Among the most critical elements of any doctoral exam, from the perspective of those who coordinate these complexities, is the search for a strong Chair. Yet this search serves as a perennial challenge to the Doctoral Examinations team. We consider ourselves very lucky indeed if we issue fewer than 10 invitations before confirming 1 chair for an upcoming exam. It is not at all unusual in some disciplines to invite 30 or more chairs before some gracious faculty member agrees to help us out.
If you would like to contribute your time and wisdom to UBC’s doctoral exams:
- Please have a look at the list of upcoming exams below and if one interests you, please send us an email to graduate.doctoral@ubc.ca
- Or send us an email detailing the areas that interest you and days/times that you might be generally available and we'll contact you as new exams are scheduled. Again, send an email to graduate.doctoral@ubc.ca
Please bear in mind that the chair cannot be affiliated with the candidate’s graduate program, or a member of the supervisor's department..
Monday, November 2, 2026 12:30 PM - Room 200
Elena-Iulia Dobre
(Electrical & Computer Engineering)
Spectrum-Skirt Transmission and Phase Noise Aware Receiver Design for Wireless Systems
Supervisor(s): Professor Lutz Hans-Joachim Lampe
Monday, November 16, 2026 9:00 AM - Room 200
Kendra Zadravec
(Rehabilitation Sciences)
Towards Self-Managed Prospective Surveillance: Supporting Patients to Proactively Identify and Manage Arm Morbidity After Breast Cancer Treatment
Supervisor(s): Professor Kristin Campbell
Monday, November 16, 2026 1:00 PM - X836, ICICS, 2366 Main Mall
Siddhesh Khandelwal
(Computer Science)
Learning Structured Representations with Fewer Labels
Supervisor(s): Professor Leonid Sigal
Friday, November 20, 2026 9:00 AM - 12th Floor Meeting Room, BC Cancer Research Centre, 675 W 10th Ave
Yilin Liu
(Experimental Medicine)
Exploring the Role of CNOT4 in Post-Transcriptional Regulation and Its Requirement in Acute Myeloid Leukemia Development
Supervisor(s): Professor Ly Vu
Friday, November 20, 2026 12:30 PM - Room 203
Kit Pai
(Language and Literacy Education)
A Multiscalar Analysis of Canadian Adult Cantonese Heritage-Language Learners' Experiences, Perspectives, and Learning Trajectories
Supervisor(s): Professor Patricia Duff
Tuesday, November 24, 2026 4:00 PM - Room 203
Varoon Pornsinsiriruk
(Botany)
Patterns and Drivers of Thermal Tolerance Variation in the Bull Kelp Nereocystis luetkeana
Supervisor(s): Professor Patrick Ted Martone
Thursday, November 26, 2026 12:30 PM - Room 200
Michelle O'Kane
(Social Work)
The Boundaries of Reasonable Supervision: Judgment, Authority and Child Independence
Supervisor(s): Professor Sheila Marshall, Professor Grant Charles
Thursday, November 26, 2026 2:00 PM - 204, Chemical and Biological Engineering Building, 2360 East Mall
Qiangqiang Mao
(Chemical and Biological Engineering)
Scalable Optimization for Differentiable Decision Tree: Algorithms and Applications in Industrial Decision Support
Supervisor(s): Professor Yankai Cao
Friday, December 4, 2026 12:30 PM - Room 200
Krista Bailie
(Art History, Visual Art and Theory (Fine Arts))
Un/contained: On the Art of Christine Schlegel
Supervisor(s): Erin Silver