Academic Dissertations in the News

11 December 2018

Richard Socher, who’s now Saleforce’s chief data scientist, demonstrated in his dissertation "that deep learning — layered mathematical functions loosely modeled on neurons in the human brain — could solve several different natural language processing tasks simultaneously, obviating the need to develop multiple models. At MetaMind in 2014, using some of the same theoretical principles, he and a team of engineers to produce a model that achieved state-of-the-art accuracy on ImageNet."

Read article by Kyle Wiggers at VentureBeat.com

29 November 2018

The 1965 manuscript—one of five known copies—sold for nearly £585,000 (almost $764,000). It was expected to go for £100,000 to £150,000.

Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/science/stephen-hawking-wheelchair-auction-.htmlNYTime.com

29 November 2018

3D printing in manufacturing, and this concept of disruptive innovation in particular, are the subjects of a dissertation, titled “The Promise of the Future: 3D Printing in Manufacturing,” written by Dr. Michael G. Westphal and submitted to the University of the Rockies in Colorado.

Read more at 3dprint.com

10 October 2018

Urmila Mahadev spent eight years in graduate school solving one of the most basic questions in quantum computation: How do you know whether a quantum computer has done anything quantum at all? ... Finally, she had the makings of a “very beautiful Ph.D. dissertation.”

Read more at Quanta Magazine.

25 September 2018

New study suggests that science dissertations increasingly are research article based, not book-length studies, reflecting the professionalization of the Ph.D.

Not every dissertation has to be a monograph. That’s what disciplinary associations in the humanities have been saying for years, as they advocate for a broader definition of what constitutes the doctoral capstone. But what about the natural sciences? New research from North Carolina State University suggests that math- and science-oriented institutions are seeing a big shift toward article-style dissertations, and that the trend is likely to continue.

Read more at Inside Higher Ed

15 September 2018

Date published June 3, 2015 by Luca Corrieri. Date updated: February 12, 2018

See and download examples at scribbr.com

22 July 2018

Findinga relavent PhD dissertation research is easy with help from one of these academic databases.

1. OATD
2. Dissertation.com
3. Stanford University Libraries
4. OpenThesis
5. Melvyl
6. WorldCat Dissertations and Theses
7. EThOS
8. Cambridge University Library Theses Catalogue
9. LSE Theses Online
10. Oxford University Research Archive
11. ProQuest

6 July 2018

Doctoral courses are slowly being modernized. Now the thesis and viva need to catch up, in Nature by Julie Gould

PhDs are assessed in very different ways around the world. Almost all involve a written thesis, but those come in many forms. ... This isn't necessarily a problem in itself, but some researchers worry that the decades-old doctoral assessment system is showing strain. ... Farrar, like other scientists, suspects that the PhD assessment is not keeping up with the times. Single-author tomes seem outdated when much of research has become a multidisciplinary, team endeavour. Research is becoming more open, but PhD assessments can lack transparency: vivas are sometimes held behind closed doors. Some PhD theses languish, little-used, on office shelves or in archives. Read more at http://www.nature.com/news/what-s-the-point-of-the-phd-thesis-1.20203#auth-1

28 April 2018

Russian networking community Dissernet (in Russian) has revealed that more than 25 doctoral dissertations from Tajikistan defended between 2004 and 2015 contained significant elements of plagiarism, in University World News by Emma Sabzalieva

These are more than just accusations: through detailed text analysis and comparison to other dissertations and publications, Dissernet is able to show exactly which lines of text are copied from other works. It is possible through their Disserpedia database to see in tabular format the extent of the plagiarism and to examine factual errors and other comments made about the dissertation.... Read more at http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20180428053554356

13 February 2018

The Society for Economic Anthropology is honored by, and grateful for, Charles Bishop’s generous gift establishing the M. Estellie Smith Award, in Anthropology News by Bram Tucker.

The M. Estellie Smith Fund will finance a competitive dissertation fieldwork grant of $2,500, to be awarded annually to a PhD candidate pursuing economic anthropology research that promises to make significant theoretical or applied contributions to solve current world issues. This award includes $2,000 to contribute to research expenses, and $500 to facilitate travel to the SEA Spring Meetings to present research results.... Read more at http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2018/02/13/new-dissertation-research-award-for-economic-anthropologists/