Master Thesis Lab

• Contact a teacher from the ICIS Institute and ask for supervision. Define the scope of your research project in cooperation with your supervisor.
• It is fine if you already have an idea about a possible research topic, before you contact a possible supervisor. But be careful that you do not define too much details for yourself, because your supervisor may have other ideas.
• Start looking for a university supervisor for your master thesis in the semester BEFORE you start it. If you want to do your master thesis at a company, check with a potential university supervisor BEFORE you contact any companies. Be aware that the requirements for a master thesis topic are stricter than for the research internship. If you have further questions about this, make sure that you discuss them with your university supervisor.
• In most cases it is wise to examine the project proposals. You can find them below (possible topics for your project).
• Please note that your supervisor must be an Assistant Professor (= Universitair Docent or UD), an Associate Professor (= Universitair Hoofddocent or UHD), or a Professor (= Hoogleraar or HL). It is stressed here that your supervisor must be an approved examiner of the ICIS Institute: the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences.
• Sometimes a supervisor asks a (postdoctoral) researcher to do a major part of the supervision, but the supervisor is responsible for the project.
• Apart from your (primary) supervisor, there will be a second teacher involved in the evaluation of your project. That second teacher must also be an approved examiner of the ICIS Institute.

You have several possibilities to do your Master thesis project. An important choice is whether you want to do a project inside the ICIS Institute or a project outside ICIS. Roughly speaking, there are three project types:

1. Internal project. In an internal project you have an internal supervisor of the ICIS Institute.
2. External project (company). If an external project is done in cooperation with a company, the project has two supervisors: an internal supervisor of the ICIS Institute and an external supervisor of the company.
3. External project (university). If an external project is done in cooperation with another university, the project has two supervisors: an internal supervisor of the ICIS Institute and an external supervisor of the second university. In particular, the Radboud University stimulates external projects at universities in other countries.

If you want to do an external project, you must be sure that your internal supervisor approves your project. If you want to do an external project but don’t know where, ask your supervisor for suggestions (companies, foreign universities).

There are also several overviews of possible topics for your project:

• Projects in one of our departments.
• Projects in a company.

For more information, see below on the page.

Now you have a supervisor and you have chosen a specific type of project. The next step is to start your project. When you start your project, you must think about the following:

1. If you want, find a place to work in the Mercator building. You can find a place to work in one of the Master thesis rooms of the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences. You should contact Simone Meeuwsen for this. You can contact her via S.Meeuwsen [at] cs.ru.nl (S[dot]Meeuwsen[at]cs[dot]ru[dot]nl) or you can visit her in room M1.00.06.
2. Cooperation. Sometimes, two students want to cooperate during their Master project. This is not easy and it is often not a good idea. There is a specific requirement for cooperation between students: if two students cooperate, each student must produce a separate Master Thesis Report. If you think about cooperation, you should discuss this with your supervisor. Your supervisor may ask you to work individually (no cooperation).

Now you start writing your Project Plan. Your Project Plan and your Master Thesis Report must be written in the English language. Also, your final presentation must be given in the English language.

For the Project Plan, you must use a general set-up. This set-up is roughly summarized as follows:

1. Mention some basic information, such as start date, expected end date, supervisor and (preliminary) project title. Also you must mention your study programme: computing science or information science.
2. Write the problem statement. In this statement you describe what is the problem that you want to solve.
3. Describe the way of working. This means: describe how you want to solve the problem.
4. Give a short overview of relevant literature and describe how you want to use that literature.
5. Give a global planning.
6. A good Project Plan does not have to be long. It is assumed that your plan is approximately one page.
7. You must make sure that you discuss your Project Plan with your supervisor and that it is accepted by your supervisor.

When your Project Plan is finished (not an intermediate version!) you can register your project and upload your Project Plan in the general system of the Faculty of Science. We assume that you will need 4-6 weeks for the start of your project and the writing of your Project Plan.

1. During the research process, you will have meetings with your supervisor to discuss the progress of your research. You yourself have to take the initiative to plan a next meeting.
2. Writing a Master Thesis may be harder than you expected. If you experience problems during your Master Thesis project, you must discuss this with your supervisor.
3. You can get additional support (for example coaching and workshops) at the Radboud Writing Lab and at the Central Student Support. See the links at the bottom of this page.
4. At the end of your project, your supervisor gives you a mark. Your supervisor decides about this together with a second teacher. Your supervisor chooses this second teacher.
5. If you do an external project in a company, you must yield a result which is acceptable for the university as well as for the company. This is your own responsibility.

Links to web pages about additional support (for example coaching and workshops) during the writing process:

• Radboud Writing Lab.
• Central Student Support.

1. For the completion of your project, please note the following:

• The Master Thesis Report must be written in the English language. Also your final presentation must be given in English.
• Your supervisor will use an online evaluation form to evaluate the results of your project.

2. You should plan your final presentation at least one week in advance:

• Choose a date and time for your final presentation. Ask your supervisor whether this date is okay.
• You should reserve a room and mail the room number to your supervisor. For the room reservation, you must send a mail to the management assistant of your Master Track. In that mail, please indicate (a) the minimal number of persons you expect, (b) the date, (c) the start and end time, (d) the kind of activity, in this case: Master Thesis Presentation.
• A Master presentation ideally takes 25 minutes and is followed by 15-30 minutes questions and discussion. Choose some slides that can be left out if your presentation takes more time than expected. Prepare one or two extra slides that can be added if everything goes faster than expected.
• Start inviting people.

3. You should deliver your Master Thesis Report to your supervisor and to the Master Thesis Coordinator:

• You should upload your thesis. Then your supervisor will automatically receive an electronic copy of the thesis.
• Mail an electronic copy of the final version of your thesis to the elly.kimenai [at] ru.nl (Master Thesis Coordinator) to make it available online (unless the thesis should not be publicly available).

• The MTL is a semi-autonomous student research institute. The projects within this institute are planned and carried out by students, and reflect their own fields of interest.
• At the same time, the results of these projects serve the purpose of Master Thesis for the final assignment of the Master Programme in Computing, or the Master Programme in Information Science.
• The MTL research covers purely academic as well as business-oriened goals, and is embedded within larger research projects of the university.

You are expected to do the following:

1. You follow the procedures of the Master Thesis Lab given on the MTL website.
2. Each month you have a meeting with your internal Master supervisor. In this meeting you discuss the process and products of your project. These meetings with your internal supervisor are important, even when you do an external project with an external supervisor.
3. If you can not do the above things, you discuss this with your supervisor.
4. If there are problems with your supervisor, you can contact the Master Thesis Coordinator.

You are expected to do the following:

1. You have a meeting with your student at least once a month. In this meeting you discuss the process and products of the Master project. These meetings between internal supervisor and student are important, even when the student is doing an external project with an external supervisor.
2. You make sure that the student follows the procedures of the Master Thesis Lab given on the MTL website.
3. You choose a second teacher (UD, UHD, HL) and discuss the results of the student.
4. Both teachers must use an online evaluation form.

The supervisor(s) will use an online evaluation form to evaluate the results of the project. The supervisor will receive the link to this form after the student has uploaded the final thesis in the online system of the Faculty of Science.

Usually, the supervisor will also receive a second mail about an online evaluation form (to be forwarded to the second supervisor).

To get a general idea about the contents of the online evaluation form, you can read the following PDF version of the form:

• The Evaluation Form (pdf, 80 kB).

Requirements for the process. You must show that you are able to perform the following tasks:

1. analyse a complex problem and build adequate models,
2. study literature, describe it in your own words, and apply the results,
3. formulate an innovative solution and describe the fundaments of this solution,
4. possibly, implement the solution, and
5. describe the above aspects in a Master thesis and give an oral presentation.

Requirements for the product. Your Master thesis should have the following:

1. a concise and accurate summary,
2. a good description of the problem statement,
3. a good and detailed description of the work you have done and of the results,
4. a clear conclusion,
5. a complete list of references,
6. a proper use of language, and
7. a good oral presentation.

• Department Data Science
• Department Digital Security
• Department Software Science

In the above overviews you can find information about projects and also about supervisors.

A recent overview of companies and possibilities for external projects can be found on the website of Career Service Science.