104-year-old student submits PhD, credits lockdown

A 104-year-old University of Manchester student, Lucio ‘Chiquito’ Caicedo, who was too busy to finish his PhD, has finally completed his dissertation, and credits the COVID-19 lockdown for giving him the time to finish it, reports Vida.

Caicedo was born in Cali, Colombia, in May 1916, where he lived for 84 years before moving to Medellin, the capital of Colombia’s mountainous Antioquia province. He received a bachelor degree in civil engineering at the National University of Colombia at Medellin, then earned a masters degree in science and technology from the University of Manchester in England seven decades ago. He has been working on his PhD thesis, about determining the maximum amount of water that can be sustainably taken from a river, for 30 years. A complicated math problem needed to be solved before his thesis could be finished. That happened this year, allowing him to send the document to the university.

He admits the COVID-19 lockdown allowed him to focus solely on his research; it was his way of making the best of the situation. However, he is a little worried about how long the evaluation might take: “The last time I submitted something, it took 25 months for the subject discussion, and I had to write around 170 emails clarifying my points of views.”
Full report on the Vida site