Research Project / Research Seminar / Group Studies

Courses are offered by the TU Ilmenau groups participating in the RCSE curriculum.
Each research group can offer topics to be finished individually by the RCSE students.

How do I get a topic?
There are three options:

1. Select a topic from the list of offered topics at the web sites from the research groups participating in the RCSE curriculum.
2. Ask a professor of the RCSE curriculum or their group members, who are working in your field of interest, if they have a topic for you.
3. Propose a topic of your own to a professor to get approval that he or she will supervise it. Make sure that the topic fulfills the requirements listed below!
   In cases 2) and 3), the project can only be started when one of the professors has accepted the topic.

There may be a meeting for instance at the beginning of a semester in which the participating groups present their offered topics. However, there is no principal restriction in the time at which you must start the course.

How are the individual studies organized?

1. Start: after you get approval by a RCSE professor to supervise your course, a form has to be filled in and signed for the Prüfungsamt to register officially. Formally, this is equivalent to the registration according to study regulations §9. This means that you cannot cancel the course afterwards without failing it.
2. During the work: Handout of topic background material, discussion of intermediate results, help with problems etc. is done individually with your supervisor or group members responsible for your topic.
3. Deadline: Your responsible supervisor will tell you in which time you have to finish your course and when results and report etc. have to be handed in to the supervisor. Exceptions can be granted in cases where the student is not responsible for the delay.

How are the individual studies graded?
The requirements are up to the responsible supervisor. A report has to be written usually. Depending on your actual task, a software program, a paper, a hardware setup etc. will be a required result. Grading will take into account the overall results compared to the task, individual performance during the work, and quality of document and presentation. Grading is done by the professor of the group in which the course was supervised, and the results are sent to the Prüfungsamt.

If the course is not successfully finished, cancelled by the student, or not finished within the granted time, the module is failed and has to be done again with a different topic.

Course offered by the TU Ilmenau groups participating in the RCSE curriculum.
Each research group can offer topics to be finished individually by the RCSE students.

The System and Software Engineering group is responsible for the general organization. Information will be made available on the web site of the group.

What requirements are there for Research Project topics?

• Research Projects are part of the third study phase "indivdual studies", in which RCSE students will do project-oriented and independent research work.
• Topics should be related to current research directions of one of the participating groups. They should support scientific education by working in actual research projects either in the university or at a company cooperating with the university.
• It is generally not possible to do a part-time job in a company and get this work accepted as a research project.
• Research projects can be done in groups of up to three students, as long as the topic allows to individually assign tasks and grade results (in contrast to group studies, which have to be done as a team).
• Work load: the module Research Project comprises 15 LP, which means 400 .. 445 hours of scheduled time. It is thus the single module with the highest amount of work except for the Master thesis! Make sure to plan your time and concurrent lectures accordingly.

for further informations please check the web site from the System and Software Engineering Group.

The life and hard times of a professional researcher has several characteristic workload pattern. Apart from hunting insights, researchers frequently have to give and listen to talks, read, write and review papers, launch research proposals, or organize workshops and conferences.

Successful research also requires many personal qualifications and skills such as analytical ability, ability to learn, to conceptualise, to communicate, to integrate knowledge, scientific discipline, curiosity, initiative, motivation, and, last but not least, quite a bit of masochism (for details see phdcomics.com).

This seminar trains skills that help to do efficient scientific work. Course topics are

• reading and writing papers
• presenting scientific work
• designing conference posters
• writing research proposals
• reviewing papers
• organizing workshops and conferences

The course is organized in three parts: a tutorial part where we study how to write research papers, review papers, design conference posters, write research proposals, and organize workshops. The second part is practical training, where every student will apply the new knowledge and will write and review papers, design conference posters, and take an active part in organizing a conference.

The concluding event will be the Annual RCSE Conference on Computer and Systems Engineering (CCSE) in February which will be fully organized by the course participants.

The Distributed Systems and Operating group is responsible for the organization. Information will be made available on the web site of the group.