Topic outline

  • General

    • The course Company Internship provides the department-level entry point to carry out internships in external company supervised by an professor at the Department of Applied Physics (PHYS).

      The course is set up between the student, the external advisor of the assignment and a supervising professor at PHYS. The student and, if applicable, their external advisor, contacts the course-responsible professor (currently, Prof. Mathias Groth, mathias.groth@aalto.fi) to discuss the scope of the assignment. The course-responsible professor will attempt to connect the project to a professor within PHYS who is potentially familiar with the subject of the project, and willing to serve as the supervising PHYS professor. The assignment will then be followed by the assigned professor for the duration of the project. If the internship cannot be allocated to a subject-suitable professor, the course-responsible professor will be supervising the internship administratively.

      The grade for the course is determined as a special assignment at the discretion of the subject-suitable professor (0-5 or pass/fail), the assessment of the company-based instructor (0-5 or pass/fail), or pass/fail by the course-responsible professor, if a technical assessment of the report cannot be made.

    • The following application procedure is suggested:
      • The student contacts the company at which the internship is performed, identifies the topic, methods to be used and the company-based instructor.
      • The student compiles the following information in two PowerPoint slides:
        • Title slide: name of the project, starting and end date of the project, name of the student, student number, name of the company, name of the company-based instructor, e-mail address of the company-based instructor.
        • First data slide: motivation of the project, including a conceptual picture of the to-be-accomplished tasks, methods.
        • The student contacts the course-responsible PHYS professor providing the above information.
        • Upon approval of the project, the student enrolls into PHYS-E0442 on Sisu.
    • Procedure of the 12-week course:
      • Prior to starting the course: the student discusses and arranges the internship with the company, and provides the project information, title slide and motivation slide to the course-responsible teacher (see above).
      • Week 5-6: the student provides a 4-5 slide PowerPoint presentation to the PHYS professor with the first results of the project and an updated time line of completing the project. The title and motivational slides may be copied over from the introduction.
      • Week 11: the student provides a 8-10 slide PowerPoint presentation to the PHYS professor with the final results and conclusions of the project, and the status of the report.
      • Week 12: the student provides a written report of up to 20 pages to the PHYS professor. If the student opts for cross-reading and correcting the report by the PHYS professor, the report must be submitted by the end of week 10.

    • The report will be assessed according to the following elements:

      • Definition of research scope and goals  
      • Command of the topic 
      • Methods 
      • Results and contribution
      • Presentation, language and structure 
      • Assignment process  
      • In addition to a report, a final presentation on the assignment/thesis work is required.

    • The required language to pass this course is English.

    • The student is expected to keep in communication with both the company-based instructor(s) and the PHYS professor. The course-responsible professor will prompt the student for one month after the due-date of the report. If the student fails to produce the report within 16 weeks of the project start, the course-responsible professor will cease prompting the student. After 16 weeks the student will need to provide an explanation why to report is late. It is the student's sole responsibility to resolve the evaluation with the course-responsible professor and the PHYS professor for the M.Sc. programme.