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Department of Information Technology

Master Thesis in Systems and Control

This page lists activities for anyone who either is or is aiming to be either supervised or have a subject reviewer in the division of system and control (i.e. one of the people listed here).

Finding a project

The first thing to do is to read this page about starting your Masters project. If you are still at the stage of looking for a project, in the link below you can find specific proposals from our division, some at or with close industry collaboration.

The range of topics includes secure control systems, optimization-based learning and control, machine learning, neuroengineering, and system identification, among others.

List of MSc thesis projects for Fall 2023 / Spring 2024.

If you are interested in some of our research fields, feel free to contact us even if there are no related proposal! You may also have a look at the list of external master thesis projects.

General comments on the thesis specification

Once you have found a supervisor and a subject reader, you need to specify the theiss. The degree project should address an engineering challenge, possibly of scientific nature, which should be tackled through a scientific methodology using both knowledge from past courses and newly acquired within the project. Regarding the scientific methodology, key aspects are the research question, hypothesis, methods and tools, delimitation, and time plan. Ideally, these aspects should be briefly described already in the thesis specification/project proposal.

Students are often more at ease with determining the tools they plan to use in the degree project. The other elements are usually harder to formulate. Especially in industry-related degree projects, formulating a research question may be difficult, as these projects are often solution-oriented (i.e., the aim is to develop/implement an artefact). Research questions are in general difficult to formulate, but they are required in the final report.

A good research question is instrumental in academic projects. The question sets the focus and scope of the project in precise terms. It also clarifies the added value of the project, beyond a straightforward implementation of a solution. Formulate a research question as early as possible, with the expectation that the question will be revised and adapted and the work progresses.

Here are some tips on research questions .

Creating a time plan

The time plan is more than just listing the weeks you spend on different activities of the project. The plan should contain elements that allow the effective monitoring of the project’s progression over time. It also represents a commitment between the student, supervisor and reviewer.

Here are some reflections and suggestions about the time plan:
• It is a plan. It may be changed later on. No need to get it perfect at the first try.
• It should show that the workload is feasible considering possible externalities (vacations, other courses, etc.).
• It should show progression of the work in reasonable steps (not too complex and large, not too small and trivial).
• It should be useful for monitoring the progress. This means, for instance, that you should include milestones here and there. The milestones should be concrete and possible to verify. Here follow some dummy examples:
• M1: a first draft of the literature review.
• M2: a preliminary <Problem component> is defined.
...
• M4: suitable benchmark environments are selected.
• M5: the proposed solution is implemented.
...

What to expect from your subject reviewer

The subject reviewer is a person not directly involved in the project (i.e. independent and partial), but who will challenge you with comments and questions to ensure that your report meets the learning goals of the MSc degree project. For more information see: detailed information here and MSc degree project and learning outcomes.

Part of the reviewer’s role is also to monitor your progress about once a month (this can happen as part of the division activities), to read and review your report, and to approve it after the necessary revisions. The reviewer’s role is not to supervise your work on a daily basis. The reviewer may not an expert on the all of the tools mentioned in your thesis, but while he/she may only be able to offer limited advice on specific aspects, most reviewers would be happy to try to point you in the right way/to the right people.

Activities for registered students

Given the increasing importance of machine learning and AI in society, it has become very popular to supervise and/or review Masters theses at our division. We are therefore organising group activities to help you along your way. This allows us to supervise and review more students in a wider range of projects. These activities are co-ordinated through our Slack channel. Please join by clicking below:

Slack channel

This is open to all masters students supervised and/or reviewed by those working at our division.
During a semester the activities will be organised roughly as follows (week is in Swedish week calendar system):

Week 4/36 (start of project): Start up meeting with all students. Explaining how they should approach their work. Also explaining this organization of their work. Helping them with final details of study plans. The students are invited to our division coffee on Thursdays at 10:15. In person, but on Zoom and recorded for late starters.

Week 9/40 (getting going): Some (about 6) students present their work, 5 minutes each with 5 minutes discussion feedback. Preferably in-person. Discussion on getting started, finding data, working within a company, finding features in data, structuring a problem, what to expect, before and after.

Week 15/45 (progress report): Some (about 6) students present their work, 5 minutes each with 5 minutes discussion feedback. Preferably in-person. Discussion on analyses, improving methods, working with data in the wild, how to approach difficulties.

Week 20/49 (writing up): Some (about 6) students present their work, 5 minutes each with 5 minutes discussion feedback. Discussion on writing a report, documenting work, how to present work and to make sure supervising company/entity get the most possible out of the work at the end.

Some past projects

Cybersecurity and Control

Projects for Spring 2022 Analysis and design of secure control systems.pdf Evaluation of security protocols in control systems.pdf Privacy in Control Systems.pdf Reinforcement Learning for Artificial Pancreas.pdf Surprise-based exploration in Reinforcement Learning.pdf

Machine learning

Projects for Spring 2022 Reinforcement Learning for Artificial Pancreas.pdf Surprise-based exploration in Reinforcement Learning.pdf

Biomedical Systems

Modeling of drug effect in general closed-loop anesthesia.
Start date: Winter-Spring 2016.
Contact: Alexander Medvedev,

Biomechanics

System för utvärdering av människans balansförmåga baserad på 2.5D rgb-djupled sensorer (kinect).
Contact: Kjartan Halvorsen

Updated  2023-09-22 09:51:35 by André Teixeira.