The fall semester has officially come to a close, and as we prepare to break for the holidays, The Rotman Institute would like to acknowledge the accomplishments of some of our student members. 2015 has been an exciting year — we’ve had seven Rotman graduate students successfully defend their theses. Their names, along with the titles of their dissertations, are shown below (pictures are from left to right):

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Top row

Reuven Brandt: Gamete Provision and Moral Responsibilty

Martin Vezer: Aggregating Eidence in Climate Science: Consilience, Robustness and the Wisdom of Multiple Models

Nicholas McGinnis: On Philosophical Intuitions

Joshua Luczak: On Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics

Bottom row:

Amy Wuest: Philipp Frank: Philosophy of Science, Pragmatism, and Social Engagement

Yann Benetreau-Dupin: Probabilistic Reasoning in Cosmology

Michael Walschots: Moral Sense Theory and the Development of Kant’s Ethics

Not pictured above, Andrew Chater, of the Political Science Department, whose thesis was entitled, “Explaining the Evolution of the Arctic Council”, also successfully defended in 2015. In addition to our 2015 graduates, two students defended in the summer of 2014:

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Elliot Rossiter: Hypothetical Necessity and the Laws of Nature: John Locke on God’s Legislative Power

Guillaume Beaulac: Language, Mind, and Cognitive Science. Remarks on the Language-Cognition Relationships in Human Minds.

Congratulations and best wishes to all of our recent PhD graduates! And Happy Holidays to our graduates, our members, and our extended community — here’s to a joyous 2016.