List of Institutions/Companies suitable for External Masterthesis (Externe Abschlussarbeit)

    As most of you might be already aware, it is quite difficult to either convince the Employer or Professors from most of the institutes to approve the External Thesis opportunity because of the rules set up by the university related to the Blocking notice (Sperrvermerk). In fact, some of you had to decline an interesting opportunity just because the Professor, the University and the Employer could not come to an agreement regarding what all can be included in the final report.

    Therefore, I wanted to create a thread where people who have successfully completed(or currently doing) an External Thesis could share the Employer Name along with the Department Name (who supervised their Thesis) so as to help others make an informed decision while applying for External Thesis. It would also be nice if people share the experiences where they received an offer from the Employer but couldn't accept it because of Professors not willing to supervise/issues related to Sperrrvermerk.

    First of all, I think it's a good idea. Since I did my master's thesis together with Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart, I also had to deal with the blocking notice. The work was supervised by Prof. Rinderknecht (IMS).

    But personally, I think that finding a supervising professor and a research assistant within the department depends mainly on the topic of the thesis and the individual circumstances.

    There is no certainty that a professor who has accepted an external thesis in the past will accept other external theses in the future.

    In my case, for example, it was quite easy because my topic was mainly a methodology development and independent of future products of the OEM. Therefore, I did not need a blocking notice.

    But let's say that the same OEM offers a thesis to someone else as part of the series development of the next engine or transmission generation, then the OEM will very likely require a blocking notice which won't be accepted by the department.

    The only advice I can give to everyone is to get all the parties (company, professor and reasearch associate) to talk about the possible topic together and as early as possible.

    • Neu

    I also had a bit of a headache around the blocking notice for my bachelor's thesis, which was external at DB Fernverkehr and advised by IAD at the university. The company required a blocking notice, which the university refused to give.

    We ended up finding a workaround with the company; according to APB § 23 (8), the MechCenter can't release submitted theses to anybody except for the examination committee without the explicit permission of the author (we confirmed this with the MechCenter at the time). In light of that, the company allowed for the thesis to be submitted without a blocking notice (after screening the content), with the agreement that I would not share any of the company-internal information collected as part of the project or approve the release of the thesis by the MechCenter without consulting them first.

    That workaround was only approved after a lot of back-and-forth with the company and the university. In general, I would only recommend going external if it's clear at the beginning that no blocking notice will be required; in my case, the institute had no problem with a blocking notice, but we were told by the university that a Sperrvermerk would only be granted in case of a patent application.

    • Neu

    Thanks for the answer evamvid and for resurfacing this thread. Now that I’ve also completed my (external) Thesis, I will also share my experience.

    I wrote my Master’s Thesis at DLR Stuttgart and STFS acted as the supervising institute from the university side. As expected, DLR advised against making the report public. After a bit of back and forth, I managed to convince them that TUbama is primarily an archiving platform and the report would be only accessible to the examiner. Surprisingly, I did not receive any kind of pushback from either DLR or STFS and I must say that the process went mostly smooth.

    Hope this helps anyone seeking an external Thesis, make sure to quote APB § 23 (8) while explaining the situation to your employer.