Towards the end of May 2026, four Chinese students successfully defended their Ph.D. thesis at their home university in China, co-supervised by Bernard De Baets. They all spent one year at KERMIT supported by the China Scholarship Council.

1. May 20: Jieqiong Shi defended her Ph.D. thesis “Various functional equations involving four classes of aggregation functions” at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, China. She was awarded the title of Doctor of Pure Mathematics. Her domestic supervisor was Bin Zhao.

2. May 22: Qian Pan defended her Ph.D. thesis “Preference uncertainty and behavioral heterogeneity in the multi-attribute graph model for conflict resolution” at the School of Management Science and Engineering, Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan, China. She was awarded the title of Doctor of Management. Her domestic supervisor was Peide Liu.

3. May 22: Yuankai Hu defended his Ph.D. thesis “Algebraic analysis of preference matrices under uncertain environments and its applications” at the School of Mathematics, Guangxi University, Nanning, China. He was awarded the title of Doctor of Mathematics. His domestic supervisor was Fang Liu.

4. May 23: Yuan Gao defended her Ph.D. thesis “A study of lattice-valued mathematical structures based on ⊤-filters and their topological properties” at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China. She was awarded the title of Doctor of Mathematics. Her domestic supervisor was Bin Pang.