I am very pleased to announce and congratulate Kenneth Omokhagbo Afebu for successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Intelligent models for optimisation of the vibro-impact drilling system”, subject to minor corrections. Kenneth was supervised by me along with Dr Evangelos Papatheou.

The external examiner was Professor Zi-Qiang Lang from the University of Sheffield with the internal examiner, Dr Junning Chen and the independent chair, Dr Prakash Kripakaran.

After his viva, Kenneth will continue his research in my group working on the intelligent models for early detection of bowel cancer as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow funded by EPSRC New Horizons (EP/V047868/1).

I am very pleased to announce and congratulate Zhi Zhang for successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Control of Coexisting Attractors in Nonsmooth Dynamical Systems”, subject to minor corrections. Zhi is the first PhD at the Applied Dynamics and Control Lab supervised by me along with Prof. Jan Sieber.

Zhi’s external examiner was Professor Ekaterina Pavlovskaia from the University of Aberdeen with the internal examiner, Dr Evangelos Papatheou and the independent chair, Dr Yulei Wu.

After his viva, Zhi will continue his work on dynamics and control of nonsmooth dynamical systems (from a micro-robot’s perspective) in my lab as a Postdoctoral Research Associate funded by EPSRC Mathematical Sciences.