Public presentation

No later than the end of your first year of study, you will present your thesis project to the doctorate advisory committee for your thesis area at a presentation open to all staff and students at the university. Therefore you must submit an electronic thesis proposal acceptance form (DISS1) incl. research proposal via your Campus-account to the Office of Academic Affairs by the relevant deadline. Please note that submissions are only possible after the approval of supervisors and mentors. Thus you should fill in your electronic thesis proposal acceptance form not less than 14 days before the deadline, to give your supervisor and mentor the necessary time to approve of it. The rector of studies checks your application and forwards it to the appropriate doctorate advisory committee, if it fullfils all necessary requirements.

As part of the application, you select one of the presentation dates proposed by the doctorate advisory committee. After your application has been checked, the doctorate advisory committee invites you to present your thesis and notifies university staff and students accordingly. After the presentation and discussion of your thesis project, the doctorate advisory committee provides its opinion on your project and sends it to the rector of studies, who then makes the final decision on your application.

Doctorate advisory committees provide advice to the rector of studies, programme directors, students and supervisors. Doctorate advisory committees are appointed by the rector of studies on the guidance of the relevant curricular commission and faculty conference(s) for a term of two years.

If your thesis project is approved, its status in the Student Portal is updated to ‘approved’. You can also view your approved thesis project and exposé in the portal.

Please take note of the deadlines and dates set by the responsible doctorate advisory committee.

Students of technical sciences, natural sciences and social and economic sciences as well as students in law have to submit their Doctoral Thesis Agreement (DISS2) along with the Application for the Approval of the Doctoral Thesis Project (DISS1) to be admitted to present the doctoral thesis project to the doctorate advisory committee.

Here you can find an up-to-date summary of…

Doctorate advisory committees (term of office 2019 – 2022)

Presentation dates for the doctoral thesis proposal (SS 2022)

Thesis proposal and presentations: Doctorate in Social Sciences and Economics

Information on submitting and presenting the thesis project for doctoral students in Social Sciences and Economics

During the first year, the thesis exposé must be presented to the doctorate advisory committee for the thesis field at a presentation open to all staff and students at the university.

Process

The thesis proposal acceptance form (DISS1) incl. research proposal and the thesis agreement (DISS2) must be submitted electronically via the Student Portal prior to your presentation. Please note that your electronic application must be submitted before the set registration deadline.

Ad thesis agreement:

a) Proof of coursework: As part of your doctoral programme, you must complete coursework amounting to between 24 and 80 ECTS credits. Presentations at international conferences, workshops, teaching activities and publications can all count towards these credits as long as they are related to your thesis. You must complete at least one course in the Faculty of Management and Economics at AAU. The accepted proof of achievement is to be agreed with your supervisor in your thesis agreement.

b) The research proposal must be submitted in written form and shall contain between 8 and 16 pages. The exposé must cover the status of research, objectives, methodology and a schedule.

The open presentation consists of two parts:

Presentation of your exposé (duration: max. 20 minutes)
Open discussion with the doctorate advisory committee

Following the presentation, the doctorate advisory committee approves the thesis project or provides a reason for rejecting it. After the presentation, the doctorate advisory committee sends the DISS1 form to the Office of Academic Affairs for approval. This form is accompanied by the DISS2 thesis agreement, which is prepared with your supervisor. The Office of Academic Affairs makes the decision to approve or reject the application.

Thesis proposal and presentations: Doctorate in Technical Sciences

Information for submission and presentation of the dissertation proposal for the thesis areas Informatics, Information and Communications Engineering and Technical Mathematics

The dissertation proposal must be presented in a university public presentation in front of the responsible doctoral advisory committee within the first year of study. The doctoral advisory committee recommends presentation of the dissertation proposal only if research problem, research questions, goals and expected innovation can be clearly addressed.

The current presentation dates and submission deadlines can be found at deadlines and dates.

Submission

You must submit the thesis proposal acceptance form (DISS1) including the research proposal (exposé) and the chosen presentation date as well as the thesis agreement (DISS2) electronically via the study portal in due time. Please note that submissions after the specified deadline cannot be considered.

The exposé must include the current state of the art, the objectives, the planned research methods and the work plan of the proposed dissertation. It should have a length of 3-5 DIN A4 pages.

The abstract (about 250 words) should comprehensively describe the proposed dissertation topic for the members of the Faculty of Technical Sciences.

Thesis agreement (DISS2)

The doctoral program in technical sciences requires coursework (examinations and other activities) of at least 16 ECTS and at most 32 ECTS credits.

The following coursework can be allocated to examinations (§3 2a):

– subject-related courses that are not part of a bachelor‘s degree programm,

– courses for doctoral degree programmes,

– privatissima and

– seminars.

At least 14 ECTS credits must be included in the thesis agreement for examinations.

The following coursework can be allocated to other activities (§3 2b) provided that they relate to the topic of the dissertation:

– summer schools,

– publications,

– own teaching activities, and

– activities completed at other universities.

At least 2 ECTS credits must be included in the thesis agreement for other activities.

Certificates of achievement of other activities must be defined with the supervising and advising persons in the thesis agreement. For publications, the thematic relevance to the dissertation must be documented with the help of keywords or exemplarily enlisted publication media. Furthermore, the type of publication and the desired quality indicator must be specified.

The following table gives some examples of a suitable description for publications:

No	Activity	Certificate	ECTS credits
1	Conference paper of cat. I, e.g., at ICRA, IROS or RSS	Publication	2
2	Journal paper of at least cat. II on „multi-robot networking“	Acceptance notification	4
3	Conference paper at IROS (cat. I)	https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2018.8594493	2

Publications that are part of a publication-based (cumulative) doctoral thesis cannot be included in the doctoral thesis agreement.

At most 12 ECTS credits can be allocated to seminars and privatissima, and at most 2 ECTS credits can be allocated to summer schools. At least 1 seminar must be included in the thesis agreement.

If the dissertation is part of a thematic doctoral program, the coursework must be stated in accordance with the requirements of the thematic doctoral program.

Presentation

The duration of the dissertation proposal presentation should be 15 minutes. The presentation should discuss the relevant state of research, the goals and research questions as well as the (planned) methods of the dissertation proposal. The presentation will be followed by a 5-minute discussion.

Supervisors and advisors should attend the presentations and can comment on the dissertation proposal in the non-public part of the doctoral advisory committee meeting.

Additional Informationen

– Information about doctoral degree programs at University of Klagenfurt

– Guidelines issued by the rector of studies on coursework to be completed in doctoral programmes

– Guidelines issued by the rector of studies on cumulative doctoral theses

Contact

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Bernhard Rinner (bernhard [dot] rinner [at] aau [dot] at)

Heidelies Aschbacher (heidelies [dot] aschbacher [at] aau [dot] at)

Thesis proposal and presentations: Doctorate in Natural Sciences

Information sheet of the Doctorate Advisory Committee Dr. rer. nat. at the University of Klagenfurt on submission & presentation of the doctoral thesis proposal (PDF)