Who must prepare and approve the project contract?

The project contract is drawn up by you and your future supervisor.

The project contract must be completed by you and approved by your supervisor and your education officer via the contract generator.

Guidance on how to complete a thesis contract

You will find the instructions below:

Guidance for drawing up a contract for a project in Molecular Biology or Molecular Medicine

Guidance plan for (name)

Date: (date of latest version of guidance plan)

Working title of the project: (provisional title)

Project description/problem formulation (approx. ½ page):

• Must contain a description of the project's aim and any hypothesis(es)
• Must contain a short section with the background of the project (why it is interesting to investigate). Preferably with scientific references.
• Must contain a brief description of methods/data sources.

Plan for guidance:

• If there are several supervisors on the project, there should be a clarification of the division of roles between the main supervisor and the project supervisor(s) in the planning phase, when carrying out experiments and/or analysis work and in the writing phase. State who has primary responsibility for the professional content of the project?
• If the supervisor or others are to participate actively in the practical work, this should be agreed in advance.
• If the project is distributed over several locations (AU locations and/or external partners), there should be a plan for where you are located in the individual phases of the project.
• Can also contain a description of how the guidance will take place (number/frequency of meetings, etc.).
• May contain a description of the association with a research section. Talk to your supervisor about whether you are expected to participate in section meetings,  journal club, seminars with other thesis students in the section or other activities?

Time schedule: Must contain indication of time periods for the individual phases of the project (see proposal below):

o (Period): Reading background material

o (Period): Planning of experimental work

o (Period): Data collection (from literature/databases/laboratory)

o (Period): Data analysis

o (Period): Writing phase

o (Period): Compilation

o (Date): First text draft for thesis report

o (Date): Final submission

The submission date, which must be specified in the contract, is the deadline for submission of your report in the Digital Exam. For projects starting on 1 September, the report must be submitted no later than 15 January at 13:00, and with start-up on 1 February, no later than 15 June at 13:00.

Project-specific competencies:

• A list of competencies that are expected to be achieved during the project period in addition to the formal learning objectives described in the course description for the thesis project can be included.
• Remember to check whether you are on the right track to meet the formal learning objectives (see the course description in the course catalogue) and possibly specific competencies during your project work.

Suggestions for competences that can be built up during the project process:

• Knowledge of the software programme (name) and independently able to (task) …
• In-depth/peripheral knowledge of (method) and being able to evaluate ... in relation to...
• Being able to use (apparatus) independently/under guidance for the analysis of...

Cooperation with company/organisation

Remember to fill in the fields in the contract generator regarding company, if you are doing your project in collaboration with an organisation, association, company or other.