On June 9th Fred Mailhot successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis “Modelling the Acquisition and Evolution of Vowel Harmony.” Congratulations on a job well done! Fred’s supervisors were Dr. Ash Asudeh and Dr. Lev Blumenfeld. The external examiner was Dr. Mary Beckman from Ohio State University. Other committee members included Shane Hawkins (College of the Humanities), Babak Esfandiari (ICS and Systems and Computer Engineering), and Jeff Mielke (University of Ottawa).