Prospectus

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LDE Thesis Labs

Course
2024-2025

Registration for 2024-2025 is open from September 13th until October 13th!

Description

Become a leader in sustainability. Work on your individual master thesis based on a real-world challenge, commissioned by an external organisation. At the same time learn, share and collaborate with other motivated students from Leiden, Delft and Erasmus universities and contribute to a common, interdisciplinary result with real impact.

With a team of 10-12 students, you will work on a real challenge set by an external organisation (a company or governmental organisation). You will meet professionals and academic experts, follow workshops, lectures and join excursions. You’ll learn from other students, confront ideas and exchange methodologies. You will write your own master thesis, meanwhile creating an interdisciplinary result for the challenge you all work on together. There are eleven bi-weekly sessions.

In 2024/2025 we organize five Thesis Labs. We organize the Labs together with external organisations Medical Delta, Municipality of The Hague, Glastuinbouw Nederland, Polderlab, AETHOS, NLR, Collins Aerospace, and more!

See more information on the LDE Centre for Sustainability website.

Admission requirements

This is an extracurricular programme for master thesis students. Students will be selected based
on their motivation.

Please see the conditions for enrollment 2024-2025 on the LDE Centre for Sustainability website.

Registration process

Enrolling for 2024-2025 will be possible from September 13th up to and including October 13th (23:59) through the LDE Centre for Sustainability website.

Please note: students are not required to register through uSis. Your registration will be done centrally.

The Selection procedure is as follows:

  • We will let you know by email if you are invited to an interview.

  • We organise online interviews of 20-25 minutes at the end of October/beginning of November.

  • The interviews are conducted by the academic coordinator of the lab (an LDE researcher) and LDE Centre for Sustainability coordinator.

  • During the interviews we will discuss: * 1. Your motivation: why do you want to join the Lab? Are you ready to commit to the lab program and to the extra work it requires? Will you be an active member of the interdisciplinary lab group? 2. The assignment you’re applying for: does the assignment you’re applying for fit your curriculum? Do you already have ideas of what you would like to research in your thesis? 3. Can we make an interdisciplinary team? We are looking for a team consisting of multiple LDE master programs.

  • We will let you know if you are selected by email after the interviews.

  • If you are selected, we ask you to find a thesis supervisor (if you haven’t already found one already). We also match you with the external case holder of the thesis assignment. Together with this case holder, your thesis supervisor and us you can start finetune your thesis assignment.

  • In January, we organize a short online meeting together with all the other Lab students, to get to know each other and ask questions.

Learning goals

After completing an Interdisciplinary Thesis Lab, students will receive a certificate, and are able to

  1. Work on a societal challenge set by an external organisation and learn from the issues faced in practice by this organisation;
  2. Get a deeper understanding of the sustainability challenge and of all its aspects;
  3. Incorporate their own unique study background in other projects and exchange ideas across disciplines, make connections across wider areas of studies, and confront their ideas and ways of thinking to others and approach their topic from other perspectives. Apply this knowledge in their individual thesis and in a collaborative interdisciplinary result.

Contact

LDE_CfS@cml.leidenuniv.nl