Opportunities for Business

Can we truly trust current blockchain technology to securely automate important processes in the financial sector? Christof Ferreira Torres wants to answer this question. In the framework of his Industrial Fellowship PhD with the University of Luxembourg and the bank Spuerkeess (BCEE), the Portuguese national works on the security of smart contracts and the detection of fraudulent transactions – because gaps in security can quickly mean high costs for thousands of people.

Thomas Schaubroeck specialises in sustainability assessment of products. We speak to the Belgian national about the research he is undertaking in the framework of an Industrial Fellowship between the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) and company Tarkett; how working with industry differs from academia; and how he hopes his research can help industry steer toward a more sustainable future.

Maciej Piotr Chrzanowski never thought he would become a researcher, but a successful attempt at applying for a PhD changed all of that, and the Polish national found himself moving to Luxembourg. Now in the 3rd year of his AFR-PPP PhD, Maciej is embedded both at the University of Luxembourg and in R&D Application Department of steel manufacturing corporation ArcelorMittal, where he works on development of new solutions for structures.

Ramona Pelich uses data from satellites in space to improve maritime surveillance and flood hazard monitoring. Splitting her time between the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) and the company LuxSpace as part of her AFR-PPP Postdoc, the Romanian national’s work has already found direct application when flood maps she co-developed were used in the aftermath of destructive 2017 hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

Once home to Luxembourg’s largest steel foundry, the southern town of Belval is today the headquarters of public research, where breakthroughs in biomedical and ICT research are just on the horizon. Marc Schiltz, the FNR’s Executive Head and Secretary General, tells about how Luxembourg is positioning itself as a global hub of innovation.

For many of us, research elicits images of test tubes and lab rats. Innovation, on the other hand, calls to mind space travel, startup moguls and exciting tech gadgets. Although innovation might seem like research’s distant, cooler cousin they are actually two sides of the same coin. The research community and startup ecosystem are natural allies that the FNR hopes to bring closer together.

Interview with the FNR’s Head of Innovation Unit, Andreea Monnat, about the definition of innovation in the Luxembourg context, the importance of encouraging and supporting it – and what the FNR is doing to tick these boxes.

When we wrote about Chetan Arora in the 2017 edition of Spotlight on Young Researchers, he was a Postdoc working in requirements engineering at the SnT, having just completed his PhD. 5 years later, Chetan is on the other side of the world working as a Senior Lecturer and Academic Director for coursework research. We spoke to Chetan about how he is still a “houfreg Lëtzebuerger”, what he is working on now, and why after working both in industry and academia, he found his heart to be in the world of research.

Many residential houses are built so that they scarcely use energy. This can also be done with industrial buildings. It just needs a different approach.