Internship and final project at DTU#
I can supervise you/collaborate with you (as a vejleder) during your internship/final project. This piece serves for both of us as a guide about how we can work together.
Summary#
Your topic should be about embedded systems, computer hardware, FPGA design.
You should be a BEng student or your topic/the company you are writing your thesis in should be interesting for my research.
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If:
you are a BEng student
and your topic is not in my area of expertise
and you could not find someone else
and you think that you don’t need any technical expertise from the university:
then I can help you too.
When you contact me, send me a project/internship proposal.
Finding an supervisor#
As an assistant professor, I have a teacher and researcher role. As we mostly teach BEng students in the Engineering Technology department, I prioritize BEng students in my supervision. As a researcher, I want to carry my research field forward, so BSc and MSc students are also very welcome, as long as your project/company is appealing for my research.
Ideally your internship area & final project topic should be in my area of industrial expertise – FPGA design, embedded systems, computer hardware. This will ensure that both of us will profit from the supervision: You get technical guidance and I get support for my research or an opportunity to peek into industrial problems in case of an external final thesis/internship.
Why are industrial contacts important for me? My goal as a researcher is to create knowledge for the society and train next generation of researchers. To hire a researcher or buy large research equipment I typically need to write project proposals to organizations that distribute money to good research ideas. These organizations often prefer academic industrial collaborations, because industry has typically the infrastructure to make a technology available for the society in a sustainable way. This is one of the reasons why I still encourage MSc students working with a interesting company to ask for supervision.
Sometimes you may not be able to find a technical supervisor at DTU in the area you are doing your internship of final project, e.g., because the person does not have any capacity. Then, I can still help you by supporting the organizational elements of your internship and project, e.g., registering, general advice, writing the report.
I recommend to prioritize a supervisor who has technical expertise in the domain you are working. I once saw that a student wanted to choose a kind and understanding supervisor, even the supervisor lacked technical expertise. Even this is important, I would still recommend finding an supervisor who can give you valuable technical feedback in your area. You could probably look over the bad manners of the supervisor in the limited time period. Feedback and assessment are the fundaments of education, after all.
When cold contacting professors, attach a concise and well-written project proposal. This could improve your chances of being accepted.
BEng internship#
Based on the [internship rules][internship-rules].
General#
100 work days, ~20 weeks
extra 2 weeks for writing the report
Responsibilities of me, you and company supervisor#
My responsibilities:
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registering your internship in project registration system
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Organizing a meeting with your supervisor at the company and you to support your learning during the internship. The meeting will be done in the company so that I can get a feeling of the environment you are working at. The meeting will be about one month after the start.
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Giving you feedback and a grade (passed/not passed) at the end of your internship, based on the report () that you write.
Your responsibilities:
Making sure that you find a technical supervisor who has reasonable time to support you, e.g., at least one hour per week. This is actually company’s responsibility, however you should find a company/supervisor that can ensure that.
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100 working days at the company.
Meeting the learning goals and writing a report based on the learning goals.
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Evaluating the company/supervision based on the evaluation template. The evaluation must be submitted to me.
The template can be found under Documents for the internship on the page Internship for BEng.
Company supervisor’s responsibilities:
Has resources to support you
Evaluate your work based on the evaluation template documented above. The evaluation must be submitted to me.
Report requirements#
Form#
Language: English or Danish
Length: ~20 pages
Content#
Excerpt from Praktikrapport og bedømmelse of [internship rules][internship-rules]:
- praktikskema 1 ”På vej i praktik” som findes på student.dtu.dk
- en beskrivelse af forløbet i virksomheden (fx dag-/ugebog)
- en beskrivelse af virksomheden, forretningsgrundlag og organisation
- en rapport med behandling af et fagligt emne, hvori det f.eks. beskrives, hvilke ingeniørmæssige opgaver der er løst
- praktikskema 2 "Tilbage fra praktikken" der kan findes på student.dtu.dk med den studerendes identifikation af og refleksion over vedkommendes personlige og faglige udbytte af praktikopholdet.
Teachers evaluate a student’s performance based on the learning goals. Your report should demonstrate that you reached these goals, especially the second one. Based is an excerpt from the [internship rules][internship-rules]:
- kan selvstændigt benytte sine faglige kompetencer ved løsning af praktiske, ingeniørmæssige problemer
- har kendskab til den sociale, tekniske og forretningsmæssige kontekst for ingeniørarbejde
- kan arbejde selvstændigt og tage ansvar for egen læring og faglig fokusering
- kan indgå i (tværfaglige) team
- kan beskrive praktikstedets virksomhedskultur
- kan planlægge og gennemføre ingeniørarbejde ud fra relevante forudsætninger og krav
- har viden om implementering af ingeniørløsninger inden for fagområdet
- kan dokumentere sit arbejde.
Document or demonstrate above aspects in your report. If one of the learning goals did not apply to your internship, then explain the reason in your report.
Your study-line may have additional learning goals. E.g., the specific learning goals of software technology mentions that your work should include following aspects of software development:
specification of requirements
problem analysis
design and programming
implementation & operation
Document these aspects in your report.
Deadlines#
Send me your draft two weeks before the deadline for feedback
The report must be submitted in 10 days after the end of your internship to both supervisors.
BEng final project (Diplomingeniørprojekt)#
Based on the BEng final project rules.
General#
Project should be 12 weeks including public holidays (20 ECTS). The time can be extended up to 18 weeks. E.g., 3 weeks if you take a 5 ECTS lecture in parallel or 1 week if you have a reexamination.
The project should be carried out in the industry and the idea should be generally developed in collaboration with the industry.
The project can be done in a group of max four students.
Content#
You should solve an engineering problem. In your work, you should demonstrate that you are able to critically reflect your/others work and be able to write your results in a way that makes sense, i.e., that follows a common thread.
Your project should contain all phases of the CDIO framework, but not necessarily all the example points under the phases. The following are based on the bottom of the CDIO.org page:
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Conceive ideas:
What is the problem?
What are the (customer) requirements?
Is this problem already solved in the market?
Are there any consequences of the solution to, e.g., environment, society?
How will I use my time?
What is my rough concept to solve the problem?
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Design solutions
Creating the design
Drawings, algorithms which will be implemented
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Implement products
Transform the design into the product
Coding, testing, validation
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Operate them
Use the product to deliver value
Includes maintaining, evolving and retiring the system
Report requirements#
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Language:
The rules state that you should write in Danish, but another language can be chosen. I recommend to write your thesis in English if you are a computer science-related student.
Length: ~20 pages
Contains an English summary.
Contains at least one diagram that demonstrates different components of your product.
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Deadlines:
At least one month before the deadline you send me the titles of the sections
Two weeks before the deadline you send me your thesis for feedback
MSc final project#
Based on the rules for the Master’s thesis:
General#
Your thesis should demonstrate that you can apply scientific theories and methodologies to an academic topic. There is also a possibility for an entrepreneurial thesis.
You should explain to me why you are competent enough to carry out the project, e.g., by listing relevant courses you have taken.
Your thesis must have a scope of 30, 32.5 or 35 ECTS, corresponding to 5, 5.5, or 6 months, respectively.
The project can be done in a group of max four students.
Project plan#
You must submit a project plan in the first month of the thesis to https://student.dtu.dk. Pay attention that your planned work includes expected work of a Master’s thesis, which I summarized in the content section.
I already expect a project plan — which I call project proposal in this document — when you contact me. You find my general expectations in section Final-project and internship proposal.
Content#
Based on the learning goals:
A combination of:
experimental work
fieldwork
theoretical studies
synthesis
modeling
analysis
You must include:
literature study
criticism (of prior work or current work)
You should demonstrate:
You can understand and communicate research-based knowledge
You can solve problems based on the elements of state-of-the-art research
You can work with all phases of a project, e.g., conceiving an idea, planning, designing and coming up with a solution, and finally documenting your results.
Writing form#
Language: English
Includes an abstract
Length: ~50 pages
Contains at least one diagram that demonstrates different components of your product and >=5 figures that visualizes different aspects of your thesis
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Deadlines for my feedback:
At least one and half month before the deadline you send me the titles of the sections
One months before you send me your first draft
Two weeks before the deadline you send me your final version
Submissions#
Final thesis submissions are done through https://student.dtu.dk
Grading#
BEng internship grading is only based on the submitted documents. For final projects:
based on the oral defense + report or thesis
max 10 days after the submission
with external censor
7-grade scale with external censor
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if group work:
first all group (you have the right to opt out)
then individual
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For the Master’s thesis:
based mainly on the academic content
formulation and spelling also count, but less than the academic content
Collaboration/feedback infrastructure for the report & project#
Use a code repository from the beginning and give access to me. This eases feedback.
If you like LaTeX, I recommend using typst for your thesis and proposal.
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Use a document writing environment that eases commenting and feedback, e.g.,:
git repository (with pull requests)
a shared Word document, e.g., Office365
Overleaf
Supervision style#
I try to see supervision not as a burden that I have to do as faculty member, but an opportunity to have deep conversations about problems that I enjoy solving. Ideally, this is a collaboration where both of us profit. But sometimes, if it is a problem that I cannot contribute due to lack of knowledge, I will try to limit my supervision and divert you to an expert or self-research instead.
In the first weeks, I will actively contact you to check how your work goes. In the coming weeks, I expect that you book me. If we are working on a research project of mine together, you can expect weekly meetings. I reserve about 15 to 30 min for each student every week.
During our meetings you can expect questions from me, because I like to test the understanding of my students.
Final-project and internship proposal#
If you want to work with me, then please send a project proposal containing:
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Background
Where does the problem come from?
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Problem
What do you want to solve? Is the problem already solved? Why should this problem solved (again)?
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Goals:
if research: Which research questions do you want to answer?
if engineering: What should your product/solution achieve?
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Methods:
Which methods will you use to achieve your goal? Example: I will implement a C++-based solution. Its performance will be tested using a test environment
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Tasks:
Which tasks do you expect on your path?
What is your (weekly to monthly) schedule?
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Resources/tools:
Which resources/tools will you use to achieve your goal.
Registration#
If we agreed to work together, then fill out the corresponding form for registration:
Other points to pay attention to#
Pay attention that DTU employees must take about three weeks vacation in July. So, do not plan your examination in July.