Handicap obstructed him from doing experiments, passing away last October prevented him from finishing a doctoral thesis, but Craig Schuff, a deceased University of Wisconsin engineering student, will receive a posthumous doctoral degree in electrical engineering this May.

After multiple signatures, including the Dean of the College of Engineering, the provost, the electrical engineering chair, the nuclear engineering chair and the chancellor, Schuff will achieve his doctoral degree, Gerald Kulcinski, Schuff’s mentor and Fusion Technology Institute director said.

“It requires a long string of approvals, which the university expedited quite rapidly,” Kulcinski said. “I think it took a month, maybe a little bit more, but getting that many people on those levels [so quickly] is pretty amazing.”

Kulcinski met Schuff in 2009 when he applied to be a part of Kulcinski’s inertial electrostatic confinement fusion group. Although his degree is in electrical engineering, Schuff was particularly interested in the field of nuclear engineering, especially using nuclear fusion to make contributions to the society, Kulcinski said.

Due to a spinal chord injury while diving in Lake Monona in 2011, Schuff became a quadriplegic and suffered a great blow to his career in the lab. Schuff, however, kept working on his thesis despite his physical handicap, Kulcinski said.

Since Schuff was doing an experimental thesis, hands-on construction of physical plants was necessary. To accommodate his handicap, the inertial electrostatic confinement fusion group hired a few undergraduate students to be his “hands” and assist him with experiments, Kulcinski said.

“He would design all the experiments,” Kulcinski said. “He would have to convey the [experiment] directions to … an undergraduate, who would actually do the construction under his supervision.”

Schuff was on his way to completing the final thesis when he passed away unexpectedly. He had already taken all the required courses, in which he did very well, and even passed the qualifying exam, which is always a big hurdle for Ph.D. candidates, Kulcinski said.

Besides all the signatures required to grant him the posthumous degree, Kulcinski said, there is an examining committee for all doctoral students. The committee is strict and probes candidates to make sure their proposal is worthwhile of a Ph.D., Kulcinski said.

The posthumous degree is very rare at UW, Kulcinski said. In fact, there has only been one other case, a posthumous graduate degree was awarded in 1999, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

“I think it shows that despite the severe handicap, you can continue to do productive research and you can function mainly in the academic environment,” Kulcinski said. “It took him longer, obviously, than a person who doesn’t have that handicap, but he stayed very close to his plan.”