All EPL students have to respect the Master Thesis rules adopted by the Louvain School of Engineering.
However, for the SINF and INFO (referred to in short as SINFO below) Master Theses the EPL rules were amended with some more specific rules linked to your program, namely:
Size of the manuscript
- Master of 120 credits
A dissertation written by one single student should be approximately 40 pages in length, and should in no case exceed 60 pages (excluding appendices).
A dissertation written by a pair of two students should be approximately 60 pages, and should in no case exceed 80 pages (excluding appendices).
- Master 60 credits
A dissertation written by one single student should not exceed 40 pages in length (excluding appendices).
A dissertation written by two students should not exceed 60 pages (excluding appendices).
Choice of topic
SINFO students who would like to present their Master Thesis the following year will have to submit, at the latest 2 weeks after the Easter holidays, 5 choices from at least 2 different supervisors among all propositions included in the Master thesis application.
At this stage, a negotiation period will start between the student, the supervisors and the program counselor in order to balance the Master thesis supervision charge among all potential supervisors while respecting the students’ choices.
Submission of dissertation
The final dissertation will be submitted via the UCL electronic platform Dial Mem. Students will receive a confirmation email containing the manuscript’s broadcasting rights. This email attachment has to be signed by students and given to the INGI secretary.
Moreover, students must send to their supervisors and readers a digital copy of their dissertation and provide them with a paper version should they request one.
Specific requirements related to software development
Specific guidelines need to be adhered to in the case of SINFO Master dissertations that involve an important implementation or software development component.
The developed program or software system should be made available to the jury in electronic form (e.g., CD or access to a website). Bulky paper appendices should be avoided, unless in exceptional circumstances.
The code must be documented at a level that allows its future modification or extension without undue effort by a competent third party. The use of standard documentation frameworks is encouraged.
In case the software development in the dissertation is based on the extension or modification of an already existing software system, a clear distinction must be made between what has been achieved within the framework of the dissertation and what was developed by others beforehand.
Quantitative measures of what has been achieved must be provided: number of lines of code, number and size of files containing the implementation sources and, depending on the context, number of functions, classes, methods implemented.
Rigorous tests of the software must be carried out and duly documented. The tests will be used to check the functionality and performance of the program. They will be selected based on clearly presented test objectives. If applicable, a comparison of performance with other software with similar functionality will be presented.
The jury members must be able to easily test the software, or at least have the opportunity to see how it works.