Imagine this! Waking to the smell of fresh bread wafting in your window from a downstairs bakery; salivating over tantalizing French cuisine while sipping delicious Belgian beer; admiring a cobblestone market across the street in Lille, France; and then taking a 50-minute train ride to the heart of Paris.
These are just some of the images that alumnus Jason Crann, remembers from his year at the University of Lille 1: Science and Technology as part of a cotutelle agreement with Carleton University. These agreements allow PhD students to study and research at two universities and, upon graduation, obtain two diplomas recognizing their PhD degree.
At the November convocation (2015), Crann was the first cotutelle student to graduate from Carleton. There are 19 other cotutelle students at Carleton.
Academically during the year at Lille, Crann participated in a unique mathematical physics working group, took two advanced courses and saw a research talk by a Nobel laureate, all the while making advances in his own doctoral research.
He and his wife took the opportunity to visit several different regions within the country, including Champagne, the Alps, and the beautiful Côte d’Azur in the south, as well as 11 surrounding countries.
Montreux, Switzerland with the Alps in the background. credit: Jason Crann
Crann says: “ I believe the cotutelle will generate a higher level of recognition for my research which will be beneficial down the road. As well, the exposure to a larger research community has given me several opportunities to present my research abroad and has helped establish international collaborators.”
Crann’s Carleton supervisor, Matthias Neufang, who has a double appointment at Carleton and the University of Lille 1 and is also the Dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs acted as a co-supervisor for Crann. Crann originally chose to do his PhD at Carleton because of Neufang’s research expertise on abstract harmonic analysis and its applications to quantum information theory. Crann explains that this is a high-level form of math that could significantly change the way we view quantum dynamics.
Matthias Neufang and Jason Crann
After an extremely positive dissertation defence, Crann won a Senate Medal for Outstanding Academic Achievement that was presented at Fall Convocation (Nov. 14).
Jason Crann and Matthias Neufang on Convocation day
He is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Quantum Computing and the Department of Pure Mathematics at the University of Waterloo and is also affiliated with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Guelph.
More information about cotutelles, including how to apply, is available by clicking here.
Friday, October 16, 2015 in Convocation, Grad Student Research, News
Share: Twitter, Facebook
