In Defense of Online Defenses
A little more than two weeks ago, Robert Cerulli, A13, M22, GBS22, turned in his thesis on peptide-based inhibitors in cancer-cell signaling. That same day, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) sent out a message informing students that because of the coronavirus, all upcoming thesis defenses would have to be completely online. Cerulli’s would be the first.
“At first, I was definitely confused—how would it really work?—and anxious,” he said. He was a little disappointed, too. He has been anticipating this moment since entering the School of Medicine’s MD/PhD program in 2013. You could say he had been working toward it since he first came to Tufts as an undergraduate chemistry major in 2009. He had envisioned proudly presenting his research to his peers in a classroom, maybe even an auditorium. Not from his apartment.
In the end, his defense via WebEx video meeting on March 24 may have been even better than what he originally pictured.