Mai is from Jeddah in the west of Saudi Arabia, a city that borders the Red Sea and has a history dating back some 2500 years, which makes it older than Milton Keynes. Mai has been working on phase separation in films of polystyrene and polybutadiene, which was the subject of my PhD. Mai studied at King Abdulaziz University, where she performed splendidly, before moving to the United States to start her PhD. In fact Mai went to Illinois, but for family reasons had to return to Saudi. This left the problem of how to get a prestigious overseas PhD without leaving the Kingdom. A number of Universities do in fact offer remote location and joint location PhDs. For some reason, Mai chose to contact me. I don’t know why, but The University of Sheffield did participate in a Joint Supervision Programme PhD agreement with King Abdulaziz University and so Mai was eligible for funding. In February 2017, Mai registered at the University of Sheffield, but on a part time basis because Mai was also a lecturer at King Abdulaziz University. I left Sheffield at the end of October 2019, which caused some issues. Fortunately, Newcastle was also a member of the Joint Supervision Programme PhD with King Abdulaziz University. Making things even more difficult, Mai was transferred as a Lecturer in Physics to Jeddah University. Anyway, it was all sorted out and Mai formally became a student of Newcastle University in September 2020. Finally, after many years and a lot of obstacles, Mai’s persistence paid off and she passed her PhD exam in front of her examiners, Dr Oana Bretcanu (Newcastle University) and Professor Vasileios Koutsos (University of Edinburgh) on February 25, 2025.
Oral presentations
ACS Fall meeting, San Francisco, USA, August 2023
Last updated in May 2025.