HOW TO FIND, REGISTER AND HAND-IN A THESIS IN CYBERSECURITY
This page is meant to help and guide students in the process of finding a thesis project in cybersecurity. The idea is to give a number of advices and recommendations that students are invited to consider when starting the process of finding a thesis subject.
PROJECT PLAN
It is very important to start thinking about the thesis project a few months before the expected starting date (usually August and January). It is recommended to have a project plan ready (i.e., carefully prepared, discussed and agreed together with the supervisor(s)) before the starting date of the thesis project. A project plan should contain a detailed description of the project, including a weekly/monthly plan with goals, milestones, and expected outcomes. It is also a good idea to think about a possibly plan B in case something unexpectedly goes wrong during the thesis project.
DURATION AND WORKLOAD
The duration of a Master's thesis (including holidays) depends on the earned credits: 30 ECTS = 5 months, 32,5 ECTS = 5 1/2 months, 35 ECTS = 6 months. As a general rule no parallel activities are conducted in this period. Nevertheless, the period may be extended with 3 weeks for every 5 additional ECTS credits from course activity. This should be included in the period defined by the starting date and end date in the project registration. The maximum is 15 ECTS credits besides the thesis.
HOW TO GET STARTED: (1) CHECK THE RULES
The first step is to read the generic rules for a thesis at DTU. For instance, here you find the generic rules for Master's theses. Then, it's important to check the rules of the specific education programme. For instance, if you are following the MSc in Computer Science and Engineering, here you find all the rules concerning the programme, including specific rules for the thesis project.
HOW TO GET STARTED: (2) FIND A SUPERVISOR
The second step is to find a supervisor for your thesis project. The main supervisor must be a member of the scientific staff, with a permanent position at DTU. If the supervisor is an assistant professor, an associate professor, senior researcher, or professor must be connected as co-supervisor. The thesis can be written in collaboration with multiple departments at DTU, another university or in collaboration with a company. The thesis can be prepared individually or in group of up to four students. However, students will be examined individually.
HOW TO APPROACH A POTENTIAL SUPERVISOR
Researchers are busy and in most cases they already have too many students to supervise. Therefore, it is essential to approach a potential supervisor in the right way. Below a few guidelines.
Case 0: How NOT to approach a supervisor
If you send a generic email with a structure like "my name is X, I study Y and I'm looking for a project, do you have any?", the chances of getting a reply are low. Every student is looking for a thesis project, and unless the specific researcher has an up to date list of available project published online, you will most likely not get a reply. Don't take it personally, researchers get tons of those emails and they simply have no time to reply to all of them (in this case, replying actually means to start a thread, which is even more time consuming).
Case 1: You have a project idea that you would like to develop as part of your thesis
Check the research page of the Section for Cybersecurity Engineering and/or the individual pages of the scientific staff of the section (starting from the lead researchers). The goal is to find one or more potential supervisors who work on the same subject or in a similar research area. You can then contact the potential supervisor(s) by email. The email should contain:
1) A short description of who you are and of your academic studies
2) The list of courses you have attended with the related grades
3) A 1-2 pages description of your idea: problem statement, why the problem is relevant, how you plan to solve the problem, novelty of the approach.
All this can give the potential supervisor a more concrete idea about you and the project. This is usually a good basis for further discussion.
Case 2: You have a project idea in collaboration with a company
Check the research page of the Section for Cybersecurity Engineering and/or the individual pages of the scientific staff of the section (starting from the lead researchers) in order to find someone who does research and/or has expertise on the subject of the project. You can then contact the potential supervisor(s) by email. The email should contain:
1) A short description of who you are and of your academic studies
2) The list of courses you have attended with the related grades
3) A 1-2 pages description of the project (problem statement, why the problem is relevant, how you plan to solve the problem, novelty of the approach), including the details of the company and the name of the supervisor(s) from the company.
It is important to keep in mind that a project in collaboration with a company might require more time to be defined and thus officially registered. That's because an agreement has to be reached to meet both DTU's and company's expectations.
Case 3: You don't have any project idea but you have a subject you like
Check the research page of the Section for Cybersecurity Engineering and/or the individual pages of the scientific staff of the section (starting from the lead researchers) in order to find someone who works on that subject (for instance, if you are interested in a subject X that was covered in a course Y, it makes sense to start by contacting the teacher(s) of course Y). You can then contact the potential supervisor(s) by email. The email should contain:
1) A short description of who you are and of your academic studies
2) The list of courses you have attended with the related grades
3) A short description of the subject you like
4) What kind of thesis project (theoretical, mostly practical, a combination) you would ideally prefer to work on.
Case 4: You don't have any project idea, nor a preferred subject
The advice is to contact the teacher of a course you found most exciting, or the teacher of a course in which your performance has been particularly good. Alternatively, you can contact the Head of Section for Cybersecurity Engineering, Professor Nicola Dragoni.
PROJECT REGISTRATION
As soon as you have an agreement with a supervisor, your project has to be registered and approved by Head of Studies. Keep in mind that the project must be approved before the starting date of the project. This can take some time, normally a few days but sometimes even a couple of weeks.
Registration is done via your supervisor's intranet and it includes information on the project, that should be sent to the supervisor by email:
- Title in English
- Title in Danish (optional)
- Project abstract: 2-3 paragraphs describing the project (context, problem, approach, expected outcome)
- ECTS
- Starting date
- Any course in parallel during the thesis period, with related course number and ECTS (optional)
- Where the thesis takes place: Denmark or abroad
- Student number
- Co-supervisors: name, email, phone number of each co-supervisor (optional)
- In case of thesis in collaboration with a company (optional):
- company full name
- company full address
- collaboration mode (100% at company, 50%-50%, 100% at DTU)
- full name, email, phone number of the company's supervisor (optional)
You will receive an email receipt when the agreement has been approved and registered in the system. The project registration is binding and counts as an examination attempt from the registered start date.
Within the first month of the project period, an up-to-date project plan outlining the objective of the thesis must be prepared and submitted on DTU Inside.
PROJECT EVALUATION
You submit the report by the end date on DTU Inside (there is a related assignment with a deadline). The report must be written in English and include an abstract.
The oral defence must take place no later than 10 working days after the project end date and it usually consists of a 25 mins presentation of the thesis work (done by the student) followed by a question and answer session. The total duration of the defence depends on the question and answer session, but it normally lasts no more than 1 hour.