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Guidelines for MSc. Projects

Rules and guidelines for Master's Degree Projects

Goals of the course degree project work

According to KTH rules and regulations, the student should:

  • be able to apply relevant knowledge and abilities, within the main field of study, to a given problem
  • within given constraints, even with limited information, independently analyse and discuss complex inquiries/problems and handle larger problems on the advanced level within the main field of study
  • reflect on, evaluate and critically review one’s own and others’ scientific results
  • be able to document and present one’s own work with strict requirements on structure, format, and language usage
  • be able to identify one’s need for further knowledge and continuously develop one’s own knowledge

These KTH-common goals should constitute the foundation for course goals for all degree project. Further or more specified course goals for degree project can be implemented by the schools, individual educational programmes or individual degree project.

Thesis content

The thesis should contain:

  • Introduction - that should contain a technical and social (when possible) motivation of the thesis subject. For example – safer and more reliable reactor types would be not only technically better but also more acceptable to public, which would allow to better explore the potential of nuclear power.
  • Description of the problems/topics.
  • Status of the research/knowledge in the field and literature review.
  • Description of the methodology/approach. (The actual structure of the chapters here depends on the topic of the thesis.)
  • Results - must always contain analyses of results and associated uncertainties.
  • Conclusions and proposals for the future work.
  • Appendices (when needed).
  • Bibliography - references and links.

Thesis style

Oral presentation

  • Your public presentation should take about 20-25 minutes. Assuming about 1.5 minute per slide gives you 16 – 17 slides maximum! Your management of time is one of the criterion in evaluation of your project. You should attend at least two other master thesis presentations to be better prepared for your own.
  • Your presentation should be pedagogical and very clear. Do not include too much information on one slide!
  • Identify and underline clearly your personal contribution and your own creative part.

Evaluation

After your presentation, the reviewer, and possibly the examiner, supervisors, and the audience will question you, in this order. Be very clear in all your answers. When you do not know the answer or when you are unsure then it is better to express that with no hesitation. The examiner (who is chairing the exam) may stop the questions after 10 minutes.

You will be evaluated according to three criteria:

  • Process - your creative and timely approach in solving the technical and/or scientific problems, organisation, independence and communication with supervisors.
  • Engineering-related and scientific content - the formulation of the problem and application of engineering-related and scientific skills in the methodology, solution and conclusions. 
  • Presentation of the thesis.

Practical information

  • Registration of the master project is done by filling the "application for Master of Science thesis project" that must be approved by the examiner. Your supervisor will hand the form over to the student office that will register it.
  • A reviewer must be appointed by the supervisor or examiner. The reviewer must have at least a week for reviewing the thesis. Hence, the thesis should be available to the reviewer at least a week before the defence.
  • The date and time of the oral presentation (defence) must be agreed on by the student, the supervisor, the reviewer and the examiner. The selection of the reviewer and the date and time for the defence may take a few days; combined with the one week needed for the reviewing process, the student should assume at least two weeks needed for this.
  • The outcome of a successful defence is usually registered at KTH within few days. After that you are obliged to provide an electronic version of your thesis to the DiVA publication database. You can do this via the student office. You are not required nor expected to print your thesis.
  • Your thesis must include the TRITA number. You can request them at the student office (you can do so by sending an email to kursexp(at)physics.kth.se).
  • To receive your diploma you have to request it yourself from your KTH account.