On May 17, 2024, our ACGG-affiliated student Sven Weber became the first PhD graduate within the framework of IRTG 2843 after the successful defence of his thesis “Maximizing information content of SNP arrays for genomic prediction”.
As is generally the case in Germany, a PhD thesis is defended in a public “disputation” with an expert examination committee. Latin grades are awarded for the thesis and the oral examination. In JLU’s faculty of Agricultural, Nutritional and Environmental Sciences, the PhD committee normally comprises two reviewers and two additional examiners. For cases where both reviewers suggest that the thesis deserves distinction (“summa cum laude”), an additional external reviewer is added, expanding the committee to five examiners plus the chairperson. Data secrecy regulations prevent us from revealing Sven’s overall grade. However, we can disclose that his examination committee, comprising Professors Rod Snowdon, Matthias Frisch, Andreas Stahl, Kai Voss-Fels and John Clifton-Brown along with chairperson Prof. Gesine Lühken, was extremely happy with both thesis and defence
– congratulations Dr. Weber!
During his PhD, Sven interacted closely with numerous colleagues at UQ and was very fortunate to be able to visit Queensland twice already. Looking forward, he has recently obtained a lucrative funding opportunity to lead his own junior research group within a new BMBF funding initiative for “Modern Plant Breeding”, and his proposal "AIM4GEM" includes travel funding for Sven and the students in his new group to continue this fruitful partnership with UQ during the next four years. So there was certainly a lot to celebrate into the late hours of Friday night!
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