Master's and Bachelor's theses
at the Software Engineering Chair

Topics

Conducting your Bachelor, Master's or PhD thesis at the Software Engineering Chair is fun, has impact on practice, and is at the foremost frontier of research. We offer a multitude of topics in the areas of

• Mining Software Archives ("Where are the most bugs?")
• Mutation Testing ("How can I improve my test suite?")
• Automated Debugging ("Why does my program fail?")
• Dynamic Program Analysis ("How does one use that class?")

As we come up with new topics and ideas every week, we'd like to interact with you in person to find a topic that best suits your interests and capabilities. Just contact us and schedule an appointment with Andreas Zeller.

How to do a Thesis in Software Engineering

We have introduced a formal process that describes the necessary steps for doing a thesis at our chair. Thus, your task is well defined and we ensure that its completion does not take too long. If you want to do a thesis at our chair, you first have to attend the bachelor/master seminar before the thesis starts. More information to study- and examination regulations can be found at the Examination Office of the Faculty.

Seminar

In the seminar phase, you are supposed to prepare your thesis. The seminar phase comprises the following steps:

Topic

The first step is to find a suitable topic and advisor. If you're unsure what's going on at the chair, you can listen to talks, approach PhD students or Prof. Zeller himself.

Attendance

You have to attend the seminar on a regular basis. The current rule is that in order to pass the seminar you have to visit the seminar at least 10 out of 15 times.

Preparation

Your advisor will give you literature to read and possibly make you write a prototype or perform some preliminary experiments. This is important to help you understand your topic.

Proposal

You have to write a thesis proposal that describes the goals of your thesis and the steps required to achieve those goals. A thesis proposal is usually between 8 to 10 pages long. Basically, your proposal is some kind of contract between you and our chair. It describes a well-defined task and its outcome as well as possible risks. This helps you finish your thesis in time.

Talk

Once the proposal is done, you have to give a 20-minute talk in the seminar. The purpose of this talk is to collect feedback from your fellow students and the PhD students.

Upon successful completion of those steps, you get a certificate (Schein) for the seminar. Congratulations!

Thesis

The earliest point in time when you can start working on your thesis is right after you handed in your thesis proposal and gave a talk in the seminar. This allows fast students to get a head start for their thesis. As soon as you got the certificate for the seminar, you can register your thesis. You have to do so at most six weeks after you got the certificate.

Successful completion of a thesis consists of the following steps:

Implementation

Typically, a thesis investigates a hypothesis. Depending on the concrete topic, you'll have to implement a tool and possibly infrastructure to conduct experiments that prove or disprove the hypothesis.

Thesis

Once you've completed your experiments and collected the results, you can start writing the thesis.

Talk

You'll present the results of your thesis in a 30-minute talk in the seminar.

Once you finished the steps described above, you'll get a certificate (Schein) for the thesis. Congratulations!

The process described above is summarized in the following diagram:

Frequently Asked Questions

• Can I start my thesis during the semester? Yes, it is absolutely possible to start during the semester.
• I won't be able to work full-time on my thesis. What can I do? Your study regulations allow you to apply for a part-time thesis which doubles the amount of time available for your thesis. For a bachelor thesis, you'll have 6 months and 12 months for a master thesis.
• Can you extend the thesis deadline? Once the thesis is registered, extending the deadline is up to the Prüfungssekretariat. You can for example apply for a deadline extension if you're sick for a longer period.
• Can I continue working on my topic after completion? If you were unable to explore your topic fully and your advisor is also interested in continuing your work, it is sometimes possible to support further effort with a HiWi contract.