Graduation Project

Graduation project

The 45 credits graduation project offers you the opportunity to apply your acquired knowledge, competences, and skills. If the student chooses to do the internship in the Netherlands, the student has to carry out at least 15 credits of the graduation research abroad.

Prerequisites and Registration

Students who started the degree program before September 1, 2020 may start the graduation project when:

  • The summaries of three ‘competence development interviews’ have been submitted to the program administration.
  • Your study program must have been approved by the Examination Committee (Study Program Committee).
  • The student has successfully completed all compulsory courses and the internship.
  • The student has no more than 10 study credits on elective courses open.

Students who started the degree program from September 1, 2020 onwards may start the graduation project when:

  • The summaries of three ‘competence development interviews’ have been submitted to the program administration.
  • Your study program must have been approved by the Examination Committee (Study Program Committee).
  • The mandatory core study components (20 credits) is completed successfully, and
  • The track elective study components (20 credits) is completed successfully, and
  • Within the student’s total Master’s program not more than 10 credits of (track) electives are still open.

You should discuss your desired graduation project together with your graduation supervisor. With your graduation supervisor you should also discuss the schedule of your project. In case you want to conduct your graduation project abroad within an external research institute, company or university, an external supervisor should be involved in defining the planning and the project phases.

Registration takes place via the Graduation project registration form and OSIRIS.

To do

Please check the CANVAS Module 'Graduation Project' and consult the Regulations of the Examination Committee a for more information regarding the organization of the graduation project and follow all steps carefully.  

Before starting your graduation project, you must fill in the registration form graduation contract. Do not sign your contract until it has been checked.

  • If you use a standard TU/e agreement (e.g. the work place agreement), CSA AP will have your contract signed by the managing director. (So, your responsible Applied Physics supervisor should not sign contracts)
  • If you use a non-standard TU/e agreement (e.g. research institute, company or university contract) or if modifications have been made to the standard agreement, CSA AP will forward your contract to the education lawyers for a legal check. Then, the education lawyer will make sure you receive the final version of your contract that you can sign.

Please be aware that the process of reviewing, changing and signing a contract can easily take one month. Therefore, fill in the form as soon as possible.

Finalizing the graduation project

After the research is concluded, you have to hand in your graduation report describing the project and its results at your supervisor (including the Signed form Code of Scientific Conduct for the Master’s thesis), and give a presentation at TU/e.

You must use for your report the NF format or AP-NF format (if you are doing a double diploma) for the title page graduation project.

Immediately after the presentation, the defense takes place. When the assessment form is handed in at CSA-AP by your responsible supervisor, your grade will be processed.

Projects at ITER

If you want to do your internship/graduation project at ITER, visit https://www.iter.org/jobs/internships for all the required information. ITER’s internship program typically opens for application from October/November until January/February.

Funding and Acknowledgements

Sometimes, but not generally, the hosting institute abroad might fund part of the stay/part of the travel. Don’t count on it though. If you stay abroad for longer than 2 months, you can apply for Fusenet funding. This will generally not cover all your costs but will probably at least pay the flight. If you are planning to stay abroad for a longer period of time there may be additional funding options available, which can be found here.

If you've received funding, it is customary (and often obligatory) to include an acknowledgement to your beneficiary in your work (whether that is just a report or a scientific paper). For FuseNet and Eurofusion, the acknowledgement message is:

“This work has been carried out within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium, funded by the European Union via the Euratom Research and Training Programme (Grant Agreement No 101052200 — EUROfusion). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for them.”