How can a company or organization collaborate with the lab?

These are the typical ways to work with us:

• You host an MSc student intern from TU Delft for a 10 week engineering internship.
• You sponsor a ~8 month MSc graduation project. "Sponsoring" entails providing a research problem and ideally co-supervision and access to your resources.
• You (co-)sponsor a PhD (4 years, ~65k/yr) or postdoc (1-3 years, ~75k/yr) for a long term research project. This would typically be tied to a grant application to find co-funding, see below.
• You contribute in-kind or in-cash donations for research grant funding (many tech research grants require co-financing from companies) and be partners in the subsequent project which would fund PhD, Postdoc, and MSc projects.
• We provide consulting for a fee paid to TU Delft.
• We provide pro bono consulting. This is typically minor Q & A as time and interest permits.

MSc Internship

3mE students are required to do an internship worth 15 ECs [*] (~400 hours, 10 weeks full time) as part of the MSc program. The students should be tasked with engineering work that ideally aligns with their MSc track, supervised by a company representative, and integrated into the company/organization for experience working with others in a professional setting. The internship work should be distinct from any graduation project work and typically the TU Delft supervisor is not involved.

The student cannot be employed by the company/organization but may be offered a student stipend. Dutch companies typically offer 250-350 EUR per month plus transportation reimbursements, but this is not a requirement.

A TU Delft supervisor (professor) approves the internship and associated project and assesses a student written report at the end of the internship for a pass/fail grade for the 15 ECs. The report will be read and stored by the TU Delft supervisor(s).

The sponsoring company/organization and student should arrange any agreements between themselves for intellectual property rights and/or non-disclosure associated with the student's work. Proprietary information should be excluded from the student's proposal form and their report.

MSc Graduation Project (Literature Study + Research or Design Thesis)

3mE students are required to do a literature study worth 10 ECs (~270 hours, 7 weeks) and an MSc thesis project worth 35 ECs (~945 hours, 24 weeks). These two things are typically, and ideally, aligned on the same topic. This research or design oriented engineering work should be driven by the student under the primary supervision of the TU Delft supervisor(s).

Companies and organizations can sponsor a graduation project. At the minimum, you provide a research or design problem for the student to work on under the supervision of TU Delft supervisor(s). But you can also provide co-supervision and access to company resources. Providing the later makes for a more enriching experience. If the project requires resources that TU Delft cannot provide, the company is expected to provide those resources (travel costs, equipment, etc.).

The company/organization, student, and TU Delft must agree to TU Delft's standard agreement for graduation projects (see below). You may add additional terms to the agreement that do not invalidate the standard terms. Any additions will be reviewed by TU Delft's contract specialists.

Resources

All of the up-to-date 3mE MSc forms and documents are found on this webpage:

https://www.tudelft.nl/en/student/faculties/3me-student-portal/education/related/student-forms

There are forms and documents relevant to companies and organizations in the "MSc forms" and "Internships" sections. In particular:

Guidelines internship contracts for 3mE students

Guidelines for the student to read when making agreements with a company.

Guideline for Internship and/or Graduation aggreements (Companies)

Guidelines for companies to read to understand TU Delft's terms.

Graduation agreement at a company (english)

This document and its associated appendix is the base 3-party agreement among the company/organization, student, and TU Delft. See the forms website for Dutch language versions.

Footnotes