Thesis

Master and Bachelor Thesis

Theses

Master and Bachelor Theses

We provide topics for theses in

Bachelor Internet Computing and Bachelor Computer Science
Master Computer Science
Master AI Engineering

For conducting a bachelor or master thesis at the chair, we expect that students successfully participated in courses offered at the chair. Ideally, you successfully conducted one of our advanced seminars or labs and you want to continue on a similar topic. In these cases, you can talk directly with the lecturer referring to the lab or seminar and ask about possibilities for a thesis.

If you do not talk directly to one of the lecturers about a thesis you should look at the Stud.IP Group AI Announcements (https://studip.uni-passau.de/studip/dispatch.php/course/details?sem_id=4d229d8f38a46587ab171699ff24c22e&again=yes) . We publish topics there in case spots for thesis students are left at the chair. However, please note that this is rarely the case. Please also note that we will not answer any e-mails on requests of a master thesis topic or on suggestions of a master thesis topic (especially from industry). Please also do not contact employees at the chair for master thesis topics.

The Thesis' Process at our Chair

Pursuing a thesis at our Chair is organised in two following phases:

Preparation Phase (0-1 Months): After you have decided to work on a topic, you will be given 1 month time to prepare your work in detail if needed. That means you must specify the research questions to be answered in detail, analyze literature and plan all steps necessary to answer your research questions. The result is either a written expose for bachelor students or a presentation given in the "Oberseminar Medieninformatik" for master students. Only after a successful presentation and an accepted expose we will allow to register the thesis with the student secretary.
Implementation Phase (3-6 Months): After registering your thesis you have up to 6 months to complete it and hand it in to the Student's Secretary. You can of course complete it earlier. You must agree with your advisor on a schedule for meetings and other working modalities. We also expect you to be proactive, i.e. if there are problems it is your responsibility to engage with the supervisor.

Individual Steps in Detail

When	Contact Point	What
First contact	Stud.IP / direct contact	Talk to a lecturer in one of our courses or reply to a topic announcement at the AI Annoucement Stud.IP Groups
1-2 weeks after receiving a topic	Supervisor / Advisor	After you expressed your interest for a topic, you might be selected for a topic. In case you did not participate in any course of the chair successfully, you need to conduct an entry task. The entry task ensures that it is possible for you to successfully conduct a master thesis on the given topic. Details will be given per topic
0-1 Months after you have been selected for a topic	Supervisor / Advisor	Written expose about the plan of the thesis. The expose must contain: Research Questions State-of-the-Art Project plan for realising the thesis (including plans for used data sets and possible experiments) Failing to deliver the expose within 1 month will have the consequence that your topic can be revoked. The Expose must be presented in the Oberseminar of the chair in order to receive oral feedback on your planned work.
Registering of the thesis	Student	The student is responsible for registering the thesis and keeping corresponding deadlines. Registering the thesis works as follows: Fill out the form available at the Examination Office. Agree with your advisor/supervisor on the second supervisor for your thesis. Sign the form and send it or bring it to the secretary at the chair. If it is not possible to bring it in person, send a scan via mail The secretary will gather the signatures and send the form to the Examination Office
During the next 3-6 months	Student	It is in the responsibility of the student, to ask for appointments. For every appointment, the student has to send a report on the current status and a set of questions to be discussed 2 days BEFORE the meeting
After finishing the thesis	Student	Submission of the thesis. We do not correct master thesis before submission, but of course you can and should ask for specific feedback on different parts (e.g. structure, quality of state of the art etc.). A final snapshot of the source code must be made available via zenodo.org (with exceptions if source code is not made available as open source. Needs to be agreed on before starting the thesis)
After finishing the thesis	Student	Final Presentation at the Oberseminar Data Science

Requirements for the Written Thesis:

Thesis can be written in English or German.
The structure should follow scientific rules. See our guide therefore.
A master thesis should range between 60 and 80 pages (excluding appendix, toc, and lists of figures/tables, references) depending on the complexity of the subject. The layout must be concise and reasonably dense (e.g. no filling of pages with figures)
A bachelor thesis should range between 30 and 40 pages (excluding appendix, toc, and lists of figures/tables, references) depending on the complexity of the subject.
Selected master thesis will be made completely available via the OPUS 4 server of the university.
All source code and data sets developed must be made Open Source (exceptions are source code with sensitive material or IPR violations), preferable via Github.com or Zenodo
Students will create a repository at the FIM Gitlab for managing source code, experiments and the written thesis. The supervisor of the thesis has to be added as a collaborator to the project in order to ease communication.

There is also a (still uncomplete) guide on how to conduct thesis at our chair. The guide should give you an idea what it is expected from your side and how to decompose the goal of getting your grade into smaller sub-units.

Chair of Data Science