Work Placement (Internship)

For students who started the programme in 2023-2024 or earlier, the old rules apply with this internship of 18ec. Students starting the programme in 2024 or later take AP3912.

You will be working full-time in a non-academic organization for a period of 3 months. Longer internships are not recommended. Your Applied Physics knowledge is necessary for the project.

The industrial internship is guided by an internal (TU Delft, Applied Sciences) and an external (company) supervisor.

During the industrial internship you are expected to get to know the organization. To do so, you need to start gathering information about the organization of your choice prior to the start and make a list of questions you would like to have answered. During the internship you need to make time to get acquainted with other departments within the organization and interview, for example, a number of people in different parts of the organization.

IMPORTANT:

• It is desirable for the internship to have a Physics content. However, in some cases it may be acceptable if this component is lacking, provided that the work requires problem solving or design skills for a physicist.

• The criteria formulated above do not exclude activities in a startup company (maybe initiated by the student) to be accepted as internships. The criterion is that there should be a sufficiently experienced internship supervisor, with a real involvement in the work, to be able to act as such.

• In order to meet the learning objectives, it is necessary that you work at least 50% of the time on location at the company/organization. Internships that are done completely remotely are not allowed.

• The internship is in principle intended as a way for students to broaden their awareness of working environments outside academia. This excludes certain organizations. For a list of allowed/not allowed options, see below.

• For very good students who aspire a career in academia, a possibility for an academic internship is through a grant from the Justus and Louise van Effen fund, which is restricted to very good students and which provides funding for internships at top-20 engineering universities only. For more information, see https://www.tudelft.nl/en/student/my-study-me/education/study-abroad/orientation/financial-support/justus-louise-van-effen-research-grant

The student is responsible for finding an internship position. The Internship Office TNW only has an assisting, coordinating and administrative role. We therefore advice to start looking for an internship well in advance. Students are advised to start the orientation process at least 6 months in advance if planning to stay in the Netherlands, and at least 9 months if planning to go abroad.

Allowed: Business, physics content; TNO (or foreign counterparts such as Fraunhofer Gesellschaft); ECN; KNMI; NFI; patent office; non-academic hospital; consultancy (provided technical/quantitative); financial analysis (provided strong quantitative).

Not allowed: university, Dutch or abroad (except with van Effen grant, see above); NWO institute (such as Amolf, NIKHEF, DIFFER) and foreign equivalents (such as Max Planck Institut, ICFO); Academic hospital (unless practical work is done similar to an internship that could be done in a 'normal' hospital, and not in combination with a thesis project in a (different) academic hospital); Nationale Denktank.
If the Board of Examiners has given permission to do the thesis project outside the university, the internship can not be done at the same organization as the thesis project.

The mark for the internship is awarded by the two supervisors. The mark is based on a series of criteria, including an individual report of the student, in which the experiences concerning the main goals, including the experience in the working environment are discussed.

For the assessment you need to submit two reports:

• A scientific report using the format and guidelines of the company for your TU Delft supervisor and company supervisor

• An evaluation report for the internship office

Two weeks before the end of your internship, the Internship Office TNW will send your company supervisor and TU Delft supervisor the internship review form.

Your company supervisor needs to assess your internship at the end of your internship period and send his review form to the TU Delft supervisor. Your TU Delft supervisor needs to assess your internship within two weeks after the end of your internship and give a mark. The TU Delft supervisor will then send the assessment form (including the company supervisor review form) to the Internship Office TNW.

In principle, the mark awarded by the company supervisor counts for 2/3 towards the final mark; that of the TU Delft supervisor for 1/3. The TU Delft supervisor can overrule this if he/she has good reasons for this, which should be communicated to the student and the internship office.

The Internship Grading Scheme will be used as a guideline to determine the mark. Please consult the Internship Office TNW Brightspace for the detailed grading scheme.

Your mark will be processed as soon as the Internship Office TNW has received:

• The review form with an original signature from both supervisors. Your supervisors can get access to the forms by sending an email to InternshipOffice-TNW@tudelft.nl.

• A digital copy of both reports.

If a report is submitted to the internship office more than one month after the registered end date of the internship without good reason, 1 point may be deducted from the grade for each month of delay.

When the nature of the project requires so, it is possible to censor parts of the report. Details like numbers and names may be left out of the report (or striked through), for example, as long as the report represents the achievements of the project and the TU Delft supervisor is able to assess the internship.

The assessment of AP3911 internships starting after 30 June 2026 proceeds differently. Refer to the assessment procedure stated under AP3912 for this.