Student Mobility at MEi:CogSci Bratislava

Welcome

Dear incoming Coxies, welcome to the MEi:CogSci programme in Bratislava, which you have chosen as your mobility semester destination. We, your host teachers, are delighted with your choice and will do our best to assist you to make the most of your ERASMUS experience. This short material will provide you with basic introductory orientation information. Where possible, the external links point to English versions of university-level webpages, however not many of the pages exist in English. For the time being, please use Google translator or ask a Slovak speaker for help. We do apologize for any inconvenience. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us!

Enjoy!
MEi:CogSci Bratislava Team

MEi:CogSci programme in Bratislava

MEi:CogSci programme in Bratislava is hosted by the Department of Applied Informatics at the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University. It has been running since 2006. Although our strongest in-house specialty is computational modeling, the teachers participating in the programme provide a much wider expertise in various disciplines. The teachers you will probably encounter the most frequently are Prof. Igor Farkaš (programme coordinator) and Assoc. prof. Martin Takáč (your host coordinator and student tutor).

Semester dates

The lecture period lasts Sep 23 - Dec 20, 2024. The examination period starts after Christmas holidays and lasts Jan. 2 - Feb. 14, 2025. You should be done with all your exams and the project by the end of examination period.

What you need to do at the beginning

University-level

You need to fill in some paperwork and register in the University information system (more info here, please ignore the obsolete dates, you can register for the courses at the beginning of the semester). This is very important, because the system keeps the record of all courses you enrolled for including your project - without their existing in the system, your teachers would not be able to fill in your marks at the end of the semester. The person of contact is Mgr. Patrik Kmetek, office No. F1-120, tel. +421-2-60295212 (or just ext. 212 if calling from internal phones within the Faculty building), Patrik.Kmetek@fmph.uniba.sk. Office hours 9:00-11:30. So make sure to visit Mr. Kmetek to sort out all the paperwork.

MEi:CogSci-internal

You need to bring home 30 ECTS for mobility. Part of this is covered by compulsory courses (10 ECTS). The remaining 20 ECTS can be divided between your project and other optional courses. Make sure to get in contact with your project supervisor ASAP and negotiate how many ECTS will your project be for (it can be for 10, 15 or 20 ECTS, depending on the expected workload - 1 ECTS translates to approx 25 hours of work, so a project for 20 ECTS amounts to approx. 500 hours spent on it).

Your compulsory courses (the two forming New Trends in Cognitive Science, and a research project):

Elective courses:

The list of MEi:CogSci courses can be found here (note: only the courses with 1/W or 2/W in the 5th column are offered in the winter semester). Some specialized courses are provided in English (marked with *) and also two introductory courses which some of you might find interesting:

  • 2-IKVa-102/18 Mathematics for Cognitive Science (5 ECTS)
  • 2-IKVa-105/18 Fundamentals of Programming (in Python) (5 ECTS)

To avoid a potential time clash, see the course schedule for the 1st year and 2nd year cognitive science courses. The schedule is in Slovak, so a better way to look for the time and place of a course you are interested in is to first look for the course in the list of courses, then enter the code of the course (e.g. 2-IKVa-102/18) into a search bar (left of the button 'Hľadaj', which means search) of this interactive schedule application. 

You can also take a look at the list od Erasmus+ courses provided at our faculty.

After you choose your courses and negotiate the ECTS for project, start working on a detailed specification for your project. This will result in filling in your learning contract (LC). The form is available on the MEi:Cogsci portal in Downloads (note, there are 3 templates). The deadline for completing your project is the end of winter-term examination period (mid-February) - make sure the project plan in your LC reflects this. After your supervisor approves the final version of the contract, send it via email to your home and host coordinators for their approval, with cc to your supervisor, by Oct 30. Your host coordinator is Martin Takáč. Detailed instructions can be found in the LC form.

Student tutor/advisor

If you need an advice in study/curriculum matters, feel free to contact Assoc. prof. Martin Takáč, your student tutor and host coordinator (consultation hours flexible, by previous email appointment).

What you need to do at the end

MEi:CogSci-internal

  1. When you have completed your mobility project, fill in section 3.3 Short project report in your learning contract and let your supervisor see/approve it.
  2. Ask your supervisor to give you a grade and add the date and their signature (right below Section 3.3, no need to give a stamp). This page needs to be scanned and sent to your host coordinator Martin Takáč by email - either by the supervisor or by you (if it is by you, please put the supervisor in cc). No need to scan the whole LC, unless the paging has changed. The deadline for this is written in your learning contract (usually mid-February).
  3. Upon receiving the grade for your mobility project, the host coordinator will enter it into AIS.
  4. When all finalized learning contracts with grades have been received by the host coordinator, he will add the course grades, add all the signatures and stamps and send the scanned version to your local coordinator by email in one batch - so this is his responsibility, not yours (please note: Learning contract and transcript of grades are two different things, see below).

University-level

When you have completed all your courses and the project and all your grades are in AIS (check it yourself), send Mr Kmetek (Patrik.Kmetek@fmph.uniba.sk) your Confirmation of Stay document - he will sign it and send it back to you together with Transcript of records (grades). It is your responsibility to deliver those documents to your home coordinator at your university.

Cogsci community

While our 2nd year students will be at their mobility semester, our 1st year students are here, so get in contact with them to get useful introduction to student's life in Bratislava. The first good opportunity to meet them, as well as your teachers and our last year's graduates, is our annual Cognitive drink event, that takes place in the second half of September. You are cordially invited. Follow also our MEi:CogSci Bratislava Facebook page.

Useful info about the Faculty

New to the faculty? Please visit this page with information about how to get there, the available facilities, where to eat, public transport in Bratislava and lot more!