classic Time Series Analysis and System Identification for Modelling the Kraft Chemical Recovery Process
Supervisor(s): Prof. Nikolai DeMartini, Prof. Yuri Lawryshyn
Graduate Unit: Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry
Nov 28Name: Emmett Wise Streamlining Calibration: Eliminating Infrastructure and Certifying Optimality
Supervisor(s): Prof. Jonathan Kelly
Graduate Unit: Institute for Aerospace Studies
Nov 28Name: Elizabeth Tirovolas Feedback with Children: Exploring a Framework for Providing Psychoeducational Assessment Results in Schools
Supervisor(s): Prof. Todd Cunningham
Graduate Unit: Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development
Nov 29Name: David Adam Przelicki Characterization of recurrent tumour biology in pe diatric posterior fossa ependymoma
Supervisor(s): Prof. Michael Taylor
Graduate Unit: Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology
Nov 29Name: Garrett Shayne Paul Bullivant Transcription Factor Mediated Rescue of Differentiation Failure in Glioblastoma
Supervisor(s): Prof. Peter Dirks
Graduate Unit: Department of Molecular Genetics
Nov 29Name: Xin Huang Collagen Morphometrics Exploration in Health and Disease
Supervisor(s): Prof. Laurent Bozec
Graduate Unit: Faculty of Dentistry
Nov 29Name: Runjie Shi Data-Driven Portable Perimetry
Supervisor(s): Prof. Willy Wong
Graduate Unit: Institute of Biomedical Engineering