Degree Project in Medical Engineering

Degree Project in Technology and Health

The purpose of the degree project is that you as a student shall apply and deepen your knowledge, understanding, abilities, and approaches within the context of the education. The degree project shall be carried out towards the conclusion of the education and imply a specialized study and synthesis of earlier acquired knowledge. In the degree project in an engineering program is emphasized both the technical/scientific content and method knowledge.
After completed degree project, the you should show such proficiency as is required to work independently as a Master of Science in Engineering according to the national qualitative targets for the Degree of Master of Science in Engineering and Degree of Master of Science in the Higher Education Ordinance.

For new students:

Before starting the project

Congratulations that you have reach so far and ready to work on your final assignment! However, before you can write a thesis, you need to find a good thesis topic! There are several ways how you can do it:

Look for any projects that seems interesting on this Cavas page

Speak with your teachers if they have or known of many projects

Look for projects on general KTH page with the projects (https://www.kth.se/en/samverkan/exjobb/studenter)

You might also check with Med-Tech / sport companies and institutions in the Stockholm area.

Once you found the project and you believe it is a good project that can make the world a better place, consider to apply for a grant from KTH Opportunities Fund (https://www.kth.se/en/alumni/engagemang/ge-en-gava/ansok-om-stod-fran-opportunities-fund-1.552270)

Project proposal

The project proposal is a short description of the intended project with the intent of showing that the project is suitable for a Engineering Master Thesis and that it is feasible in 20 weeks full time work.

The reason for requiring students to write a project proposal is twofold:

Get an assessment by the course managers about the suitability of the project
Obtain a reviewer to whom you will then submit a project description.

Please keep in mind that the suitability of the proposed project will be checked against KTH-common guidelines for master thesis projects, from which, in particular, we want to stress the following points:

The student should be able to apply relevant knowledge and abilities, within the main field of study, to a given problem within given constraints, even with limited information, independently analyze and discuss complex inquiries/problems and handle larger problems on the advanced level within the main field of study

Please, write your proposal focusing on showing how your project will allow you to show that knowledge and abilities within the main field of study are needed to carry on the project and that the problem(s) to be solved are complex enough to show that you are able to, within given constraints, even with limited information, independently analyze and discuss complex inquiries/problems and handle larger problems on the advanced level within the main field of study.

Submit a project proposal via the following on-line form: https://www.kth.se/form/project-proposal

On approval of your project proposal:

Write a project description to be submitted to your reviewer for approval.
Ask your external supervisor (i.e. the person that gave you the project at a company or university) to fill in an sign supervision agreement form.

If course managers find that the proposed project does not complies with KTH guidelines for a master thesis, you will have to start looking for another project.

Project description

After your project proposal has been approved and you have been assigned a reviewer/examiner, you should write a project description. The project description is a document that you write with the help of your scientific supervisor and that has the scope of more precisely define your project. Consider also that the project description is a job description against which you will be evaluated in the end of your thesis work. Please, set concrete and measurable goals.

Typically a project description will consist of:

Introduction: shortly describe the state of the art relative to the problem at hand. Include reference to relevant publications (Max ½ A4)
Main goal of the project: typically 1-2 sentences. Here, please, specify the relevance to the Medical Engineering curriculum and/or impact on healthcare.
Project description: list the tasks that you are going to undertake, describe the methods that you will use (with references where necessary) and formulate milestones for each task mentioned so that your project can be evaluated at any time during implementation.
Project timeline: Include a time line with milestones
Reference list

Submit the project description with attached the signed supervision agreement form to your reviewer for approval.

Usually a reviewer will take some time for reviewing your project description and might eventually ask you to modify few things before approving it, so be sure to submit your first project description well ahead of the deadline (1 month is recommended).

The project description has to be approved before December 15.

On approval of your project proposal you will be registration to the course.

During the process

Please find listed in the following, in short, the main steps to be taken during the process of executing your master degree project (this comprehends the time between the approval of your project description and the submission of your thesis report):

You will be assign an instructor who will support you during your work.
- The instructor has not to be confused with your project supervisor (who is the person with whom you will do your thesis work). The instructor is the person that will lead the group instructions.
- The duties of an internal instructor are in brief:
  - Schedule and lead the seminar series
  - Recommend for or against the submission of the thesis
  - Check upon student’s progresses and give feedback and suggestions
  - Provide the reviewer with “grading relevant” information
Your instructor will contact you to invite you to the first meeting during where, among other things, the rest of the seminar series will be presented and scheduled.
- The instruction meetings of master thesis are run in seminar groups (4-5 students, led by an instructor from faculty). The main goal of the seminars is to help the students writing their thesis report, managing the execution of the thesis project in time and helping with the reviewing of other students’ work.
- In relation to the learning outcomes declared in KTH-guidelines for master thesis, the group instructor will particularly address the following points:
  - reflect on, evaluate and critically review one’s own and others’ scientific results
  - be able to document and present one’s own work with strict requirements on structure, format, and language usage
  - be able to identify one’s need for further knowledge and continuously develop one’s own knowledge
- Typically, the seminar series consist of 6 meetings with mandatory home works. For the actual schedule of the seminar series, please contact your instructor.
At some point during the first part of your work (exact deadline will be given to you by your instructor), you will have to submit to your reviewer a State-of-the-Art report. The report will be graded by the reviewer who might even ask you to modify parts of it. More details about the State-of-the-Art report will be given to you by your instructor.
Another duty during this period is to be present at a master thesis presentation session and write a written review of one of the presentations. Please be aware of the fact that there might be one only presentation day previous to your own presentation session, do not miss it!
Finally you will have to submit your thesis report to your reviewer. Details on how the report should be formatted will be given to you by the instructor. Please note that the instructor might decide to not let you submit your report in case they will judge it insufficient for a pass grade. In that, hopefully rare case, you will be allowed to take advantage of the next available deadline for presenting the thesis in the same semester. If you miss the last deadline for the semester in which you have carried on your project, you will have to enroll in the course again and start with a new project.

After submission of your thesis report

At this point it is time to preparing for your oral presentation and few other things listed below:

Prepare an oral presentation of max 25 min. After your presentation you will discuss your results with a student opponent and a faculty opponent (generally your reviewer) who will have 15 minutes each to ask questions and making comments.
You will also be assigned another thesis to oppose to. You will be required to write a written review of the thesis and you should prepare a short oral presentation (max 5 min) describing the main results of the thesis you oppose to. The presentation will be given as a start to the oral opposition (see above).
You will, soon after the discussion of your thesis, receive your reviewer’s comments and requests. You will have to comply with all requests for changes in your report within 3 weeks from receiving the review and resubmit the final version of your thesis for final approval. The reviewer might also judge your work to be insufficient. If you have presented your work in January then you will have the possibility of discussing your thesis again in June. If your thesis is judged to be insufficient on the second session you will have to re-enroll the course.
After the final approval of your thesis by your reviewer, you will receive an email with the TRITA number to the approved version of your report and instructions to compile a cover page for your thesis.
With the final approval it also will be recorded that you have passed the course and your report will be uploaded on DIVA.
This last step is not mandatory but you can print via US AB a certain number of copies (typically 5) at KTH expenses. Please, double check with the course manager about the instructions on how to proceed for printing.

HL207X HT21-1 Degree Project in Technology and Health, Second Cycle