Theses Application
We support Bachelor's and Master's theses as well as research practicals and internships in the field of practical informatics. We provide a non-exhaustive list of topics via Open Theses, but we are also open to your own ideas.
About Us
Prof. Kunkel leads the HPS research group as well as the AG-Computing of the GWDG. Together these two groups cover a wide range of research topics centered around High-Performance Computing. These topics, therefore, either focus on improving existing (HPC) systems or exploring application areas, such as AI.
Application Process
When looking to apply for a thesis, please read over the rest of the website and have a look at the Open Theses topics. If you are unsure, consider performing some initial research into topics of interest to get an idea of what could be done. Afterward, write an email, describing what topics and research interests you as well as what skills you bring to hps-theses@uni-goettingen.de.
We will then contact you for an initial online meeting to discuss your topic, scope, timeline and possible supervisors. Once you have a topic, we will guide you through the process of registering your thesis or research practical.
For Bachelor students: You are expected to join the Bachelorabschlussmodul (BAM), which includes a Scientific Writing Seminar and our Oberseminar, OSHPS. To pass you need to regularly attend sessions for both seminars, give an ungraded presentation in OSHPS once and submit your thesis on time.
For Master students: You are expected to join our Oberseminar, OSHPS. To pass you need to regularly attend sessions for OSHPS, give an ungraded presentation in OSHPS once and submit your thesis on time.
Workload and Duration
Bachelor of Science
The minimum duration is 15 weeks in total for
- Scientific Writing Seminar 2C
- Oberseminar 1C
- Bachelor's Thesis (12 weeks) 12C
For a total of 15C.
The scientific writing seminar is offered once per semester, and it is recommended to start participating as early as possible, potentially in parallel with other courses. The Bachelor's Thesis may be written in parallel to the Scientific Writing Seminar or afterward. The Oberseminar should be visited in parallel to writing the thesis. Working on your thesis is considered a full time job.
Of the 12 weeks writing time, it is recommended to reserve 5 to 6 weeks for writing. Plan enough time for receiving and implementing feedback.
Scientific Writing Seminar
Students learn:
- characteristics of academic writing
- structuring a scientific paper (abstract, introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, conclusion)
- Planning and scientific work (timeline, milestones, drafting)
- scientific writing processes
- correct citation practices (APA, IEEE, or other relevant style)
- reading and analyzing scientific publications
- Avoiding plagiarism and ensuring academic integrity
- Use of reference management tools (e.g., Zotero)
Participation requirements:
- at least 80% attendance.
See the latest instance of BAM under Teaching for more details.
Oberseminar
Students are expected to present intermediate results (usually close to the end of their thesis). The presentation is ungraded and is expected to start a discussion with the participants on the work itself.
Participation requirements:
- at least 80% attendance. 8 OSHPS meetings.
See the latest instance of OSHPS under Teaching for more details.
Master of Science
A master's thesis has a duration of 6 month and awards 30C. Working on your thesis is a full-time job.
As noted above, you are expected to additional join the Oberseminar, OSHPS while working on your thesis.
Of the 6 month thesis duration, 2.5 month should be reserved for writing. Plan enough time for receiving and implementing feedback.
Thesis Requirements
See below expectations for a student working on a thesis.
| Aspect | Guideline |
|---|---|
| Topic | Must be within a computer science specialization and approved by the supervisor. The topic should be original, scientifically relevant, and research-oriented. |
| Length Bachelor's Thesis | Typically 50–60 pages (excluding title page, abstract, references, and appendices). The focus should be on quality and scientific rigor rather than page count. |
| Length Master's Thesis | Typically 70-100 pages (excluding title page, abstract, references, and appendices). The focus should be on quality and scientific rigor rather than page count. |
| Language | German or English. The selected language must be used consistently throughout the thesis. |
| Structure | The thesis should follow a standard scientific structure consisting of: Title Page, Abstract, Table of Contents, Introduction, Related Work / Literature Review, Research Question and Objectives, Methodology, Implementation / Experiments, Results, Discussion, Conclusion and Future Work, References, and Appendices (if applicable). |
| Citations | A consistent citation style (e.g., IEEE, APA, ACM, Chicago) must be used throughout the thesis. In LaTeX, alphabetic-verb is preferred, e.g., [KUN2026] All sources, figures, datasets, and external material must be properly referenced. |
| Originality | The thesis must represent the student's own independent work. Plagiarism, fabrication, falsification of results, or any form of academic misconduct is strictly prohibited and may lead to failure of the thesis. |
| Supervision | Students are expected to maintain regular contact with their supervisor. Situative meetings and feedback can be requested by the student any time. Additionally, the thesis should be given for feedback to the supervisor. |
| Submission | The final thesis must be submitted via FlexNow according to the procedures and deadlines specified by the Examination Office and the Institute of Computer Science. Submission includes a PDF version that is PDF/A compliant. Submission is possible until midnight of the final day. |
| Format | The thesis must be submitted as a PDF document. Recommended formatting: 12 pt font size, page numbering, clearly structured headings, and margins of approximately 2.5 cm. Recommend to use our thesis Templates. |
| Source Code & Data | If applicable, source code, datasets, experiment configurations, or other supplementary materials should be published, if permitted, or at least submitted to support reproducibility of the results. This includes sufficient documentation of experimental code for another researcher to reproduce the results. |
| Scientific Practice | Students must follow the principles of Good Scientific Practice, including transparency, reproducibility, proper documentation, and ethical handling of data and research results. |
| Administrative Requirements | Students must follow the official registration and submission procedures of the University of Göttingen and consult the official forms page: https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/626775.html |
| AI | Students are permitted to use AI while working on their theisis but must report on their usage via a transparency report as given in the template and ensure the scientific integrity of their work. |
Supervision
A supervisor, typically a PhD student, is assigned as the thesis advisor. The student is expected to maintain regular contact with their supervisor, typically via weekly meetings. The supervisor is responsible for:
- Guiding the student in their research
- Providing feedback and support
- Advising the student to help them stay on track with their thesis
When requesting feedback from their supervisor, a student should consider that their supervisor also has many other tasks. A request for feedback should therefore be formulated as precise as possible. For example, instead of requesting general feedback for the current thesis draft, a student might ask for feedback on the structure of on figures or only on the introduction.
In addition to the supervisor there are additional roles in the context of a student's thesis:
- First reviewer, must be a university professor, signs thesis registration and grades submitted thesis
- Second reviewer, typically a PostDoc but can be any person allowed to examine the thesis, which can be requested if needed, signs thesis registration and grades submitted thesis
- Technical supervisor, optional, expert to provide additional insights in assistance to the supervisor
The Bachelor’s thesis is typically supervised by a faculty member or authorized researcher.
Supervision usually includes:
- topic definition
- methodological guidance
- literature recommendations
- Regular progress meetings, typically weekly
- and feedback on scientific work
Students are expected to work independently while maintaining regular communication with the supervisor.
Thesis Structure
A thesis typically follows a structure as denoted in the table below. For further examples of completed theses see Theses and https://data.goettingen-research-online.de/dataverse/gwdg-final-theses.
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| Abstract (150–300 words) | Overview of the research area, introduction to problem, common approaches, own approach, note at results. |
| Introduction | Motivation: Overview of the research area, introduction to problem, common approaches, own approach, note at results. Goals: Research question and expected products. Contributions: Contributions to the scientific community, e.g., overview of literature, implementation of X, assessment of Y. Outline: Overview of remaining sections of the work. |
| Background | Explanation of basics, concepts and technologies required to understand the rest of the work. |
| Related Work | Overview and critical discussion of existing research relevant to the topic. |
| Methodology | Establishing the research questions (RQs), method to answer the RQs and what kind of data is required, how that data will be collected, e.g., via an experiment, describing the subject of study including own design (if applicable),analysis methods (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed). |
| Results / Evaluation | Visual presentation of experimental result data, descriptive inference, e.g., observations made on the data, abductive inference, e.g., providing most likely explanations for observations while considering issues during experiments, analogical inference, e.g., consider how well the results can be generalized, answering the RQs |
| Discussion | Implications of the results, comparison with existing literature, limitations, and major issues (if any). |
| Conclusion | Summary of the work, key contributions, limitations, and recommendations for future research. |
| References / Bibliography | Complete list of cited sources using a consistent citation style. |
| Appendix A | Additional materials, e.g., large code snippets, experiment data, additional graphs. |
| Appendix B | Transparency Report: Tools and Third-Party Contributions, list what software was used, how AI was used, non-trivial contributions from others. |
It is highly recommended to employ the provided LaTeX Templates.
Originality & Academic Integrity
- Must be original work.
- Plagiarism is strictly prohibited (checked via software like StrikePlagiarism).
- All used tools including AI usage must be specified - an example is given in the template.
- All sources must be properly cited.
- AI usage statement as given in the template
Submission
- Submit final version in digital form as PDF via FlexNow
- Must be PDF/A compliant
- Compliance is supported by the template
- Any additional materials such as code or data should be published, if allowed, along the thesis via a platform such as GitHub or Zenodo
- Tell supervisor whether if you disagree to the thesis being published on Theses
Assessment Criteria
When assessing a thesis the following criteria are considered:
- Complexity of the work completed - this defines the baseline and ceiling of the mark - easy theses can not yield the mark 1.0
- Research aspect
- Form and structure of the thesis (as well as additional materials)
- Soundness of scientific reasoning
These points further break down into:
- Difficulty of the project, e.g., technical challenges
- Originality of the work, standard scenario or new idea
- Depth of knowledge about chosen topic shown in the thesis
- Quality of the literature review including recognition of high-level structures in related work
- Clear identification of a research gap
- Proper usage of citations
- Consistent usage of terminology
- Employment of own diagrams to visualize aspects of the thesis, e.g., experimental design
- Establishment of research questions and addressing the research questions using the data gathered
- Selection and design of appropriate methods and experiments
- Soundness of methodology and data analysis with clear description and analysis of data
- Reasonable choice of method and experiment design
- Proper visualization of results as graphs and figures
- Understandability of the presentation of the work, e.g., usage of fitting examples
- Meaningful captions and references in the text
- Ethical conduct
- Consistent style and layout of the thesis document
- Well written text that, easy to read and well-structured
- Results are reproducible as code and documentation to repeat experiments are provided
- Acknowledgement of limitations and contradictions
Relevant Modules
BSc Applied Computer Science Module B.Inf.1190: Bachelorabschlussmodul
| Module Code | B.Inf.1190 |
| English Title | Bachelor's Thesis |
| Credits | 15 CP |
| Thesis Credits | 12 CP |
| Seminar Credits | 3 CP (Scientific Writing + Oberseminar) |
| Duration | 1 Semester |
| Thesis Duration | 15 Weeks |
| Recommended Semester | 6th Semester |
| Teaching Language | German or English |
| Module Coordinator | Prof. Dr. Julian Kunkel |
| Frequency | Every Semester |
| Repeatability | Twice |
| Contact Hours | 42 Hours |
| Independent Study | 408 Hours |
| Total Workload | 450 Hours |
Learning Objectives
After successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
- Apply the principles of Good Scientific Practice.
- Write and structure scientific documents according to academic standards.
- Conduct independent work on a Computer Science problem within a defined timeframe.
- Apply established methods from a chosen specialization area.
- Develop scientifically justified conclusions and present them appropriately.
- Communicate research results clearly in written and oral form.
MSc Applied Computer Science
30C: No Relevant Module in Module catalogue
BSc Data Science Modul B.Inf.2001: Bachelorabschlussmodul
Same as BSc Applied Computer Science.
| Module Code | B.Inf.2001 |
| English Title | Bachelor's Thesis |
| Credits | 15 CP |
| Contact Hours | 4 SWS (56 hours attendance time) from Scientific Writing (2 SWS) + Advanced Research Seminar (2 SWS) |
| Independent Study | 394 hours |
| Total Workload | 450 hours |
| Duration | 1 Semester |
| Recommended Semester | 6th Semester |
| Typical Thesis Duration | One semester (15 weeks recommended) |
| Teaching Language | German or English |
| Module Coordinator | Prof. Dr. Fabian Sinz |
| Frequency | Every Semester |
| Maximum Number of Students | 50 |
| Repeatability | Once |
| Admission Requirements | According to §10 (1) PStO |
| Recommended Prior Knowledge | None |
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
- Apply the principles of Good Scientific Practice.
- Write and structure scientific documents according to academic standards.
- Independently solve a Data Science problem using established methods of the discipline.
- Develop scientifically justified conclusions and communicate them appropriately.
- Critically evaluate results and derive evidence-based insights.
- Present scientific findings in written and oral form.
MSc Data Science Module M.Inf.2901: Master’s Thesis
| Module Code | M.Inf.2901 |
| English Title | Master's Thesis |
| Credits | 30 CP |
| Contact Hours | 4.5 WLH (63 hours) |
| Independent Study | 837 hours |
| Total Workload | 900 hours |
| Duration | 1 Semester |
| Recommended Semester | 4th Semester |
| Teaching Language | English |
| Module Coordinator | Prof. Dr. Alexander Ecker |
| Frequency | Every Semester |
| Repeatability | Once |
| Admission Requirements | According to §12 (1) PStO |
| Recommended Prior Knowledge | None |
Learning Objectives
After successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
- Structure, manage, and complete an independent research project within a defined timeframe.
- Select and apply appropriate scientific methods from their subject area.
- Conduct and evaluate scientific investigations.
- Develop independent and scientifically justified conclusions.
- Structure and write a professional scientific research paper.
- Apply academic standards for formatting, referencing, and scientific communication.
- Understand and apply the principles of Good Scientific Writing.
- Critically review and revise scientific manuscripts.
- Participate actively in scientific discussions on advanced topics.
- Provide constructive feedback to peers.
- Present research results professionally and lead scientific discussions.