Jitendra Singh Chouhan

Hello friends, I am Jitendra Singh Chouhan, recently successfully defended my doctorate (Materials Science and Engineering) at viva-voce in Sheffield Hallam University.

My thesis is on investigating erosion-corrosion and flow-assisted galvanic corrosion of tantalum/tungsten and project was in collaboration with UKRI Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), and Materials & Engineering Research Institute (MERI) at Sheffield Hallam University.

Viva Preparation Journey

I have submitted my thesis back in February 2024 and at that time since I have gone through the University thesis submission guidelines and as such was aware that successful viva defence later in support of my thesis would be the ultimate end goal. And therefore, I have started my viva preparation immediately after my thesis submission. And considering the highly technical nature of my vast thesis contents I have decided to prepare its PowerPoint slides. The presentation slides aimed to give an overview of my experimental methods and present / discuss key results in a very concise manner. And once all my slides were ready, I then requested my supervisor for their review and feedback which was extremely helpful to fine tune my entire presentation. Moreover, I prepared a document in which I have included few questions (with answers) that are most likely to be asked during viva. I also discussed these questions with my supervisor to cross-check the accuracy of respective answers which I prepared earlier. Apart from presentation slides, I was going through the literature review section of my thesis and referring couple of books to refresh/have a firm background on theories/previous work mentioned in the published literature.

Viva Schedule

By April 2024, after getting confirmation from the external examiner, the doctoral school informed me about my viva date scheduled on 24th May 2024. I also enquired from doctoral school about the items which I need to carry with me for viva, and they suggested only to carry hardcopy of my submitted thesis which I may find useful during viva. As it was already about two-months since I started my viva preparation, I was getting confident about the viva day. With a month left for exact viva date now, I was aiming for at least a couple of rounds of preparation with clear strategy to cover the following in every round; ppt slides, thesis, and textbook.

Viva Day

On the viva day, after getting eight hours of sleep, I have once again quickly glanced through my thesis and refreshed with viva questions-answers which I prepared earlier. With the energy of a light breakfast, I carried my printed thesis and ppt slides (although not required officially) to my research institute (MERI) boardroom where viva was scheduled to take place. After pre-examination meeting of examiners, I was invited to the boardroom and offered to take seat which was placed centrally and typical of a panel interview setting. The panel was comprising of external examiner, internal examiner, independent chair, and my supervisors who were allowed only to observe the proceedings and participate in the discussion only when invited by the examiners.

I was slightly nervous to see all these esteemed people sitting and facing me, but at the same time I was confident about my preparation for this day. The internal examiner did request to run through the ppt slides if I may have and so I introduced myself and presented my ppt slides straight away. The slides presentation did overshoot the time limit by good 20 minutes or so, but external examiner kindly allowed me to carry on and complete my presentation. After the presentation, examiners gone through my thesis page by page, and they spent considerable amount of time asking questions from literature review section followed by questions from discussion section. Some of the questions which I did not know the answers, they were kind enough to share with me their answers as well.

Overall, they were impressed by the comprehensive results which I managed to generate especially during the limited access periods of lockdown due to past pandemic and they were extremely impressed by my paper publications in high impact factor journals.

Viva Outcome

After the completion of viva which lasted close to three hours with a break in between, the examiners kindly asked me to please wait outside the boardroom so that examiners can discuss about my viva thesis defence. My supervisors also came out with me, and they said that I performed well. After about 15 minutes, I was invited to the boardroom where examiners informed me that I have successfully defended my thesis and they recommend no mandatory corrections to the thesis and some advisory only. I was elated to hear this from the examiners and my supervisors were very happy when they came to know this outcome.

Take Away

Finally, I would like to say that based on your thesis you can work out your viva preparation strategy which may or may not be like mine. And if you prepare well then almighty ensures that odds against goes in your favour for success.