In the first year, an internship of 7 or 8 weeks (at
least) is required depending on the
location of your second semester (AMU ≥ 7w,
KIT ≥ 8w). For
more details, see below.
At the end of the
second year, you
will make your master thesis which is in fact handled as a long internship
(AMU: 4-6 months). The master thesis can be
carried out at any partner location and any associated partner location (the
list is here),
not at different universities. If you do it at a partner location, the local
partner takes care of the evaluation and the formalities. If you do it at an
associated partner location, the place where you were enrolled for the S3 takes
care of the evaluation and the formalities.
Concerning
evaluation and formalities of the master thesis at AMU, they follow the same
rules as the first year internship (internship contract etc. described in
detail below) and the latest finishing date is
end of September. However, doing your master thesis in a ZRR lab (there are many in Marseille) you will need to contact the
supervisors early as your security clearing can take up to 2 months. (For a
6-month duration, try to get it done in January.)
KIT makes a
separate evaluation of the master thesis and requires close to 6-month duration
and a KIT-supervisor.
The latest
finishing date is not
the same depending on which university handles your evaluation. For AMU
internship contracts the lasted finishing date for the master thesis is
September 30th.
As the second semester (S2) starts later at KIT, people following an
AMU-KIT mobility path have some time before the S2. If they want, they are
allowed to do their internship (or part of it) during this time.
Please click here for a graph
of the coarse schedule from S1 to S4. The internship with a length of 8 weeks
is just placed there to show you the length of 8 weeks in the graph. You are
not fixed to the date where I placed it for the graph. Also, the latest finishing date is not the same depending on which university
handles your evaluation.
The University of your S2 takes care of the validation of this
internship according to local rules.
You can also add a voluntary internship as long as it does not enter in
conflict with your courses or exams. Follow the same procedure as for the
required internship (described below), just skip the evaluation.
Depending on your mobility path and on your plans, there are 4 possible
cases. Please check the list below to see which of the following sections you
need to read.
o
I
will be a S2-AMU student:
-
I
will perform a 7-week internship (or more) after the S2:
§ I need to be aware that internships may be paid à “Paid and unpaid internships”
§ I need to establish a French
internship contract à “Establishing
a French internship contract”
§ My internship will be evaluated at
AMU à “Internship evaluation at AMU”
o
I
will be a S2-KIT student
-
I
will perform an 8-week internship (or more) before
the S2 at KIT (thus starting before registering at KIT):
§ I need to be aware that internships may be paid à “Paid and unpaid internships”
§ I need to establish a French
internship contract à “Establishing
a French internship contract”
§ My internship will be evaluated at
KIT à “Internship evaluation at KIT”
-
I
will perform an 8-week internship (or more) with the same supervisor/same
topic/same lab/same place split into two parts: One before and one after
registering at KIT: (This is administratively the most complicated choice)
§ I need to be aware that internships may be paid à “Paid and unpaid internships”
§ I need to establish a French
internship contract à “Establishing
a French internship contract”
§ My internship will be evaluated at
KIT à “Internship evaluation at KIT”
-
I
will perform my 8-week internship after
the S2 (thus after registering at KIT):
§ I comply to the internship
regulations at KIT.
§ My internship will be evaluated at
KIT à “Internship evaluation at KIT”
Both, voluntary or required internships may be paid or unpaid. If the
work place is in France, internships with more than 308 working hours (that are
written in the internship contract) have to be paid 4.35 €/h. (With standard working time of
7 h/d: 308 h = 7 h/d * 44 d = nearly 9 weeks, but
sometimes 8w internships are paid anyway.) This needs to be discussed with the
supervisor before establishing the
internship contract. In case you are paid, the supervisor needs to
indicate/give you the internship contract form to use and all papers are
required earlier than for an unpaid internship. If the supervisor is with the Institut Fresnel, the intranet pages Human Resources / Recruitment / Financing Source / Trainee Recruitment
provide information on the procedure and documents for download, and the
reference person for all these matters is the human resources person of the
research team. You will always be paid for the master thesis.
As said before, different internship contract forms exist. Usually one
for each origin of the payment and in case of unpaid internship one for each
university. However, they all obey common rules that we try to illustrate here
using the example of a student of AMU
making an internship where the salary is paid
from an AMU account:
1. At least 3 weeks before your preferred starting date (earlier if looking
for a paid internship):
Start to look for topics, contact groups or people where you
would like to do the internship. Even researchers who did not provide a topic
for the Europhotonics web site may write one on demand.
2. Send the title / topic or a short description of the internship to me
via email (I’m the “Enseignant référant” / academic tutor,
Frank WAGNER, frank.wagner@univ-amu.fr,
+33 (0)4 13 94 55 54).
I will tell you if the topic is ok for Europhotonics or not. Usually all
systematic / scientific work on topics that are somehow connected to photonics
in an experimental or theoretical way will be validated. Please also include
information on the planned starting and ending dates, possible breaks. I will
check that it does not overlap with the course dates, spring school dates and
that it is long enough.
3. Once the topic is validated and everything else is clear too
(supervisor, title, topic description, starting and ending date, possible break
(especially for the master thesis), unpaid or paid, and, if paid, the origin of
the funds (details see above)):
Start the procedure to create the internship contract. For this, fill the forms
on the internship web site accessible through your ENT using the AMUStage button (if you don’t find it,
search for “stage”) (see page 1 in the detailed
guide to AmuStage). This web site will be used to generate the internship
contract. It is necessary to read the detailed
guide to AmuStage and to execute all the steps. Some remarks:
a. The “Etablissement
d’accueil” or host institution is not the lab. For paid internships you need to put here the
organization that owns the account you will be paid from. For example:
i. UNIVERSITE D'AIX MARSEILLE ; Jardin du Pharo, 58 Boulevard Charles LIVON ; 13007 Marseille ; Siret n° : 130 015 332 00013
ii. CNRS Délégation Régionale Provence et Corse, 31 chemin Joseph Aiguier 13009 Marseille ; Siret n° : 180 089 013 01724
iii. Délégation régionale INSERM PACA ; 18 avenue Mozart 13009 MARSEILLE ; Siret n° : 180 036 048 01674
For unpaid internships, put the
university the lab is attached to.
For internships in a company, put
the company main name and address here
b. The “Service d’accueil” or host department is the lab. For example:
i. Institut Fresnel ; Site de Saint-Jérôme ; 52 avenue Escadrille Normandie Niémen ; 13013 MARSEILLE
ii. IM2NP - UMR CNRS 7334 ; Site de Saint-Jérôme ; 52 Avenue Escadrille Normandie Niémen ; 13013 MARSEILLE
iii. PIIM ; Site de Saint-Jérôme ; 52 avenue Escadrille Normandie Niémen ; 13013 MARSEILLE
iv. Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille ; Technopôle de Château Gombert ; 38 rue Frédéric Joliot Curie ; 13013 MARSEILLE
v. DyNaMo ; TPR2 Bloc 5 ; 163 Avenue de Luminy ; 13009 MARSEILLE
vi. LP3 ; 163 Avenue de Luminy ; 13009 MARSEILLE
c. The “Tuteur professionnel” is the person who proposed the internship (the one you contacted to apply for this
internship).
d. Later you also need to define a “signataire”, i.e. the person representing the host
institution.
Sometimes you need to fill in a (short) chain of people representing at the end
the person representing the host institution. For example:
i.
(For
the PIIM lab with host institution AMU):
M. Eric Berton, Président, et par Délégation M Yannick Marandet,
Directeur de P.I.I.M.
ii.
(For
the IM2NP lab with host institution AMU):
M. Eric Berton, Président, et par délégation Christophe Girardeaux,
Directeur de l’IM2NP
iii.
(For
the Fresnel lab with host institution CNRS):
M. Jérôme Vitre, délégué régional du CNRS
For internships in a company, put
the director and by delegation the boss of your supervisor.
In principle a split internship is
possible too for the S2 internship if,
and only if, both parts are done on the same topic and with the same
supervisor(s). As the first part starts before the second semester at KIT, you will
need to make a French internship contract with interruption on AMUStage (p.6).
4.
Once
you finished filling in all the forms, you validate
the summary (“récapitulatif”-tab). After validation by yourself, validation demands are
automatically send to the academic tutor and “administration”.
5. Once all validations are there, and
the administrative things are checked somebody from the Erasmus Mundus office
will send you the pdf-file that you need
to forward to all prtaies in order to collect the signatures (either on paper
or electronically):
There
are 5 signatures that need to me collected in
the following order:
a. The student confirms that this is the internship he/she wants to
do.
b. The supervisor confirms that this is the student he/she wants to hire
for this internship topic in this time frame with this payment (if so).
c. The supervisor will ask for the
signature of a person responsible for
the host institution (simplified: his/her boss) who by the signature
confirms the supervisor is allowed to hire a student and that there is money
for the payment (if so).
d. The “responsable
pédagogique” will sign to confirm that the internship topic is ok for the master
studies of the student (R&D in optics and related topics).
e. Finally, the university
administration will ask for the signature of a representative of the university. If the internship-place is not in
France, depending on the country and the situation there (COVID and other), the
representative of the university will delay their signature until feedback of the defense officer of the
university has been given.
6. A fully signed copy of the
internship contract comes back to you
Remark on insurance: Be aware that by signing the internship contract you confirm that you
have a liability insurance for damage that you may cause during the internship.
(You may need to contact your insurance to check if they cover this.)
The general procedure is always the same: You give administration all
the information about your internship, they make the pdf file, everybody signs.
For the people doing S2
at AMU, we make a mark based on:
1. A short report in a format similar
to a scientific paper, with a maximum of 15 pages including appendices. Use the
template of the scientific journal Optics Express. The report is due one week
before the oral presentation.
2. The oral presentation should last 15
min. + 5 min. for the questions. It is mandatory to respect the 15' duration as
it is a part of the evaluation. This is usually done mid-September. Some
teachers and the supervisor (if possible) will participate in this project
defense.
3. Supervisor evaluation form.
At AMU the internship gives you 5 ECTS.
For people
having an AMU internship contract for the master thesis the procedure is
roughly the same, but we allow a longer (KIT-like) report format and there is
more time for presentation and questions.
To the best
of my knowledge, the internship evaluation at KIT is done by:
1.
A
report in the format of a “seminar paper” (German Academia). (Ask for the
details, but last year an approximate length of 10 pages was asked for and a
possible due date was mid-October. But possible months are February, May, July
and October).
2. An oral presentation. (Ask for the
details, but last year the length was 7 min. (+2 min. for the questions) and a
possible date was end of October.)
A possibly outdated but more detailed file on the internship evaluation
and the registration for it (at KIT) can be found here.
Frank Wagner 05/03/2025