Dissertation selection, agreements and contract

After proposals are accepted and published, the process of matching students to proposals takes place. In this process:

• Students express their interest in the published proposals.
• Students are encouraged to contact proponents to learn more about the proposals.
• Proponents will have access to the list of students interested in their proposals.
• Proponents are encouraged to contact the students to accelerate the agreement process.
• As soon as an agreement with a student and supervisor is reached, all parties should confirm it to the coordination using the agreement process.
• If an external organization is involved, a contract needs to be signed by the student, the proponent organization, and FEUP (See below for details about the contract signing process).
• After this process, proponent, supervisor and student should arrange an initial meeting to bootstrap the dissertation work, ideally before the end of July.

Students expression of interest

This takes place in the M.EIC dissertations platform. Detailed information available there at the appropriate period.

Agreements

This also takes place in the M.EIC dissertations platform. Detailed information available there at the appropriate period.

Regarding contracts with external organizations

When an external organization is involved in the dissertation work, a written contract must be drawn up between the student, the organization and FEUP (a sample of the contract is available in the documentation page)

The parties must supply the necessary information to fill the contract, so that the secretariat can produce the final document and distribute it for signing. When the contract is finalized, there are two options for signing it:

• Digital signatures (preferred): a single PDF document is generated and signed by all parties in the following order:

  1. Student and supervisor;
  2. Director of M.EIC;
  3. Organization representative and tutor;
  4. Vice-President of the Scientific Council of FEUP.

  The contract will circulate by e-mail between the parties. When fully signed, it will be e-mailed to the student, who will, in turn, send it to the external organization for archive and future reference.

  NOTE: only digital signatures (with citizen card or digital mobile key) shall be deemed valid. Any contract with scanned signatures will be considered invalid.

• Manual signatures: three original copies of the contract must be printed and signed by all parties in the same order indicated above. All pages of the three copies must be initialed, except for the last one which must have full signatures.

  When all copies are fully signed, one will remain at FEUP and the student will be contacted to pick-up the other two copies (one for the student and the other for the external organization).

  In exceptional and dully substantiated cases, the external organization may be the last party to sign. In such cases, the contract must be printed out and manually signed.