Call it another MIT innovation. When PhD student Jesse Tordoff passed her dissertation defense this month, she learned about the outcome in a new way: Her professors sent a thumbs-up emoji on the Zoom screen they were all sharing. Welcome to the new world of the online dissertation defense, one of many changes academia is making during the Covid-19 pandemic. For generations, dissertation defenses have been crowning moments for PhD candidates, something they spend years visualizing. At a defense, a student presents work and fields questions; the professors on the…
