The Department of Information Systems for Sustainable Society offers bachelor and master theses. However, the following information is exclusively applicable to master theses.
The individual theses are supervised by a first and a second examiner affiliated with the department. Please read up on the topics we offer specifically (see below) and in general (see topic areas) and the respective researchers that supervise in these areas. You can contact the researcher(s) fitting your topic preferences most closely. Please hand in your application in due time. After having agreed upon the topic of the thesis, a prompt registration at the examination office of the University of Cologne is possible.
For optimum preparation, we recommend you to participate in the courses offered by our department. These comprise detailed insights into relevant research topics in the context of energy systems. Furthermore, we aim at conveying fundamentals regarding data analytics and machine learning. Within additional seminars, you are granted the option to gain experience with respect to scientific work and writing. The individual feedback may act as a crucial cornerstone to assess your performance level, main interests, and requirements to successfully realize a thesis.
We strictly advise students to write their theses using Latex. This enables a quick adaption of the written thesis, e.g. to submit it to a journal. To facilitate the writing process, we provide a Latex template on Overleaf and an exemplary GitHub repository to organize the thesis. Using Overleaf's documentation, students can easily learn how to use Latex for scientific projects.
Admission Requirements
At the Department of Information Systems for Sustainable Society we only supervise theses related to our primary research interests. These, above all, comprise smart electricity markets, the smart grid, sustainable transportation as well as e-mobility, data analytics, and competitive simulation. Additionally, proposed theses have to meet the general requirements of the examination office of the University of Cologne. Please note that any other application and inquiry will be rejected without further argumentation.
We prefer students exhibiting profound contextual (smart energy systems) and methodological (data analytics and machine learning) knowledge regarding our research interests.
Finally, all guidelines specified for the respective study programmes have to be considered.
Procedure
As regards the award of theses, the following procedure has been adopted:
Topic: The candidate either chooses a topic based on the list of currently available topics listed below (recommended) or works out a detailed research proposal on her own. The contact person given in the individual tenders can be contacted in case of any question regarding the content or organizational issues. If the question is of a rather general nature, the person in charge is Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Ketter.
Application: The applicant sends his documents to the respective supervisor/contact person. In case of individually suggested topics, please contact Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Ketter. Each application should comprise the following elements:
Proposal: The proposal depicts the main background and motivation of your research topic. Based on the proposal, a concise research question is to be defined and formulated. This includes the methodological approach as well as methods (and algorithms if applicable). Please also give an overview of the respective datasets you plan to leverage. The proposal already has to include a preliminary list of seminal literature that is relevant to your topic. Please note that special focus shall be placed on the research question and the respective approach.
Outline: A first outline is supposed to present the individual work steps and sub-topics as well as the respective weightings in terms of content/length.
CV: You are also invited to attach your CV so that we can find a thematic fit for your profile more easily. This is a voluntary aspect and is not a hard requirement for admission as a Master Thesis student at our chair.
Contact details: Please use the contact sheet comprising the following information: name and surname, postal address, phone number, mail address, date of birth, student id, course of study, targeted date to begin your thesis.
Proposal Revision: The supervisor of the research topic may ask you to revise your proposal and outline. If both reach a certain maturity, the supervising professor, the supervising researcher, and the candidate arrange a meeting. If needed, the examiner may initiate further revisions.
Signature of the Examiner: After having agreed upon the research proposal and outline, the examiner confirms the acceptance of the research topic under discussion by signing the proposal and outline.
Application for Acceptance: Given the signature of the examiner, the student has to contact the secretary's office of the department (Christel Schäfer). (It can take between 3 weeks and 3 months to successfully finish the steps 1 to 5)
Official Confirmation: If the secretary's office has handed in the application at the examination office, the student receives a confirmation of his registration by the examination office.
Submission: After the processing time, the thesis has to be handed in at the examination office (two documents bound and a copy (pdf + office document if desired) on a CD/DVD). The CD/DVD should include the raw data, the cleaned-up data, the programming code, and the literature as pdf.
We explicitly point out that we do not guarantee the completeness of the previous guidelines. Therefore, please study the official guidelines specified by the examination office in detail.
Topics
Please find below a list of all theses which are currently to be assigned. If no topic finds your interest, you might want to have a look at the research domains below and contact a potential supervisor directly. We can then try to find a suitable topic for you. For further inspiration you can also have a look at past thesis topics at our chair.
