The month of December has seen the final three defenses of the year, adding to what has been amongst one of our busiest in terms of graduate students completing.

First up was Abdulmohsin Al Isaee, defending his MS thesis "Investigation of the Corrosion Mechanism of CO₂ Transport Pipelines Steel Caused by H₂SO₄". Supervised by Research Professor Yoon-Seok Choi, Abdulmohsin is the first of our graduate students to complete from the CCT-JIP. He investigated X65 steel corrosion in concentrations of H₂SO₄ of up to 98%, with a focus on phenomena occurring associated with droplets on our newly developed coupled multielectrode array (CMA) system. Abdulmohsin defended remotely, having recently started a position as a Chemical Engineer with OQ, formerly known as the Oman Oil Company, in Muscat.

Next was Mengqiu Pan, her PhD dissertation is titled "Simulation of Batch Inhibition Applied to Top-of-The-Line Corrosion Mitigation". Supervised by Professor Marc Singer, she completed her PhD within ICMT's TLC-JIP. Working with both in-house synthesized and commercial formulations, she focused on their persistency in associated with methodological development employing ICMT developed electrochemical probes designed and now validated for TLC conditions. Mengqiu also defended remotely, having recently returned to China to commence her employment as a Technical Engineer with the Zhujiang Gas Company in Guangdong.

Finally, Shrirang Deshmukh defended on "Mechanistic Impact of Oxygen on Corrosion in Aqueous Systems"; supervised by Research Professor David Young. He investigated electrochemical kinetics of oxygen reduction and other experimentally relevant reactions using potentiodynamic sweeps, linear sweep voltammetry, and cyclic voltammetry. This elucidated an oxygen reduction mechanism involving interspecies interactions, revealing novel insights which have not been previously reported. He has joined Clariant as an Application Scientist relating to product formulations and their testing.