Bachelor and Master Theses

We regularly offer proposals for bachelor and master thesis projects in all areas across our research activities and related subjects, which cover most topics in Virtual Reality and (Immersive) Visualization. The thesis topics are usually specified in cooperation with one of our research assistants or PostDocs and/or Prof. Kuhlen taking into account your individual interests and previous knowledge as well as our current research agenda (e.g. in terms of ongoing academic or industrial cooperations).

Prerequisites

In order to guarantee a successful completion of the thesis, we usually expect you to have

taken the "Basic Techniques in Computer Graphics" lecture by Prof. Kobbelt if you are a bachelor student
taken at least one of our “Virtual Reality” lectures or our lab course if you are a master student
a good working knowledge of C++ or C#
some experience in the Unreal or Unity game engine
or an equivalent qualification.

Request for Supervision

If you are interested in writing your thesis with us, you should inform yourself about our recent research topics first. Watch our research and theses (examples of theses in progress or finished) sections as well as a (non-complete) list of currently open theses below.

In case you are interested in one of these fields or topics, please send an appropriate request directly to office@vr.rwth-aachen.de via E-Mail.

Your request should at least include the following information:

Thematic interests (and hint to open thesis if applicable)
Possibly more concrete suggestions for topics
Motivation: Why do you want to write your thesis with us?
Any previous experience and knowledge (programming skills, relevant software skills, finished projects, relevant attended courses, internships or the like)
Desired earliest and latest start date
Overview of grades

Note, that we only have limited capacity for supervision of theses. Thus, it is inevitable to apply on time and flexibility concerning the start date can increase the chance of supervision. Furthermore, it is advantageous if you already have a brief idea for the topic or at least name concrete research interests of yours. If no capacities are available in the certain area(s), we will automatically check capacities in related areas. Thus, specifying the topic you want to work on, does not reduce the chance of an admission for our part.

Master Thesis: Immersive Surface Boxplots - Exploring Uncertainty of Scientific Data in VR

Scientific data is the basis for the analysis of complex physical phenomena such as meteorological or biological processes. However, while often ignored, models and measurements typically incorporate uncertainties. Visualizing such uncertainties is crucial for domain experts to truly understand these phenomena, as well as gain a sense of trust for the reliability of the data. While approaches exist, that help communicate such uncertainties in ensembles, such as Surface Boxplots (Genton et al. 2014), these are typically made for classic desktop environments. In this thesis, we want to explore, how the additional dimensions provided by immersive displays could be used to provide an alternative, more interactive and intuitive encoding of uncertainties in 2D scalar field ensembles. This includes designing and implementing an immersive application and evaluating the solution in an appropriate user or expert study. Further details will be discussed in a meeting.

Contact:
Dr. Tim Gerrits