We congratulate our colleague Sharath S. Ulhas to his outstanding doctoral defense. The title of his PhD thesis is “Defect engineering in HfO₂/TiN-based resistive random access memory (RRAM) devices by reactive molecular beam epitaxy”. As external examiners we had Thomas Schroeder (IKZ Berlin) and Klaus Hofmann (Electrical Engineering department of TU Darmstadt) as our guests. The defense was followed by a social event with food catering in the presence of Dr. Sharath’s parents and wife which traveled all the way from India and US. We are extremely thankful to Sharath for his remarkable advances in science and for having been a much valued member of our research group. We look forward to continuing scientific exchange and wish him all the best for his future career!