General planning

Sebastien Deheuvels (e-mail : sebastien.deheuvels at utoulouse.fr) and Douglas Marshall (douglas.marshall at utoulouse.fr) are responsible for the organisation of the internships.

The internships run over a 5 month period from mid-January to mid-June in a research laboratory. The ISAE students start later and generally finish in September. The ISAE students can either defend their thesis in June with the university students if they wish to apply for a PhD studentship via the SDU2E, or in September if they already have a studentship or if they do not wish to continue in research. The defence for these students takes place in September, but the rest of the modalities concerning the report and the defence remain the same as for those who defend in June.

The proposed internship topics are made available in October/November. It is possible to undertake an internship that is not on the proposed list, but this topic must be validated by the responsible for the internships following an examination of the proposed topic (typically a one page description of the internship).

Internships opportunities

Staff wishing to propose an internship subject are invited to follow the link below from 12th September 2025.

http://stages-masters.sf2a.eu/ (proposers only)

and until the 30th October 2025.

The list of internship subjects validated for ASEP for the second semester of 2025-2026 will be available from the 30th October 2025.

“Internship fair”

A presentation of the internships proposed at the  IRAP will take place on Tuesday 4th November 2025 at 15:30 in the Pyrénées room, Belin site. 

Internship assessment

The internships generally run from mid-January to mid-June, with the dates defined so that students will be able to apply for a PhD studentship.

For 2025-26 the June thesis defences will take place on Wednesday June 17th 2026 and Thursday June 18th 2026 (Conference Room, Roche site).

The agenda will be sent the week before the defences. The information concerning the writing of the report and the auditions, given in June are still valid for the September auditions. For the June defence, reports must be sent to Sebastien Deheuvels and Douglas Marshall before 16:00 (CEST) on Friday 5th June 2026 as a pdf file. The deadline to send your slides for your defence (again pdf only) is at XXX (to be defined later).

Agenda for the defences (June 2026)

Composition of the jury :

• Nicolas André (ISAE)
• Thierry Contini (IRAP)
• Agnès Cousin (IRAP)
• Sébastien Deheuvels (IRAP)
• Katia Ferrière (IRAP)
• Doug Marshall (IRAP)
• Michel Rieutord (IRAP)
• Adam Walters (IRAP)
• Natalie Webb (IRAP)

The reports

The reports should be written in (good) French or (good) English. The maximum length is 30 pages with a minimum font size of 11 points. It should include:

• A cover page including the name of the student, the name of the supervisor(s), the name of the laboratory in which the internship was carried out, the period over which the internship was carried out and the title of the internship.
• The following declaration attesting the absence of plagiarism must be included at the beginning of the report and signed and dated : I declare that this thesis was authored by myself, that the work contained herein is my own except where explicitly stated otherwise in the text using standard bibliographic referencing, and that this work has not been submitted for any other qualification. I declare that this work contains no plagiarism. Date Signature :
• An abstract (maximum 20 lines).
• An introduction of at least 4 pages describing the general context of the subject studied, followed by chapters describing the methodology used and any results.
• A chapter containing the conclusions and future work (at least 1 page).
• A bibliographic section using the publishing rules such as those in astrophysics journals such as A&A, ApJ, MNRAS…. Please use utilities like ADS for your bibliography (ADS).
• You are allowed to add appendices, within reason (max. 10 pages), but the assessor is not obliged to read these appendices.

It is very important to demonstrate your personal contribution to the work presented in the report. The reports will be read by an assessor that is not from your area of research. You should therefore write the report in a way that it is understandable to someone outside your domain

ATTENTION: plagiarism is not acceptable. We are putting in place software to identify plagiarism. You should, under no circumstances, copy and paste text from books, journals or websites into your reports. All work should be properly cited. Strong sanctions will be placed on those who do not adhere to these rules.

Deadline to submit the report for the September defence : Friday 5th June 2026 16:00 (Toulouse time!). Please send to nwebb at irap.omp.eu (request confirmation of reception) and respect this deadline. Any reports arriving after 16:00 will be penalised 1 or several points on the final grade, depending on the delay. Only pdf format will be accepted. The name of the file should be composed of the first letter of your first name and your surname (example: nwebb.pdf).

The reports will be evaluated by a jury and the independent assessor from one of the M2 partner institutes.

Criteria for the evaluation:

1) For the independent assessor

• abstract, introduction and general context
• Presentation of the subject area, ideas and argument
• Scientific knowledge, methodology
• Quality of the manuscript : form and clarity of the text
• Use of the report as a reference document

2) For the supervisor

• Knowledge obtained, understanding and skills
• Judgement, initiative, personal contribution
• Quality and rapidity of the work carried out
• general behaviour, motivation, integration into the team
• Understanding of the subject and its context
• Attendance

For the defence

The defence will consist of :

• an oral presentation of 15 mn
• questions from the jury (the supervisors and the assessors are invited to the oral defence) before the jury deliberates the result.

A good presentation includes:

• A cover page with your name, internship title, name of the supervisor(s), the place where the internship was carried out and the dates of the internship
• A constructive plan of the talk
• An introduction that allows a non-specialist to understand the problem in hand
• Several slides highlighting your contribution to the work presented
• Concluding slide (at least 1) giving a summary of the work carried out and 1 slide of future work

The name of the file should be composed of the first letter of your first name and your surname (example: nwebb.pdf). The pdf file of the presentation (only this format will be accepted) should be sent to Sebastien Deheuvels and Douglas Marshall by XXX Toulouse Time (to be defined later). Please request confirmation of receipt and respect this deadline. The files arriving after this time will be penalised. You will not be allowed to provide the slides on a memory stick nor use your personal computer. During your audition if you are connecting via videoconference you will share your screen but some members of the jury might follow on the sent version if there are some technical problems. Make sure you put slide numbers on your presentation.