In your studies you may include an intership within the core subject area.

1. You must provide a Prof. of the department willing to act as a supervisor. When looking for this Prof. please go by the topic/field of the company ideally matching the research field of the Prof.
2. It must be done in a German company. In case of large companies and upon request to the examination board it may also be done at a European branch. Please note that anyway point [1] must be fulfilled.
3. Duration is defined as “at least 10 weeks”. This means it can be longer, of course, but not shorter, of course.
4. Should a company ask for a letter stating that this internship is part of curriculum please forward the text asking for it to Master-MatEng@rwth-aachen.de.

Please note that work experience from the time before your studys at RWTH may not be recognized.

Please note that the intership must ce carried out in industry. Internships in research facilities are not acknowledged. In this case you may opt for a mini thesis instead.

How to register/get the credit points:

• No registration prior to the internship required.
• You find a supervising Professor of our department.
• The supervisor signs the registration form (multipurpose form from www.muw.rwth-aachen.de).
• You do the internship.
• Afterwards, you make an appointment with your supervisor for an oral presentation (colloquium).
• The supervisor confirms the internship and the colloquium on the form above and sends it to ZPA. The internship is not graded, just acknowledged.
• The Examination Board is not involved.

The industrial internship is listed in the core selection field of the curriculum. In consequence, if you opt for an internship it becomes a mandatory part of your curriculum. The proof is to be found in the examination rules in the RWTH OFficial Announcements. Please note that in accordance with the rules a maximum duration of the internship ist not defined. It has to be a minimum of 10 weeks but may also take 6 months or even longer. In case a company asks for a confirmation by letter please forward the request to master.mateng@rwth-aachen.de. Should the company request a definition of the maximum duration this may not be issued (see above). In this case you will have to find an alternative company.

A potential internship host company may ask for confidentiality of content of the internship. This can be achieved by a non-disclosure agreemnet between the company and the supervizing institute/Prof. However, that means that the Prof. significantly narrows down his research field without a proper scientific research cooperation on the basis of a student´s work. This may happen but is highly unlikely. Since there is no report and no publication but only a certificate of the company to be issued declaring the duration and the rough content of the internship there is no need for confidentiality regulations. Even the presentation at the supervizing Prof.´s institute may be carried out exclusively with the Prof. alone. Thus, there is no need for any type of regulations. Should the company insist then this internship would turn impossible and students need to opt for any other subject from the core selection catalogue or for a min thesis. For conidentiality in theses see here.