Among many enjoyable moments of my collaboration with Mike Bennett was the time when he made a beautiful observation that the group action mechanism in vector spaces over finite fields yields an immediate proof of the (d+1)/2 exponent in vector spaces over finite fields. He walked into my office and told me about it in a very calm manner. I did not believe Mike and politely diverted the conversation to something else. He came back a couple of hours later and politely insisted, so I asked him to write the argument on the board which convinced me very quickly. This was typical of my interactions with Mike Bennett. He was a hard-working and insightful student who frequently came up with interesting and unusual ideas.

My joint papers with Mike and others on group actions in the context of Erdos-Falconer problems in vector spaces over finite fields continue to influence my research to this day, and his dissertation serves as a very fine reference source for many ideas and calculations.