The individual project dissertation provides the opportunity for a student to demonstrate independence and originality and to apply knowledge learnt in courses to a reasonably large problem requiring analytical and/or design and/or experimental effort. Students taking this course must work independently on a research project or an applied research project or a substantial development project, under the supervision of staff. Please see the Nature of Projects to get an idea of the broad classifications to which a proposed project belongs to.

The project demonstrates a student’s work ethic, level of initiative, determination and innovative ways of solving problems. It also tests a student’s ability to adapt to work in a research or a large scale project environment involving design and development, or take up an individually challenging problem requiring innovative solution and able to think laterally when difficulties are encountered. The project also provides scope for student to use their skill in technical project execution and management, and to think and seek solutions when difficulties are encountered, as each student is largely responsible for their own programme of work.

The project is expected to kindle interest in research in students and motivate them to undertake research work through higher studies by joining our PhD programme. The applied research work carried out in these projects has enabled some of our students to start their own start-up companies through our incubation centre or otherwise.

Continual assessment – Student is required to submit a report at the end of first semester into the project. The supervisor and main evaluator would assess on student’s performance and also on his/her competence and attitude towards the project.

On completion of the project a student is required to submit a dissertation describing the project work, and give an oral presentation before a panel of examiners, in a seminar environment.

The project work spans over a period of two semesters, with a workload of approximately 400 hours, and carries 12 units.