The student must have sufficient understanding of and knowledge about the chosen specialization track of the Master’s program in Materiomics. The examination committee assesses on a case-by-case basis whether the student is sufficiently prepared to take up the master's thesis. 

This course unit takes up the entire academic year (semester 1 + semester 2).

The master's thesis will be conducted in a university research group within UHasselt. The work carried out within the master's thesis is situated within Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) 1–4. This includes fundamental scientific research and concept exploration (TRL 1–2), proof-of-concept development and validation (TRL 3), and early-stage laboratory validation of technologies or materials (TRL 4). The emphasis is therefore on scientific innovation, understanding, and feasibility rather than on industrial deployment or commercialization.

The topic of the master's thesis concerns a materiomics-related problem that can only be solved through the integration of various perspectives and/or disciplines that the student learned during the program. The focus here is on innovation and development of new materials linked to one of the four research pillars of the program, under the guidance of the supervisor(s). Master's thesis topics are collected from potential supervisors during the previous academic year. Sufficient topics are provided for each specialization pillar. During the same period, the different pillars are presented to the students. Then, the topics are made available to the students and the students can contact the promoters if they wish to ask for more information. Afterwards, the students provide a motivated choice, with two alternative options. The distribution of the topics is done on the basis of these motivations by a master's thesis committee (led by the coordinator of the master's thesis, at least 1 representative per pillar).

The master's thesis is supervised by a supervision team consisting of a supervisor and a daily supervisor (mentor). It is strongly recommended that in addition to a supervisor, the master's thesis be supervised by a co-supervisor from another discipline. The (co-)supervisors are professors (ZAP). Daily supervision can be followed up by doctoral or postdoctoral researchers. The student reports at regular intervals to the daily supervisor, to the promoter and in the group meeting of the promoter's research group. This may also involve the co-supervisor. The student is expected to receive at least 1 intermediate feedback on his/her work.

The master's thesis describes the state of the art, research question/hypothesis, experimental or computational methods and details, results, discussion and conclusions, as well as references. The thesis is submitted via student file (plagiarism check) and via email.

The final product is presented by the student during an oral defense before the master's thesis jury, considering an interdisciplinary target audience. The jury consists of promoters, co-promoters, colleagues in the relevant research institution, ... The audience also includes fellow students, university researchers, etc.