Tag Archives: phdinleuven

Halfway around the globe on the racing bike

Yesterday somewhere along the channel between Mechelen and Leuven, I passed the 20000 km mark on my racing bike. This is the distance I have ridden since I started cycling (as a sport/training – I do not keep track of the kilometres during commuting anyway) on the 20th of February in 2010. By the time I arrived home and finished the day’s ride, I was (virtually) over halfway around the circumference of our home planet. To commemorate this event, here are some statistics from the past years.

Between 20 February 2010 and 15 May 2013 (1180 days, or almost 39 months) I have the following statistics:

457 rides (including very short ones up to and down from the Mercator telescope)
20042 km (half the Earth’s circumference)
711h 17m 06s on the bike (almost 30 days)
126933 m of elevation gained (more than 14 times the height of Mt Everest)
28.1 km/h average speed (674.4 km/day)
159 BPM average heart rate (that is still in Zone 2 for me, so moderate intensity)
88 RPM average cadence
546431 Calories (or kcal) burned (almost 220 Guideline Daily Amounts for men)

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A long weekend in Paris

We just spent four days in the French capital, and despite the really cold and not so sunny weather, we had a really good time. Here are a few pics from the trip straight out of my new FUJIFILM X100S camera (see last image in the bottom).

Internal PhD defence: done!

Yesterday I have successfully passed my internal doctoral defence, which basically means that I will inevitably become a doctor (Dr.) on the 31st of May, at the end of my public defence. The internal (or private) defence was more like an extra discussion round of my thesis than an exam, and everything went very smoothly. At the end, the members of my jury provided me with a very small list of minor changes which I still need to implement in the final version of the text (mostly spelling mistakes, a couple of extra references, and a few additional sentences here and there), before I send it to the printing company, to turn it into a nice book. Just after the defence (and some extra private discussions with some of my jury members) I went for a quick training ride (the most windy ride I ever had), then we had a very pleasant dinner on the evening in the Faculty Club.

My fourth “first-author” paper is accepted!

Good news: my next paper (Two new SB2 binaries with main sequence B-type pulsators in the Kepler field) is accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics! It is my longest paper so far, and maybe the one closest to my heart (just after the second one). It contains the work I have done in the last year, so if you are interested, you can already have a look at the non language-edited – but other than that final – version on arxiv.org. The acceptance mail came just in time, since this enabled me to still include the last minor changes in my thesis, and change the note on Chapter 4 from “under revision” to “accepted for publication”, which is always good. Furthermore, telling your jury on the internal defence, that now this work is also in press, is definitely a good point and might help to avoid some nasty questions too :D.

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My PhD thesis is ready for the jury!

Yesterday I printed my PhD manuscript (which blocked one of the printers at the institute for an hour…) and sent it to the members of my jury! I have been working on the text (the introduction and conclusion parts, as the main chapters are my published/in press first author papers) in the last weeks, so I am pretty happy it is finally done. My internal PhD defence will be on the 18th of April, then we will see how good the text is. I am satisfied with it, hopefully my jury will like it too. And if you think that now I have nothing to do, you are so wrong… For example, I got invited to give a review talk on the KASC 6 conference which will be held in Sydney during the last week of June (just two weeks after another conference on Rhodes), so today I had to prepare an abstract and a small “FWO Grant for participation at a congress abroad”, to get money for my flights :)