100 not out - Engineering profs supervise 100th doctoral degree

Professor Andrew Ball and Professor Fengshou Gu have jointly supervised 100 successful doctoral degree candidates… and they are not finished yet!

THE University of Huddersfield’s Professor Andrew Ball and his colleague Professor Fengshou Gu have together now co-supervised 100 successful doctoral degree candidates.  This is a major and rare milestone.

The gold standard qualifications gained have enabled the 100-plus former research students to build successful careers around the world.  Some are now professors in their own right and others have senior roles at major companies, said Professor Ball, who is a leading expert in condition monitoring and diagnostic engineering. 

He works with Professor Gu in the University of Huddersfield’s Centre for Efficiency and Performance Engineering (CEPE), the largest independent group of its type in the world.  Professor Ball is also the University’s Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise.

Professor Ball and Professor Gu – himself an expert in the fields of vibro-acoustic analysis and machinery diagnosis – have been supervising candidates for PhD and EngD (doctorate in engineering) degrees since 1994, graduating on average four every year.

The 100th doctoral candidate was Yuandong Xu who recently successfully defended his work in viva examination with a thesis entitled Machine Condition Diagnostics based on Enhanced System Identification Technologies.

But Professors Ball and Gu currently have another 12 doctoral students who are completing their three-year programmes of research in a wide variety of engineering topics.  In fact, another candidate – number 101 – Xiaoli Tang has now passed her viva with a thesis entitled An Investigation of Data Compression Methods for Intelligent Machine Condition Monitoring.

Study Engineering at Huddersfield

Some doctoral candidates have devised their own projects, but the great majority of the 100 successful supervisions have dealt with engineering issues that the two professors decided were worthy of investigation. 

“It’s a combination of response to the needs of industry and second guessing future technology directions and opportunities,” said Professor Ball.

“For example, we might go to a conference and meet some industrialists who are really struggling with reliability issues around, say, wind turbine gearboxes.  So, we would put together a number of PhDs project ideas in that subject area and offer them to potential candidates.”

“Several of the former students are now placing research grants and contracts with us and some are sending junior engineers as sponsored students to do PhDs at Huddersfield.  I doubt we will make it to 200, but Feng and I have no intentions of slowing down,” said Professor Ball

Candidates, a large proportion of whom are from overseas, then apply for the doctoral projects and when accepted they receive close supervision and encouragement from Professors Ball and Gu. 

“We have an ‘open door’ policy.  They can come and see us at any time and there is no limit to the amount of help and support we will give them,” said Professor Ball.

The two professors keep in touch with many of their past doctoral students, meaning that they have large numbers of useful contacts in academia and industry around the world.