phd defence youtube

How to Stream your PhD Defense on YouTube

By Benjamin Ackerman

March 14, 2020

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, many of us have started to see most of our academic gatherings move to online. No doubt, this shift has caused a lot of stress and anxiety, especially for PhD students with upcoming thesis defenses scheduled. There’s been a lot of uncertainty around whether universities and departments will allow defenses to proceed as scheduled, whether they would require that they be held remotely, or (worst case) they would ask that defenses be rescheduled altogether.

I feel very lucky that I was able to complete my dissertation defense in person last Monday, two days before JHU moved all classes online and cancelled large gatherings. Still, I had prepared for a remote defense option by setting up a Zoom call for my committee, and a YouTube Live stream in case friends and family were unable to attend my public seminar. I decided to stream my defense anyway, and thought I would write up a short blog post on how I set up my YouTube Live stream, in case this information would be helpful to any students out there!

You may be asking: Why not do the whole thing on Zoom?

Zoom is a really great option for streaming defenses! You can share your screen easily, connect your computer video camera, and even record the whole thing! I liked using YouTube because I could share the link with folks who are less familiar with Zoom (particularly family and friends outside of academic), and the YouTube option doesn’t require people to download any new software. Since people don’t call in to YouTube, this also prevented accidental noises from viewers/callers with microphones on… Lastly, I was able to save the recorded footage to my own personal YouTube account, which I can now share easily and directly with anyone who wishes to watch! Also, to see what the end product of this blog post looks like (and if you’d like to watch my defense seminar 😉) click here!

Note: I have not tried using Zoom and YouTube Live at the same time. If you need to communicate with your committee members through software like Zoom, please be sure to test out and make sure that the setup below will be compatible with the requirements of your school/department/committee! One thought off the top of my head might be to set up the Zoom call, and then just stream the window of the Zoom call on YouTube… but please let me know if you find a better way if you try this!

Update : Apparently you can also stream a Zoom call directly to YouTube! Learn more here.

Step 0: Make a YouTube account

Fun fact: if you have a Google account, you already have a YouTube account! For this post, I’m going to assume that you already have a YouTube account created.

Step 1: Set up the stream on YouTube Live

🚨 IMPORTANT :🚨 In order to use the stream feature on YouTube, you will have to verify your account. In the top right hand corner of your account, click on the little camera icon, which will prompt you to “Create Video or Post.” Select “Go Live,” and follow the steps to verify your account. It will take up to 24 hours to gain access to this feature, so if you’re considering using YouTube to stream your defense, start setting this up ASAP!

Once you have your YouTube account (and have verified it) here’s how to set up and scheduled the stream:

• In the top right hand corner of the YouTube homepage, click on the little camera icon, which will prompt you to “Create Video or Post”
• Click “Go Live”
• On the top of the screen, select “Stream”
• Fill in the details about your defense!
• Once set up, locate the Stream Key. You will need to copy and paste this momentarily!

🌟 Tips and Tricks :

• 🗓 Set the scheduled date to remind people of the time and date of your defense (but don’t worry, you can start the stream whenever! Good to get it started and double check everything works before the defense starts)
• 🎥 If you don’t want your defense public on YouTube, set privacy to Unlisted . That way, only people with the video link can access it (and watch it back later!)
• 📝 If you want folks to be able to comment live, select “No, it’s not made for kids”
• 📸 Add a preview photo! Maybe pick the title slide of your seminar slide deck, or a screenshot from an advertisement flyer, or a headshot!

Step 2: Download and Configure Streaming Software

YouTube Live allows you to set up streams in two ways: 1) stream directly from your computer camera, or 2) connect to streaming software to mirror screens, windows, and configure more complicated layouts. For my defense, I wanted to stream both my computer camera footage and my slides, so I decided to set up the latter. In order to do so, I had to download software to format the streamed screen layout.

I like OBS , which is free and fairly easy to use! Here’s my advice on how to get a simple layout set up, but I encourage you to play around with the other OBS features:

• Choose “YouTube/YouTube Gaming” as service
• Find the Stream Key on your YouTube Live stream settings. Copy from YouTube and paste into OBS
• Video Capture: to show your face!
• Window Capture: to show your slides!
• 🧐 Sometimes when using Window Capture, the window won’t show up if it’s already in full screen (or, it will only show up properly in full screen). Play around with the Window Capture with your slides a bit first, whether you’re using Google slides, Powerpoint, or Latex Beamer slides.
• 🤗 Try different layouts! I liked having my slides big, with a small window of my video in the corner. Maybe you prefer the opposite! Or having them more side by side! Lots of options.

Step 3: Start Streaming!

Now that you’ve set up the OBS streaming layout, it’s time to connect it to YouTube and go live!

• On OBS, hit “Start Streaming” to send the stream to the YouTube Live stream link
• On YouTube, check to make sure the stream is showing up
• When ready, click “Go Live” on YouTube. You’re all set to present!
• 🔜There will be a delay between what’s shown on the OBS window and what’s streamed on YouTube. Don’t panic if it takes a few moments for the stream to appear when you first connect!
• 🤯 I personally found the OBS window and the YouTube Live window to be a bit distracting, so I kept them open in the background, but brought my slides to the forefront so I could focus on them while giving my talk.

Step 4: Finish Streaming

Once you’re all done, don’t forget to hit “End Stream” on YouTube, and then exit from OBS. Your saved video will be available on YouTube shortly after, and the same link you used to stream it will allow you to edit and share the recorded seminar, too!

There you have it! Again, it may be very disappointing to move your defense seminar to a remote option. You’ve worked so hard, and you want to celebrate that with the people nearest and dearest to you! Hopefully this tutorial can help provide you with an option that, though not ideal, will allow you to share the culmination of your dissertation work with the world. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas, please reach out and let me know!

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Lin Deng PhD Dissertation Defense

April 15, 2024 @ 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm.

Name: Lin Deng

Title: Function Capacity Expansion of Nano-Optics via Multiplexed Metasurfaces

Date: 4/15/2024

Time: 1:30:00 PM

Location: SL 011

Committee Members: Prof. Yongmin Liu (advisor) Prof. Hossein Mosallaei Prof. Sunil Mittal

Abstract: Throughout history, the exploration of light has been fundamental to our understanding of the world and has driven advancements in technology and communication. Metasurfaces, composed of rationally designed nanostructures, offer a revolutionary means to control light in a prescribed manner. Metasurfaces can operate in conventional free space, and the emerging integrated photonics domain. Maximizing functionality and degrees of freedom (DOFs) in both arenas is paramount. My thesis aims to push the limit of metasurface capabilities by leveraging multiplexing strategies across input/output parameters such as polarization, incidence angle, and waveguide mode. I will present three novel metasurfaces as follows.

(1) We aim to expand nano-printing multiplexing capacity using the Polarization-Encoded Lenticular Nano-Printing (Pollen) method. When employing three input/output polarization pairs and varying detection angles, a single metasurface device enables the observation of up to 49 high-resolution nano-printing images.

(2) By integrating metasurfaces with waveguides, we can couple guided modes to free space while controlling wavefront and polarization. Our research exploits the multiplexed on-chip metasurface, which could generate multiple functions depending on the polarization states and waveguide mode propagation directions.

(3) We investigated mode division multiplexing (MDM) for high-volume optical transmission, enabling multiple waveguide modes to coexist without interference. By manipulating the orientations of individual nanoantennas, we have achieved on-demand mode conversion and focusing effects, demonstrating promising results in various scenarios.

In conclusion, my research seeks to push the boundaries of metasurface functionalities through innovative multiplexing approaches. The research findings allow us to unlock new possibilities in optical display, communication, manipulation, and beyond by integrating multiple functionalities into single free-space and on-chip metasurfaces.

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A Tax Day Resolution for the Department of Defense: Pass an Audit

Patrick Sullivan | 04.15.24

It is April 15, the deadline for Americans to pay taxes to the United States federal government. This annual drill is a hassle in the main, but one that cannot be ignored; failure to pay on time induces a quickly escalating series of penalties , and then interest on the penalties. As such, Tax Day can be an important forcing function for taxpayers to get their financial houses in order.

Part of this ordering is ensuring payment of the full amount of taxes owed as prescribed by federal tax law. Failure in this regard in can induce not just the penalties and interest, but also a financial audit courtesy of the Internal Revenue Service. Many taxpayers fear getting audited by the IRS and subjecting their entire financial lives to the full weight of government bureaucratic scrutiny. The auditing process is uncomfortable and intrusive by design: the United States government really does not cotton to tax fraud (at least at the individual taxpayer level ), and the threat of audit is a powerful deterrent .

Thus, auditing serves as an important tool of domestic accountability. This particular accountability does not work both ways, of course. Although the federal government will audit taxpayers to determine whether they paid what they owed, the taxpayer has no direct recourse if the government fails to responsibly spend the taxes that it collects. The taxpayer cannot audit the government. Rather, the government audits itself. Unlike when an individual taxpayer fails an audit, however, there is not a penalty when the government fails one. In fact, the federal government fails its audits all the time, with the worst offender being the United States Department of Defense. DoD has never passed an audit. It is high time that it does.

DoD and Auditing

There are several reasons why the American taxpayer should be concerned about DoD having never passed an audit. Most obviously, defense spending is by far the largest consumer of US federal discretionary tax revenue , with total budget authorizations approaching $1 trillion annually. There is a multitude of contexts available to establish just how big this number is— almost 40 percent of all reported global military expenditures, more than the GDP of all but nineteen countries , or a stack of $100 bills that would be six hundred miles high , to list a few. Regardless of one’s choice of context, the pathways to potential fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption within the US defense budget are commensurably numerous. Additionally, the Department of Defense is the largest employer in the world (and thus the largest portion of the federal bureaucracy), which makes the pathways available to a large number of stakeholders. These two factors of scale—a lot of money and a lot of people—suggest a level of complexity in DoD operations where even expected waste—the literal costs of doing business—could total billions of dollars.

Those billions, of course, also do not account for any additional losses through fraud, abuse, or corruption. To be fair, the vast majority of Department of Defense employees have never been accused of financial malfeasance or are even in a position to commit financial crimes. But malign actors exist everywhere, and the sheer size of the defense budget in an audit-resistant bureaucratic environment can incentivize fraudulent or corrupt behavior. This is especially true for those who contract with DoD; every fiscal year sees hundreds of contract-related criminal cases , and DoD contracting has been on the Government Accountability Office’s “ high-risk list ” since 1992. Considering that this list is compiled by the supreme audit institution for the United States, placement on it carries a certain amount of infamy.

Contractor activity is inherently linked to the Defense Acquisition System , and the public consciousness about potential fraud, waste, abuse, or corruption in the defense budget is probably mostly associated with the procurement of weapons systems and other materiel. Although they might not be aware of the particulars of certain troubled procurement programs, many Americans almost assuredly have a sense of the very real dynamic that the Department of Defense has been getting less capability out the Defense Acquisition System over time at greater expense . The various pathologies and drivers for this dynamic are well documented , but probably beyond most people’s time and interest to fully understand. A simpler statement of the dynamic reveals what taxpayers should understand and demand auditing for: their dollar is not going as far as it has in the past to buy military readiness. While the American public may take comfort in the assumption that 40 percent of global military spending will buy all the military readiness that US national security interests need irrespective of high levels of waste or a dysfunctional acquisition system, this assumption is more fragile that it may initially seem. Purchasing power within a particular country’s defense industry is a more complete measure of military readiness than mere spending, and the United States’ presumed primary global competitor has more comparative purchasing power for new weapons systems and force modernization despite a smaller overall defense budget (owing mostly to vast differences in personnel and stationing costs).

One can dismiss DoD’s failing to pass an audit as a relatively minor failure of recordkeeping , with the detection of fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption being the purview of financial investigations, not audits. Technical distinctions aside, the layperson probably associates audits with an integrity function—again, the IRS leverages individual audits as a way to deter tax fraud—and even failures of recordkeeping should be cause for grave concern. If the Department of Defense cannot get the essentials of following the money right, then how can it ensure that the money is being spent how Congress authorized it to be? Or that the authorized, funded programs are doing what they are supposed to do? These latter two questions speak to efficiency in spending on top of financial integrity, and in its published accountability standards , the US federal government recognizes auditing’s role in tracking both. To wit, this dual role came out of the National Performance Review early in the administration of President Bill Clinton, which recommended that federal inspectors general —the executors of most enterprise-level audits and financial investigations in the US government—elevate internal controls and program performance auditing to the same priority level as traditional financial audits. In this context, separating audit failures from concerns about fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption seems willfully deceptive.

From the Halls of Montezuma, to the Black Ink in the Ledger

Although DoD has never passed an audit, one of the services recently did for the first time— the Marine Corps . The Marines are the third smallest of the US armed forces, and the bulk of their supporting establishment comes from the Navy, but neither of these factors should diminish the accomplishment. It is not as if the Marine Corps’s budget is aggregately small; the approximately $54 billion the service was appropriated in fiscal year 2023 is bigger than what the entire Department of Defense budget was in 1970. Moreover, passing the audit was extremely difficult , requiring a multi-year iterative effort with consistent command emphasis at all levels.

The Marine Corps’s emphasis on finally passing an audit was no doubt grounded in it being the right thing to do. But it also reflects a strategic consciousness of the current informational and political environments. Not only has the Department of Defense never passed an audit, but it did not even attempt one until 2018 , despite full auditing being an annual statutory requirement of all federal departments and agencies since 1990. It took the implicit threat of loss of funding to get DoD to adjust its financial practices toward audit readiness, and the political pressure is unlikely to relax anytime soon given ongoing debates about the US military’s role as a global security guarantor and how to rein in the national debt. These debates could make the interservice competition for limited budget dollars even more intense than it has historically been , and the Marine Corps now has positional and narrative advantage for that competition since they can argue greater financial responsibility than the other services.

In addition to setting a marker that the other services would be well advised to catch up to, the Marine Corps’s success with its audit shows that it is achievable for DoD as a whole, and sooner than the timelines that the department has forecasted . The respective budgets of the other services are well within one order of magnitude of the Marine Corps’s, and so their passing an audit would not be exponentially more difficult. Once all the services pass an audit, then the aggregation at department level should follow readily. This argues against the belief that the Department of Defense is too big, too complex, or too far gone (with its almost $3 trillion in legacy assets ) to make an audit feasible. Additionally, the relative success of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction —which exhaustively audited and investigated programs that cost almost $2 trillion for the twenty years that the United States was involved in that country—shows what can be accomplished by the federal inspector general model when properly empowered and resourced.

The Department of Defense has confidently indicated that it will eventually pass an audit. Although the department has made progress since the first audit attempt in 2018, there are reasons to be skeptical that it is simply a matter of time. On the contrary, DoD passing an audit is foremost a matter of principle: the largest discretionary consumer of the American taxpayer’s dollar should not get a pass on accountability lest the whole idea of the domestic accountability be revealed as a conceit. On Tax Day in particular, the American taxpayer deserves better from the DoD. Let not another Tax Day pass without the principle being met.

Colonel Patrick Sullivan, PhD, is the director of the Modern War Institute at West Point.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Lisa Ferdinando, DoD

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The articles and other content which appear on the Modern War Institute website are unofficial expressions of opinion. The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

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