Traditional doctoral defense at Aalto University

Aalto University (School of Business, Helsinki, Finland) invited Prof Dr Gyula Vastag as an opposer this year as well, the Vice Rector for Research at the Corvinus University of Budapest. Despite the pandemic situation and the online doctoral defence on April 16, the oral part was held among the usual ceremonial environment.

 During the nearly two hours of successful defense, Tri Tran, a doctoral candidate from the School of Business, discussed the main questions of his dissertation “In the pursuit of Operational Excellence – Challenges with performance measures and performance estimates” in response to the opponent’s questions.

Prior to the public defense, the dissertation underwent a preliminary review and revision. The University of Finland has invited Prof. Ajay Das (City University of New York, USA) and Prof. Dr. Gyula Vastag as pre-judges. Tri Tran was supervised by Prof. Dr. Markku Kuula, and the dissertation advisor was Dr. Max Finne, Assistant Professor (Department of Information and Service Economy, School of Business, Aalto University).

In previous years, Prof. Dr. Gyula Vastag was able to personally participate in the doctoral defense held at Aalto University together with the other opponents. In accordance with tradition, candidates, project managers and opponents gave their doctorate in tails each year on both personal and online events.

 
From left to right: Prof. Dr. Krishna Dhir, Prof. Dr. Markku Kuula, Jarmo Toivanen PhD candidate and Prof. Dr. Vastag Gyula before entering the room.