Ms. Niloufar Dabestani, a PhD student supervised by Prof. Ioannis Papamichail and Prof. Markos Papageorgiou, member of DSSL and contributor to TrafficFluid, accomplished successfully her PhD thesis defense on 7 November 2025. The jury comprised 2 external members (Prof. Iasson Karafyllis – National Technical University of Athens, Prof. Elias Kosmatopoulos – Democritus University of Thrace), as well as Profs. Ioannis Papamichail, Markos Papageorgiou, George Chalkiadakis, Lefteris Doitsidis and Dimitrios Ipsakis. The PhD thesis is entitled "Optimal control strategies for lane-free vehicular traffic". We congratulate Dr. Dabestani on this achievement!