On 2 September Xavier Gréhant, who was an HP fellow in CERN openlab II (2006-2008), successfully defended his PhD thesis at Telecom-ParisTech. The thesis is entitled "Efficient, non-obstructive scheduling on computing grids using virtual execution environments".

The jury consisted of: President: Prof. Pierre Manneback, Mons University, Belgium Evaluators: Prof. Yves Robert, ENS Lyon and Prof. Jean-Marc Vincent Grenoble University, Members: Sverre Jarp (CERN) et Isabelle Demeure (Télécom ParisTech) Guest: Michel Benard (HP).

We are also pleased to report that Michal Kapalka, who was an openlab summer student in 2003 and 2004, successfully defended his PhD thesis ("Theory of Transactional Memory") at EPFL earlier this summer.

We congratulate both of them for their great achievements.

Sverre Jarp, CERN openlab