Master Thesis

 Time schedule 2011-12

 
March 28 - 30
Oral presentation of Master Thesis focus and current status. Session where students coment and grade the work of the others.
June 27
Student delivers the initial version of the Master thesis to the supervisor
June 29
Supervisor delivers the initial version of the Master thesis and evaluation report to the coordinator of the master
July 2
The academic director and the coordinator of the master check whether any of the supervisors' reports are not positive and report so to the masters subcommission.
July 9 & 10
Oral presentations of the Master theses in front of a CSIM board of evaluators: the supervisor, the coordinator or the director of the master and an invited member.
 
July 9 - September 2
Student rewrites/finishes the Master thesis and delivers it by e-mail to the coordinator of the master
September 7
CSIM board of evaluators defines final grade
September 12
Final grades published
 

 

Master Thesis Presentation Procedure

The project lasts for 6 months, approximately January to June. Each project has an assigned supervisor. The format of the presentation of the project for its evaluation is the following:

  1. Students must deliver a preliminary report on their work before the defined deadline. This preliminary report must be sufficiently complete to provide all the information on: problem definition, state of the art, method, experiments, design criteria and  data gathering; i.e. such that the supervisor, the coordinator and the director can decide whether it is in a good position to pass on to step 4. The final experimental results, analysis and conclusions are desireable but not yet obligatory at this point. Hence, this initial report does not need to be fully finished to the maximum detail, which will be done for the final version.

     
  2. The supervisor of the student must fill an evaluation form of the Master Thesis also before the defined deadline. The supervisor must send the reviewed thesis preliminary report and the evaluation form to the academic coordinator of the master.

     
  3. The academic coordinator and the director of the master will check whether any of the supervisors' reports are not positive and will report so to the master’s subcommission. They will also inform the subcommission about the projects, essentially basing the comments on the supervisors' reports. If any of the projects is understood as being too weak the CSIM subcommission may recommend:
    1. to correct the report of the student before the final oral presentation in July. The student will then have to send the corrections to the coordinator before a second fixed deadline together with the new report of his supervisor. The coordinator will verify that the corrections have been made in order to pass on to step 4.

       
    2. to correct certain aspects of the project and delay its presentation until next year.

       
  4. Those students whose reports have been accepted will present their final Master Thesis in front of a board of three members (the supervisor, the coordinator or the director of the master and an invited member) at the beginning of July. This presentation must last for 20 minutes (not less, not more) followed by 10 minutes of questions and discussion with the board. This presentation MUST have all the information of the project: problem definition, state of the art, information on method, experiments, design criteria,  data gathering, results, analysis and conclusions.

     
  5. Students should rewrite/finish the Master thesis document following the instructions and comments of the jury during the oral presentation. Students will deliver the final text by e-mail to the coordinator of the master before the defined deadline.

 

Guidelines on the formatting of the theses

As for the format of the written thesis (Font size, line spacing, margins, Section numbering etc) students must follow the A4 Word Template defined for UPF's PhD thesis. You may also use the templates for OpenOffice or Latex. In any case, the document must comply with the same font size, line spacing, margins etc. as described in the A4 format of UPF's Phd-theses. As for the different parts of the thesis we also refer to the university guidelines for PhD-theses (cover page, abstract, table of contents, etc.). However, in contrast to these PhD-guidelines, the Master thesis should have no prologue, and the abstract should be in English only. The secretary of DTIC will provide the cover.
 
NOTE: the document MUST be delivered as a PDF file.
 

 

Guidelines on the length and structure of the theses

The following is the structure of content that the report must have.
 
o        Abstract
o        Keywords
o        Introduction
-         Problem statement
-         State of the art
o        Methods
-         Design & Development criteria and strategies
-         Experimental design and set-up
 
-         Procedures used to obtain data and results
o        Results
-         Key results obtained in the study
o        Discussion & Conclusion
-         How did the results address the problem defined
-         What are the problems faced by the study
-         Validity of the results
-        Relevance with respect to state of the art
-         Future steps
 
As a general guideline, we would like to indicate that a Master thesis is not supposed to reach the comprehensiveness of a PhD thesis. An adequate length of the thesis is between 20-40 pages (This page count assumes the format referred to above. This count includes the text, figures, figure captions, tables but excludes cover pages, abstract, acknowledgements, table of contents, references and also excludes technical appendices, such as for example programming source codes).

 

Qualifying Criteria


The grade of the Master Thesis is based on the grade proposed by the supervisor of the project (who knows best how the project has been attacked, developed and analysed). The student will have to make a presentation before a board of three teachers to defend his/her work. This board will qualify three aspects:
  • The actual work: research level, clarity, procedure and method, results, etc.
  • The report: how well it is written, whether it has already resulted in a conference or journal paper, whether it can lead to a conference or journal paper, etc.
  • The presentation: how clear has the work been presented, how much knowledge did the student show on the topic, etc.
The board will then decide upon a final grade based on the grade of the supervisor and the three points above. The three points are equally weighed in the final grade.
 
The board will establish an approximate indication of the grade of the written report at the oral presentation based on the first version of the report. This grade will be formalised when the student hands in the final version of the report in September.
 

Subsequent publication of abstracts 


The abstracts of all theses will be published on the web page of the CSIM master. This is meant to inform possible future students about the topics that can be addressed in our master program. If, for whatever reason, the student and/or supervisor prefer not to publish this abstract, they should notify the CSIM commission beforehand.

Zero tolerance on plagiarism


It is very important that the guidelines on plagiarism that were handed out to the students at the beginning of the academic year must be followed. Any incidence of plagiarism will result in that the student does not pass the Master thesis. No exceptions will be made. In case of a doubt on how to cite work of others properly, the student should consult with the supervisor and/or the commission.

Possible publication at 'Recercat'


We would like to encourage all students submit the thesis in the Recercat platform. However, this is not a formal requirement to pass the thesis.