It's been a very (at least academically speaking) eventful fall for me. Two weeks ago I took my PhD candidacy oral qualifying exam (which, YAY!, I passed), and since then, back to coursework and more research. The nice thing about passing the Research Fundamental Exam without any amendments is that I do not have to take any more intensive courses, at least for the PhD portion of my degree. As an aside, there are three outcomes for this exam; passing, conditional passing (in which case the academic committee suggests enrollment in research topic related coursework), or failing (in which case you can petition to take the exam again in a semester).

So what will I do now that this giant milestone is behind me? Keep working hard at doing nerdy things of course… Here's an example: This October 27th, (see attached shamelessly advertised flyer) some of the grad students in Robotics are taking part in an open house robotics demo with a Halloween theme. I think I'll probably have three demos showing, Mr. Needles my suturing robot, a brain wave controlled remote controlled mobile robot platform, which is meant for teaching mice "driving" skills (yes really, you will control it with your thoughts!!) and some suture tension and tissue trauma measuring devices. So, if you're interested, come on by! (See Flier for more details)