External degree project in mathemtics

How does it work?

Find an area and project that interests you. If you do this well in advance, you will increase your chances of finding a project and you can also adapt your course choices to ensure you have what you need. Use your department's contacts or find something on your own. Read about degree project event and other tips below.

The fact that a project is advertised or proposed as a degree project does not automatically mean that it is a suitable degree project at the right level and scope. You must first check with the programme coordinator who can suggest a subject reviewer who is formally responsible for it and who must give the go-ahead before the thesis can begin and who also assesses when it is ready for presentation.

When you do an external degree project, you have a supervisor from the company/organisation/authority/department where the project is carried out and a subject reviewer and examiner from the department.

Thesis contract

Might be needed in some cases in order to stipulate who owns the results and for confidential information. If you need help with the contract, please contact the student adviser or the programme coordinator, who have access to the relevant contract documents.

Who owns the results of the thesis:

• the student (but the company is allowed to use it for their purposes),
• both the student and the company,
• the company withholds the results but renumerates the student etc.

In any case, the student should be able to use the results for the examination.

Confidential information

While working on your thesis you might gain access to information or produce results that the company or authority has legal right to keep
secret. In this case you will be asked not to transfer this information to any third party, except to the department if needed for the purpose of examination.

Open access

A fundamental principle at the university is that openness should apply as far as possible. Ideally, degree projects should be public.
Our advice is to inform the company or authority that the standard practice is open access publication, and that they have the possibility to request the exclusion of certain information from the thesis, provided that this does not compromise scientific integrity (e.g. reproducibility and accuracy).

Previous examples include situations where a company has wished to anonymize specific measurement units or categories in tables. This was deemed acceptable, as it did not affect the mathematical validity of the work.

Avoiding delays

If your external theses requires data from a company or authority, you should be prepared to encounter the following issues that have occurred at least once in the past:

• the data is not in a format that allows for the intended analysis,
• the data is not made available in time due to internal restrictions within the company,
• the data cannot leave the company premises, and the company takes considerable time to provide the student with access to a computer.

To avoid delays, we strongly recommend that you have a “Plan B”! Make sure that there is some freely available or simulated data that you can use as an alternative if necessary.

An external supervisor from a company, organisation, government agency, or another department within Uppsala University. Helps you choose a project, reads drafts, provides feedback, and so on.

A subject reviewer from the Department of Mathematics assesses whether the project is suitable within mathematics at the chosen level and decides when the work is ready for presentation.

An examiner appointed by the Department of Mathematics and responsible for grading the degree project.

See reports from previous projects to get an idea of their scope and level.

• external degree projects in mathematics at Master´s level
• external degree projects in mathematics at Bachelor´s level

Read an interview with a student who did an external thesis in spring 2024 and who shares his experience.

The department sometimes receives information about thesis projects that a company or organisation wants us to disseminate to our students and we then post it on the programme pages in Studium. We also organise an external thesis event in the autumn semester, see heading below.

Sometimes there are degree projects advertised that you can find via, for example, the university's career portal, CareerGate. or Graduate Land - Thesis in Sweden. The fact that a work is advertised as a degree project does not mean that it is a suitable degree project, so you have to agree with the programme coordinator. Another channel to reach out to companies is via the mathematics department's alumni group on LinkedIn. As a student, you are also an alumni and can join the group and send a request for project works as a post or as a message to one of the alumni. You can also search in the degree project portal of KTH (use Engineering Physics and/or Engineering and Computer Science as filters as there is no Mathematics as subject)

Do not hesitate to contact the programme coordinator or study counsellor to discuss different ideas for external degree work in advance. You can ask someone at the department to be a subject examiner or ask the programme coordinator for advice.

• When: 14 November at 12:00 - 13:00
• Where: room 101166 in house 10 level 1.
• For Whom: both bachelor and master students in all years

Register by 12 November to receive a lunch sandwich. You can also contact the page editor (see footer) later and it may be possible to organise this with shorter notice.

See who is coming and prepare yourself

We will continuously post a list of the expressions of interest that come in and with a link to business/project descriptions, so keep an eye on this page. It is good to prepare for the event as it is positive if you can suggest what you could do in cases where there is not already a planned project.

• When: 5 December at 12:00 - 13:00. The department will provide a sandwich for lunch.
• Where: room 101260 (find on map)
• For whom: both bachelor and master students in all years. It is good to start thinking about and planning for degree project in good time and we guess that several of those who come and who are interested in offering degree projects may also need more time before it can be implemented. For those of you who are going to do a degree project this spring, we hope that there are some who have projects that they can supervise already.

This event is a result of our first alumni event we had in October where many alumni indicated that they were interested in offering thesis projects to our students. We now invite them at fairly short notice to come and present project ideas they have, or just their business and an area or project they are working on where there are problems or development opportunities that are suitable for a degree project in mathematics. We hope that several of them can come and meet you at this event and for those who can't, we have asked them to send suggestions and contact details so that you who are interested can contact them yourself.

In order to get a lunch sandwich, registration for the event is required no later than 3 December (let us know if you happen to miss it and maybe it can be solved).

See who is coming and prepare yourself

We will continuously post a list of the expressions of interest that come in and with a link to business/project descriptions, so keep an eye on this page. It is good to prepare for the event as it is positive if you can suggest what you could do in cases where there is not already a planned project.