How to be a good thesis/POCS/PIP student

I am here to help you sharpen your ideas and your focus, as well as learn to be a scientist! I’m not here to do your work for you. 😁 Think about what you want to get from the project and from working with me, write a great contract at the beginning, come prepared to meetings with questions and topics that you want to discuss, do the work you proposed to do, and we’ll have a great time doing research. ⭐

For other/more info, have a look at Joanna Bergström’s page or Dan Ashbrook’s page about this, too! KUNet also has some guidance.

🤔 How to think about finding a supervisor and topic

Joanna Bergström has excellent tips about doing this in general. So the question you probably have is, when would I choose to work with Valkyrie?

• if you want to do something related to an idea on my project ideas list
• if you want to do something related to fabrication, sensing, and/or human anatomy
• if you have strong technical skills in software, hardware, or mechanical engineering
• if you met me at an HCC Open House and can’t wait to get into the lab and make stuff
• (MSc) if you took, enjoyed, and did well in Advanced Topics in Human-Centred Computing (ATHCC); User Interface Technology (UIT); Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Computing; or a related course at KU

If you said yes to one or more of these things, I suspect we can find something fun to work on together. 💪🏽

✍🏽 Developing your topic

I expect the following from all Bachelor and Master projects (POCS/PIP/thesis):

• It's research
  • Do the related work search early → I link related work on my project ideas page, but you can find loads of related work in the ACM Digital Library (free to access when you are connected to eduroam), especially from conferences like UIST, CHI, and TEI. Related work can give you inspiration and also tell you what has been tried or explored before.
  • We’re not building a product! We want to create scientific knowledge, not just make something. Think about research in terms of questions instead of products.
• You (the student) drive, not me
  • I might provide initial idea but it should evolve from there
  • Think hard about why you want to work on a particular area and what kind of work you want to do (do you want to spend all day coding? making things in the lab? talking with people?): this should help you figure out a general direction you would like to take an idea in
  • 1 ECTS = 25-30 working hours. MSc thesis is 30 ECTS (4 months full time). Bachelor project is 15 ECTS (2 months full time). It’s a lot of work! So it’s good to be happy with your idea and want to do that work.
• Aim as though for publication
  • Think big! We’ll scope the idea together.
  • I have had several students submit their theses/POCS projects for publication, especially as a Work in Progress, afterwards.
• Read sample theses and DIKU guidance for theses

📨 Emailing me about working together

I get a lot of email! Make it easy for me to want to write back to you. Include the following in your email: