Each year, the UCL IEEE Student Branch, composed of ICTEAM PhD students and supported by both the IEEE and the ICTEAM, organizes a contest for rewarding the best master’s theses in its fields of interest. The goals of the contest are twofold:
- First, to reward outstanding works from both technical and presentation-wise perspectives. To this end, a jury of researchers reads the abstracts, attends the master thesis presentations and interviews the participants. The three best candidates will receive a monetary reward.
- Second, to recommend potential candidates for an international contest: the IEEE Region 8 Student Paper Contest. IEEE’s Region 8 spans Europe, Africa and the Middle-East. We have had several successes at this Student Paper Contest, reaching the top 3 in previous years. More info can be found here.
For more information about the contest, please check the rules below. To register, please fill in the form below.
Contest rules
1. Awards
A jury of researchers selects a first, second and third prize based on the public defense of the master’s thesis, an abstract and an interview (more details below).
A monetary reward of 500 EUR will be split amongst the three finalists (250/150/100), and an award certificate is granted to each finalist during the Louvain School of Engineering (EPL) graduation ceremony. The finalist most likely to succeed in the IEEE Region 8 SPC contest will be offered the opportunity to participate to SPC2021.
2. Eligibility
Students participating in the contest need to satisfy the following criteria:
- Their master’s thesis must be defended in June 2020 in the Université catholique de Louvain.
- They must be students of the Louvain School of Engineering (EPL).
- At least one of the members of the master’s thesis comity (advisers or jury) should be part of the ICTEAM. A list of all ICTEAM members is available at https://uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/icteam/people.html . Nevertheless, if you believe your master’s thesis subject corresponds to the scope of the IEEE but no member of your comity belongs to the ICTEAM, feel free to contact us.
3. Process
The contest proceeds as follows:
- First, students should subscribe through the form below. Subscription are closed on June 15th, 2020.
- Students should send us the abstract of their master’s thesis, written in English, by e-mail at the address “celine.gerard@uclouvain.be”. The e-mail should have as object “[IEEE BMTA 2020 Abstract] Surname – Name”. The deadline is June 17th, 2020. The abstract must be a one page pdf file.
- We will appoint researcher volunteers to attend to the students’ public defences. There is no need to adapt anything for the contest (language, format, etc.). However, the language you choose for your presentation when you register to the contest must not change!
- A short interview will take place right after the defense. In case the interview needs to be delayed, we will contact you for an appointment.