Student blogs

Hej hej!

As time goes by, my thesis project gets more and more intense. The workload is increasing, time is passing by fast and soon it will be time for submission! I was recently reflecting on the different projects that my classmates are doing and how each of us managed to find a suitable project of our liking.

Thus, today I wish to talk about how to find a project/lab group for your Bachelor thesis! One of my fellow DA Jie has also written a similar blog but for the Toxicology program if you wish to know more about the other programmes at KI or if you just wish to see how the thesis projects differ 🙂

Places to conduct your thesis research: 

1. Project at KI

This seems to be by far the most popular choice in all the years and all the programs at KI. Being such a vast research institution, a lot of my classmates are conducting their thesis at KI. There are many different lab groups that you can start contacting or better yet sometimes you can even approach the lecturers who are also PhD/PI’s of lab groups.

A lot of the major labs are in the new KI building Biomedicum. However, if you feel like you want to move out of the KI research environment and experience a new one, some of my friends are working in labs that have collaborations in KTH or Stockholm University. Some are even carrying out their research in Linköping! The choices are endless, one only has to put in time and effort in narrowing down what they want to do and start emailing!

2. Exchange program (Erasmus)

A majority of my classmates are currently carrying out their research in Singapore, Sydney, Edinburgh, Munich, Barcelona and many different places! These projects are based on an exchange agreement between KI and the various international universities. If you feel like you wish to move out of Stockholm for a little while and experience an international university lab setting this is the perfect option for you!

As you know I am carrying out my research in a lab in Mannheim but the agreement is between Heidelberg University and KI. The process for applying for an exchange is longer (as you can read from my previous blogs) as it involves a few extra steps such as hunting for accommodation, fixing health insurance and what not! However, in terms of finding a lab group it is very very important to start early. Start researching the different research departments in the university and start emailing!

3. Free mover

As per my knowledge, I know of two people in my class who are free movers. Basically, when you are a free mover you have to arrange for everything right from accommodation to finding a lab to making an agreement with the university you wish to go to yourself! It is quite difficult but many universities welcome exchange students like these! One of my classmate is currently in Munich and the other is in Boston carrying out their research as free movers.

All in all, it is very important to start early such as in Semester 5 of the programme to look for potential supervisors at least in KI. This is because in case you do not get accepted for the exchange or as a free mover you can carry out research at KI! Additionally, if there are problems later on such as after you have agreed to carry out research at an exchange university for example, the programme coordinator and course director need to be informed. This is so that they can help us in finding another lab asap so we do not fall behind.

If there are any problems during your project and you can not complete the project on time, once again you can inform the programme and course director and they can help prolong the thesis submission for that student. However, this is only applicable, I believe, in extreme situations!

I will follow up with another blog about my time here in Mannheim!

That’s all for now!

See you around.

Nishi

nishi.dave@stud.ki.se