IPP Home Regulations Course List Detailed Schedule

Program Structure and Regulations

Program Requirements

The program is structured over 2 years, M1 and M2. During the first year (M1) the students acquire the basic competencies and concepts to work in the area of CPS, while in the second year (M2) the students should specialize their knowledge and interest to a specific research area (e.g., formal methods, real-time systems, robotics). The courses are classified as Core CPS, Elective CPS, and Optional. The program imposes the following requirements:

  • For the M1, a student must acquire 60 ECTS during the first year, where:
    • the students must take all the Core CPS courses;
    • exactly 30 ECTS from the research projects (15 ECTS for each project) or the M1 internship (30 ECTS);
    • the remaining ECTS can be from any Optional course.
  • For the M2, a student must acquire 60 ECTS where:
    • the students take all the Elective CPS courses;
    • exactly 30 ECTS are from the compulsory M2 internship.
    • the remaining ECTS can be from any Optional and Core CPS (if the student joined the M2 from another program) courses.

Study Plan

Each student must prepare a study plan for the next academic year and send the plan to the responsible of the master track. The responsible of the master program will provide feedback or approve the study plan. For example, a study plan will not be approved if it does not respect the program requirement.

Steps to construct and validate validate your study plan:

  • Consult the page of the courses and their schedule and prepare the list of courses you want to follow, according to the program requirements.
  • Send an email to Sergio Mover with subject IPP CPS study plan.
  • You will receive an answer via email, either validating your study plan or pointing out the courses that should be changed. In the second case you will be required to fix your study plan.

The students can request to change the study plan later in the year, getting in contact with the responsible of the master track and motivating the change in the plan. The change to the plan must be validated before becoming definitive.

Research Projects (M1)

Goal: Each research project is a long projects that amounts to 15 ECTS credits and will take place in one of the IPP laboratories: Laboratoire d’Informatique de l’École Polytechnique (LIX), Laboratoire de Traitement et Communication de l’Information (LTCI), and Computer Science and Systems Engineering Laboratory (U2IS). The goal of the projects is to investigate a research problem in one of the research topics of interest for the CPS track and start to learn how to perform research.

Organization: Each research project will be organized in a specific IP Paris lab and the student will work with an advisor from the research lab that will guide the student during the project. The project can consist of experimental and theoretical work. The student must produce a report of his research project summarizing his contributions.

Timings: The students are supposed to complete 2 research projects during their M1.
The first research project must be scheduled between September and mid February, the second research project will be scheduled between mid February and mid June.
For each project, the student will have to spend an equivalent of 20 days in the research lab (this roughly correspond to spend a full day in the lab every week). The student can schedule the days he spend in the lab in agreement with his advisor.

Finding a research project: Each student is responsible to find and discuss a research project with the professors of the involved research labs.

M1 and M2 Internship

Goal: The internship allows a student to work in depth on a project related to the CPS master track thematic, either in in the context of a research (e.g., in a research lab or an university) or industrial (e.g., in a company). The internship will help the student to gain further experience and expand his network, to either find a job or a Ph.D. position after the completion of the master program.

Timings: M2 internships should last at least 5 months long, while M1 internships should last at least 3 months. In any case, internships must be carried out between March to August .The internship must finish (and defended) before the end of the academic year.

Where: The student can have an internship either in a research lab (e.g., the IP Paris research labs) or in a company, in France or abroad. We will share the internship offer we receive from our partners (both industrial and academic) but each student is responsible to find the internship.

Formalizing the internship: The internship has to be formalized with an internship agreement between the school (École Polytechnique) and the hosting organization (company or research lab). We will share the formal procedure each student has to follow to formalize an internship. The student and the hosting organization have to clearly define a project for the student to work on (the project should be coherent with the CPS Master track), an internship advisor, and the schedule for the internship.

Evaluation: In order to acquire to validate the internship and acquire the internships credits the student will have to prepare an internship report describing the internship in detail the work (motivation, contributions, comparison with related work, and results). The student will defend his internship during an oral defense (to be scheduled before the end of the academic year) in front of a jury (usually formed by 2 professors). The student will receive a grade for the internship. The student will receive the credits for the internship if the grade is at least 10/20. Both the defense and the report should be in English, and the report must be sent at least one weak before the oral defense.