The PhD candidate and the King

It's been a good week for Team Reed, and I'll tell you straight up that you should avoid Jeff Reed for the next several months if you don't want to hear about it.

First, Alison successfully presented to a select committee of scientists with PhDs why she should have the opportunity to be among them, and we got to help her (a little) with the pretty parts of her presentation. She, of course, did the hard stuff. 

Second, the Captain was crowned King of the annual Canterbury Neighborhood Chili Cookoff last night. He agreed, reluctantly to remove his crown and medal before he got into bed, but they're both back on today as we prepare for a day of football. 

The cookoff is part of a block party that takes place on the street in front of our house. We drag out fire pits, tables and chairs, and Ricky and Kris set up a movie screen for the kids. 

When we are in town for the event, our biggest contribution is a table of adult beverages for parents who bring their little ones through for trick-or-treating and those who just happen to wander by. We are becoming known as the "Bourbon House," which is kind of the equivalent of the house that gives full-size candy bars. 

This year, the Captain/King brought out more than a dozen bottles in addition to pitchers of a Pineapple Lemon Drop for those (including me) who don't indulge in brown liquids. The party long outlived me, but the beauty of a party in/near your yard is that you get to go to bed when you want.

As for the arguably more important part of what made the last several days a huge success, we were invited down to Orlando last week to help the little redhead prep for her big event.

It's not like we didn't know Ali is a smart cookie. She is a research chemist and has some published work and an undergraduate degree to prove it. 

She was always a good student, and when she discovered chemistry back in high school, we were impressed. But to see her in her (now) natural habitat presenting her case for why she should be allowed to be a bona fide PhD candidate in the field of research chemistry brought it all into sharp focus. 

Since she enrolled at UCF two years ago with the goal of earning her PhD, I've thought of her as being in the doctoral program. But there's more to it than just signing up and doing the work. In the five-year program, I thought the hard part came in the last year where you have to write and defend a dissertation - essentially a detailed, long paper about a research project. 

Before you do that, though, you have to first earn your Master's Degree and pass an exam/presentation where a committee of PhD-holding professors judge whether you have what it takes to be an official doctoral candidate. The Masters portion seemed to go without a hitch. The second portion, though, requires you to write a paper that outlines a mock issue you want to tackle, along with a research project  you actually will take on. In this paper, you have to credibly explain why your mock issue is real and your solution would correct it, and you also have to credibly explain why you're qualified to tackle the real project and detail how you'll do it, including the budget and equipment you'll need. 

Alison's mock project was about the "Fate and transport of oil-based particulates formed via hurricane-driven aerosol generation in the Gulf of Mexico." Unless you actually want to know the inner workings of cloud formation - both marine and continental - I urge you to not ask her about it.

Her actual doctoral project is to use an electrospinning structure to create environmentally friendly, porous nanofiber shells that would house chemical compounds capable of mitigating pollution in salt or freshwater. After being introduced into the water, the compounds escape the shells to chemically negate the pollutants. The shells would biodegrade without leaving behind any synthetic or harmful products.

Simple stuff, right?

When she asked if Jeff and I would come down to help her fine-tune her presentation, I was reluctant. Not because I didn't want to help, but because I didn't think either of us could offer any real help. I'm pretty sure I got an A in Chemistry in high school, but that was a millennium ago. Sure, I still recognize NaCl and H₂O as salt and water from those days, and I kind of remember what radicals are, but that's about it. 

I said as much to her. She laughed and said she wasn't relying on either of us for our chemical know-how. "I have to tell a story," she said. "You're a writer. You can tell me where I get off track."

The Captain's role was largely in clarity and preparing for the committee questions that would come with her in the room, without any onlookers. As you might imagine, he took that like a fish to unpolluted water.

Alison had a dozen slides showing chemically how harmful carbon compounds in oil will (probably) change while in a cloud and subject to ozone and UV radiation. I called them heiroglyphs, but they're chemical structures that meant something to most of the people in the room where she presented.

We helped with other, less scientific slides like the one that showed her electrospinning set-up and how it would actually ensure her nanofibers surrounded her bio-remedial compound like wood surrounds pencil lead.  And how when she talked about creating a cloud in a flask in the mock project, she needed to be sure to not give her committee the idea that she was going to create a fluffy cloud in a bottle, but that she was focused on the watery portion of cloud droplets.

What's most important here is that she passed with flying colors if the speed of the deliberation was an indicator. In criminal trials, a speedy verdict generally means the defendant is about to be found guilty. When the jury doesn't come back quickly with an answer, that you know someone wasn't convinced.

In Alison's case, her presentation was about 45 minutes to an audience that included us, her boyfriend and his parents and more than a dozen students who are at varying stages of the masters/doctoral program. After she finished, the audience could ask questions. 

The committee questioning portion took about an hour, but the deliberations and answer that she'd passed came in about five minutes. 

What's important to us, as parents, is that she truly valued our opinion and thought we could help her with the presentation. Her boyfriend, Beau Tryzbiak, was also a big part of her review process, and as a person who'd worked in her lab and is in the medical field, he could also speak to some of the chemistry.

We had a great celebratory lunch with some of her lab mates and Beau, and a great dinner that night, including Beau's parents, Deb and Tim. All in all, a great visit and an outcome that wasn't guaranteed, but knowing her level of preparation, kind of was.

If all goes as planned, we'll soon have a doctor in the family, and while the crown is technically only good for a year, I suspect the Captain is going to want a title upgrade. Sigh. Wish me luck.