This a central post to connect all kinds of tips I have for writing a Master thesis. While they are largely inspired by the master thesis process at the Delft University of Technology, you might find them useful for other universities or thesis / research projects as well.

Thesis First Meeting

After deciding to do your master thesis with me on a topic, we’ll typically have a first meeting to get to know each other and plan out the project. There is a few important questions I try to ask every new student to create a joint understanding of how your thesis project will look like:

  • What type of supervision are you looking for?
  • (+ discuss how we’ll contact each other)
  • Do you want to have a working spot / desk at VMB (our building)?
  • What do you plan to do after your thesis?
  • (+ discuss options for publishing thesis work afterwards)
  • What grade are you aiming for?

Project Proposal

If you’re doing a thesis or other research project with me, you’ll likely be asked to write a project proposal. This is a document that outlines the research questions you’re interested in, the motivation for the the research, and the methods you plan to use to answer your research questions.

Why write a project proposal?

It can be much easier to discuss and refine research ideas with each other when they are written down. Often, text pieces from the proposal are also reusable for the first drafts of the later thesis and report.

What should be in a project proposal?

Typically I recommend the following content:

  • motivation for the research / problem statement (what is the situation you want to improve?)
  • research questions
  • solution approach (What are you developing to answer the research questions?)
  • evaluation plan (How will you evaluate how well your solution addresses the problem? How will you validate your solution?)

If you’re not working on engineering research / design science there might not be a concrete “solution” to develop, skipping that section.

Templates:

  • SERG Master thesis template: GitHub
  • PhD thesis template, TU Delft version improved by Moritz Beller: GitHub

Thesis Defense

Here some notes on the typical structure of a Master thesis defense at SERG:

  • Presentation by the student (max 20 minutes, better 15 minutes)
  • Questions by the audience
  • (Public) Questions by the committee (expect 3-5 questions per committee member)
  • The committee withdraws (~15 minutes)
  • Announcement of the result + signing the dipoma

Awesome ressources by others:

  • Lots of in-depth and technical LaTeX Adivce by Diomidis Spinellis
  • Need to copy-paste your abstract somewhere? Use Moritz Beller’s Abstract Formatter