ODE Literature Research

This course serves as preparation for your master graduation project (OE54035). You are expected to do a review of the available literature for your intended topic of graduation, which result in the framework for your research. The report should consist of the following components:

• A background description, or a description of the field.

• A general problem statement. Why further research for this field is needed?

• A description of the method of literature retrieval. What search engines did you use? What search strings and how did you define these? How many publications did you find and how many were useful?

• An overview of the available relevant literature. What research have been done? What problems have been considered? What are the recent developments? Other sources you could use are interviews, discussions with an expert panel, simple benchmark calculations etc.

• A specific research objective, research question or hypothesis. What should be the outcome of your research?

• A description of your research approach. How do you intend to reach your objective?

For your literature research you should make use of recognized scientific sources. Correct, consistent and complete referencing in accordance with an accepted academic style is expected. It is possible to use oral sources, for instance by means of expert interviews. In this case, written documentations of the interview should be added as an appendix to the literature review. Online search engines and generative AI tools can be helpful in collecting information and improving your writing style. Using such tools does not take away your responsibility for the content of your report.

A summary of your literature review can serve as the introduction of your graduation report.

The procedure to find a topic for your literature review and graduation is as follows:

- Contact the professor, or other academic staff members, who works on a topic of your interest to see if there is a project available that you might like. TU Delft is frequently contacted by problem owners for such projects, but this is not guaranteed. In a discussion you can both find out what subject interests you and if there is a project available that relates to that subject. In most cases there is a rough problem description available of about half a page (A4). If not, most academic staff members can tell you where to search or who to contact to help find a suitable project.
- Another option is to contact a problem owner (company/PhD student/Staff Member) yourself (e.g. through your own network). If they agree to take you as a graduation student on a subject you find interesting, you should write a short description of about half a page (A4) to discuss with the specialization prof. This is usually sufficient to check if a problem is a viable subject to graduate on.
- Based on the initial description and discussions with all involved parties, you should extend the description to a more detailed Plan of Approach that ensures that both you and your supervisory team agree on what you will do. If all parties agree with your Plan of Approach the initial phase is concluded and it is time to set the date for a kick-off meeting. Usually at this point, you should also be assigned a daily supervisor (the problem owner) and an academic supervisor (TU Delft).

It is advised to start about 3 months in advance with these preparations.