'It Felt Great to Study at UrFU' - a Egyptian PhD Graduate

09:18, July 20, 2020

A young scholar from Egypt, Hanan Maghdi, shared her thoughts on finishing her studies at UrFU

Young scientists from different countries continue to successfully defend their Candidate of Sciences' dissertations at the Ural Federal University. A few days ago a scientist from Egypt Hanan Maghdi Darvish Shabana defended her scientific work.

Prior to coming to Yekaterinburg, Hanan worked at home as an assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering at the University of Menufia. Then she decided to continue her research activities in Russia. First, from October 2015 to June 2016, she studied at the Russian language school of UrFU. There she not only learned a lot about Russian culture, but also met students from different countries: China, Korea, Pakistan, Japan, Germany, Vietnam, Mexico, Zambia and Nigeria.

“It was a very exciting time and a great opportunity to experience different cultures,” Hanan says. - Then I entered the Department of Algebra and Fundamental Informatics as a graduate student under the guidance of Professor Mikhail Volkov. I am very grateful to him, he is a very good leader, I have gained a lot by working with him. I want to thank him for all the encouragement, the many discussions we had, and all the time we spent writing and editing scientific texts. I also want to express my gratitude to my colleagues in the Combinatorial Algebra Laboratory and the Department of Algebra and Fundamental Informatics for their help. "

Hanan's work is devoted to the study of problems of synchronization of finite state machines. This topic has attracted a lot of attention in recent years, since it is essential for applications such as software testing, error-correcting information coding, bioinformatics, industrial robotics, and others.

“One of the most wonderful days of my life was July 9, 2020,” Hanan says. - I was awarded the degree of candidate of physical and mathematical sciences in the specialty "Theoretical Foundations of Informatics". I would like to dedicate this achievement to my family, who have always wanted this success with me. I am also very grateful to UrFU for everything, including for organizing my defense in the current circumstances associated with the pandemic. "

According to Mikhail Volkov, it was immediately obvious that Hanan was very diligent and persistent. This, albeit not immediately, but gave results. The output was a full-fledged work, which she submitted to the dissertation council in mid-March. PhD Dissertation defense was planned for May, but then the coronavirus intervened, and the university was quarantined. A critical situation has arisen as Hanan's graduate student visa expires on August 31st. After that, she and her sons will have to leave Russia. Whether she could get a new visa and return for protection in the foreseeable future was impossible to predict.

“The point was that the defense of the dissertation, in which so much effort had been invested, could fail,” comments Mikhail Volkov. - Fortunately, at the end of May there was a deus ex machina in the form of government decree No. 751, which determined the procedure for the defense of dissertations during a pandemic. Thanks to the non-trivial efforts of the chairman of the council, Vladimir Pimenov, and the academic secretary, Dmitry Kosolobov, as well as the efficient work of the attestation department of UrFU, it was possible to promptly organize the defense of Khanan according to the procedure introduced by the said decree. I would like to thank the members of the council and opponents who took part in the defense and highly appreciated the dissertation. "

Hanan now plans to return to Egypt.

“I miss all my family members, friends and colleagues in my faculty in Egypt,” Hanan says. - I will tell them how pleasant it was for me to study at UrFU, and I will be happy if I have the opportunity to come to Yekaterinburg again.