The objective of the Master Project is to carry out a personal research project in a professional environment. This gives students the opportunity to put into practice the methodological and technical competencies acquired during their studies and to show their ability to work independently. The Master Project offers students professional work experience and the possibility to familiarize themselves with industry processes.
Duration | Dates | Location
Duration: The Master Project takes place after the three coursework semesters and it lasts for 26 weeks (about 6 months).
Session dates: It can start after the Winter exam session upon completion of the Master Cycle (90 ECTS). It must start on a Monday, and be submitted at the latest on the last Friday at noon. Students must verify the starting date of their Master Project with the internship coordinators.
Requirements: To be admitted to the Master Project, students must have successfully completed the 90 ECTS of the SMT master program coursework.
Location: The Master Project can be carried out in a company, for instance, a consulting firm, a multinational, a small or medium enterprise, a well-established start-up, or a public administration department.
Project definition & supervision
Students have two supervisors for their SMT Master Projects:
- An academic supervisor (a professor of one of our partner institutions, i.e. UNIL-HEC, IMD or EPFL), and
- A company supervisor (the representative of the company who will follow the student’s work in the company).
Validation of the Master project
First, the student applies for internships.
Second, he or she obtains an internship offer from a company, the student then needs to find a professor who supervises his or her Master Project and who validates the Master project.
Third, the academic supervisor must get in touch with the company supervisor to clarify the academic content and confidentiality issues.
The student can formally engage with the company only when the project is approved by the academic supervisor.
Finding an internship
It is students’ responsibility to find a Master Project (both the internship at a company as well as a professor for supervision). During the search, students are welcome to check the EPFL internship database, where companies post internships. Those are either specific to SMT students or shared with students from other EPFL sections. We recommend students to apply to several internships at the same time.
Previous SMT Master Projects
Titles are indicative and may be refined as projects progress.
- How to make new business models desirable to consumers – BSR (Business for Social Responsibility)
- Analyse du cycle de vie d’un processus de fabrication horlogère – Rolex
- Consolidation of automation processes for Sustainable Digital Practices: A Banking Case Study – UBS
- Vers une quantification harmonisée du contenu recyclé : élaboration d’une méthodologie standardisée pour les métaux et alliages dans l’industrie horlogère de luxe – Rolex
- Relocaliser la production de vélos : Analyse de l’écosystème industriel et des coopérations entre acteurs comme leviers de relocalisation et de mutualisation – Fondation Modus
- Transition plans credibility – Tikehau Capital
- Comment le rapport entre le coût des mesures d’isolation thermique et les économies d’énergie réalisées varie-t-il selon les installations, les typologies de bâtiments et les segments de propriétaires ? – Services Industriels de Genève (SIG)
- Regional cost assessment of EU climate policy – EPFL LEURE Lab
- ESG in Life Insurance products – Vaudoise Assurances
- Sustainable incentive mechanisms – Pemsa Group Lutry
- The potential of decentralization / distributed services in making climate adaptation investable for private capital – Morphosis Solutions SA
- Human skills in the age of Artificial Intelligence: From AI-driven skill and job shifts to building the human capabilities that cannot be replaced – UNIL-HEC
- Business Process Management (BPM) – CEMEX Innovation Holding AG
- Development of an impact reporting system for an early stage focused impact investor in Sub-Saharan Africa – Persistent Energy
- ESG due diligence framework for global commodity supply chains – Mercuria Energy Trading SA
- AI for nature innovation assessment: accuracy, bias, and reliability of automated evaluation – Innovate 4 Nature
- Life cycle assessment (LCA) of AI models – Resilio
- Solar energy diffusion analysis – Engie Singapore
- Strategic sustainability implementation in SMEs: certification standards, organizational change, and impact measurement – Aderco
- Mapping regenerative transformation in SMEs – Sustainsoft, Paris
- The (de)centralized cloud: an ESG perspective – Impossible Cloud Network
- Hong Kong’s corporate sustainability landscape: a comparative analysis of reporting, leadership, and post‑ISSB/HKEX maturity – B‑Lab Singapore/Macau
- Energy recovery in textile recycling – Worn Again Switzerland AG
- Comparative LCA of cashmere and wool fabrics – Academic Thesis
- Navigating the cleantech funding landscape: strategic practices from founders – Academic Thesis
- Carbon solutions – SCB Brokers SA
- Bridging the data collection gap with machine learning: a case study on electricity in Côte d’Ivoire and Mali – Academic Thesis
- Supply chain mapping for deforestation exposure: integrating probabilistic origin mapping and predictive regression models – Rolex SA
- Rethinking risk: challenges and opportunities in integrating double materiality into enterprise risk management – Alpiq SA
- Forecasting air freight in EU e-commerce logistics: balancing speed, cost and carbon emissions – Amazon
- Designing effective climate transition plans: a risk-informed framework for corporate scope 2 strategy evolution across European clusters – Rolex SA
- The biodiversity impacts of sports events and their implications for the Global Biodiversity Framework – International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
- Corporate legitimacy through climate transition planning: a Swiss perspective on legal and strategic alignment – Academic Thesis
- Assessing climate change risks on a bank’s investment portfolio – Banque Cantonale Vaudoise
- The impact of nonviolent communication on inner development and sustainability – Academic Thesis
- Integrating circularity into the construction industry – Hilti Danmark A/S
- Safeguards and market uptake in forest carbon projects: developing a universal assessment framework and empirical evidence from the voluntary carbon market – United Nations Environment Programme
- ESG climate – Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences SA
- The roles of AI in advancing circularity: a conceptual framework and managerial guidance – Siemens AG
- A framework for ethical and sustainable pharmaceutical donation: addressing waste at the warehouse level – Haleon
- Overcoming barriers to sustainable aviation fuel certificate (SAFc) adoption in air cargo: the role of cross-functional intermediaries in a fragmented early market – SCB Brokers SA
- ESG water – Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences SA
- Embedding ESG into non-life insurance products: development and application of a product-level evaluation framework – Vaudoise Assurances
- Towards transparent ESG scoring: NLP-based signal extraction from Swiss corporate disclosures – Banque Piguet & Cie SA
- The strategic contribution of the double materiality assessment: from stakeholder engagement to strategy-making – Patek Philippe SA
- Certification & ecosystem – B Lab Switzerland
- From space to nature: leveraging satellite data to quantify the impact of economic activities on nature – Academic Thesis
- Accelerating sustainable innovation: a case study in the footwear industry – Salomon SAS
- Beyond symbolic adoption: a network model of sustainability knowledge diffusion in organizations – Romande Energie
- Existential questions: a qualitative analysis of how poverty-affected people in Switzerland perceive climate change and efforts of climate protection – Caritas Switzerland
- Sustainability engineering – Logitech Europe SA
- AI-enabled efficiency and rebound: impacts on EU household energy use and direct CO2 emissions to 2050 – Solar Impulse Foundation
Further examples of previous SMT Master Projects can be found on the E4S website.
Registration
Once the proposal was agreed upon by all parties, students must register their Master Project on the IS-Academia platform.
Submission & defense of the Master project
The completed Master Project will have to be submitted in the form of a written Master Thesis at the end of your internship (the latest on Friday at mid-day) Students need to follow the SMT guidelines for writing the Master Thesis (which will be uploaded in due time). After the submission, the student and the academic supervisor organize the oral defense. For the Master Project to be successful, like with other courses, the grade must be at least 4. In this case, the students are awarded the 30 ECTS that complete their Master studies.
In case of doubt, please always refer to the official information and regulation regarding Master Projects. The links below point to these resources.