LIST website - Job offers

Student internship in collaborative crowd technologies (M/F)

Crowd computing is a research field at the intersection of crowdsourcing, social behavior modeling and computational systems, and in parallel a rising multi-billion industry. From the mass volunteer participation in Wikipedia or OpenIDEO, to the numerous paid crowd workers of Amazon Mechanical Turk, crowd computing is harnessing the power of people to perform tasks that are difficult for individual users or computers to do alone, and is transforming the way that we produce knowledge services. One of the latest trends in crowd computing is the creation of crowd teams to work on knowledge-intensive tasks that require collaboration and cannot be addressed by independent individuals, such as product design, idea filtering, knowledge synthesis, and innovation production. Despite the potential of collaborative crowd technologies to constitute the “next frontier in crowd computing”, forming such teams is nothing but easy. Crowd workers are people with different personalities, needs, expertise, skills and availabilities, who have usually never worked together before. The goal of this project is to develop and experiment efficient computational methods to form ad-hoc, elastic crowd teams in a manner that accounts for the particularities and constraints of the involved human workers while guaranteeing a high-quality final result.

The specific objective of this internship is to design and experiment with one or multiple methods for efficient crowd team formation, including the development of the web tools that will support this experimentation.

The trainee will be responsible of:

Getting acquainted with the state-of-the-art in crowd computing, online communities and virtual teams
Co-designing a series of experiments on crowd team formation and team building optimization
Developing web-based software that will support the aforementioned experiments
Gathering and analyzing the experimental data, participating in the writing of publications

Master student internship in the synthesis of innovative polymer electrolytes for Li batteries (M/F)

The lithium battery industry is undergoing rapid expansion, now representing the largest segment of the portable battery industry and dominating the computer, cell phone, and camera power source industry. However, the safety of the present batteries is questionable for the large-scale batteries needed for hybrid electric vehicles. This is caused by several reasons: one of them is the utilization of electrolytes based on organic flammable solvents, while the second refers to the so-called dendrite growth. Over the course of battery charge/discharge cycles, particularly when the battery is cycled at a fast rate, microscopic fibers of lithium, called “dendrites,” sprout from the surface of the lithium electrode and spread across the electrolyte until they reach the other electrode. An electrical current passing through these dendrites can short-circuit the battery, causing it to rapidly overheat and in some instances catch fire.

In order to solve this problem it is planned to synthesize new polymer electrolytes that will show high ionic conductivity, demonstrate excellent mechanical properties and will serve as a protection layer for the Li anode’s surface. The intern will take part in on-going efforts in this direction, and will be engaged in the design, preparation and optimization of novel polyelectrolytes at the Materials Research & Technology (MRT) department.

The trainee’s task will be to:

Synthesize unique polymers that simultaneously possess high ionic conductivity and excellent film forming ability
Investigate structure-properties relationship and optimize polyelectrolyte macromolecule with the aim to gain the desired merits
Perform characterization of obtained materials (NMR, IR, GPC, DSC, TGA, impedance, etc.)
Assemble half cells and test them in collaboration with partner institutions

The job opens the opportunity to learn organic synthetic techniques (monomers synthesis), basic polymer modification principles, specific knowledge on polyelectrolytes preparation, skills on materials characterization via modern methods and state of the art experience in electrochemical devices.

Master Student Internship in Polymer chemistry and Polymer processing (M/F)

The Materials Research and Technology Department (MRT) translates cutting-edge materials research into applicable technology, with about 150 collaborators. For this, the department cultivates close relationships and joint projects with both academic and industrial partners, and contributes to Luxembourg's and Europe's innovation agenda in Materials Research and Technology.

The internship position will assist our ongoing investigations on polymer blending and polymer modification. Focus will be put on the following tasks:

· Polymer blending

· Polymer reactive modification and blending

· Characterization of the properties of the resulting materials

· Potentially : ageing resistance characterization of those blends

This internship will consist in exploring a new aspect of our investigations: the addition of biobased polymers (such as aliphatic polyesters: PLA, PBS or potentially starch) in matrices of commodity plastics (e.g. PVC, PET, PVDF, PMMA, PC…) will be evaluated. Besides reactive compatibilization will be run.

Functional properties (mechanical, transparency, fire resistance, scratch resistance, UV resistance …) shall be connected to physico-chemical structure using different techniques (e.g GPC, IRTF, DSC, TGA …).

Finally, a selection of potential applications for the best blends should be envisaged.

Stage étudiant " Gestion et valorisation de Portefeuille de brevets " (M/F)

Dans le cadre de la valorisation de son portefeuille de brevets, le LIST cherche un/e stagiaire pour une durée de 3 à 6 mois.

Les missions seront les suivantes:

· Assister le responsable de transfert de technologie lors des premiers entretiens avec les chercheurs inventeurs, pour évaluer la brevetabilité d'une nouvelle invention

Participer aux réunions avec les inventeurs, rassembler les documents techniques (publis, mémoire d'invention, etc.) et synthétiser les informations techniques avant l’écriture du brevet

· Contribuer à la promotion des nouvelles technologies LIST en rédigeant des fiches technologiques, sur la base des brevets

A partir des brevets et au besoin d'une discussion avec les inventeurs, rédiger de manière synthétique des fiches descriptives présentant les avantages des inventions. Ces fiches seront diffusées sur différents supports, pour assurer la promotion de nos technologies auprès d’acteurs industriels

· Effectuer l’analyse d'un portefeuille de brevets

Pour un portefeuille d’une vingtaine de brevets couvrant une technologie particulière, lister toutes les extensions de brevets et toutes les demandes de brevets divisionnaires, faire le point sur la couverture des revendications de chaque brevet, dans le but d’évaluer l'importance de chaque brevet dans le portefeuille et la qualité de la protection de la technologie

· Faire le point sur le positionnement concurrentiel d’une technologie brevetée

Discuter avec les chercheurs (notamment) pour identifier les caractéristiques et avantages de la technologie + faire une recherche bibliographique pour identifier les avantages par rapport aux technologies concurrentes. Restituer un bilan comparatif

Ces missions pourront être étoffées avec d'autres actions en lien avec les procédures brevets et les démarches de valorisation (marketing technologique).

Master Student Internship in market intelligence for industrial applications of nanomaterials (M/F)

The successful candidate will join the “Material Research and Technology” (MRT) department. With a team of more than 170 scientists and engineers from nanomaterials science, (nano)composites, and physical-chemical characterisations and performance evaluation, the department has the necessary interdisciplinary knowledge and skills to tackle major challenges of industrial integration of nanomaterials our society is facing today: scientific design, technological process adaptation, market specifications matching, and innovation opportunities regarding the state-of-the-art.

The major challenge concerns the assessment of the impact of nanomaterials size, shape, and chemistry on derived composites performances, the impact of integration processes on the final products performances, and the state-of-the-art of some industrial partners and related markets. In this context, the RDI Unit on Nanomaterials/Nanotechnology (NN) is looking for a trainee to support some initiatives of nanomaterials integration into composites and innovation at market scale. This effort is driven by the need to translate fundamental science in the field of nanomaterials and process design into operational solutions for nanocomposites high performances, and win-win market innovation.

The position will give the intern an opportunity to work with a diverse team of researchers within the NN unit and Strategic Intelligence group. It is an ideal prospect to gain experience of working with innovative technologies which are designed to solve real world problems in the domain of nanomaterials industrial applications. The likely endpoint of this internship is the achievement of the most effective knowledge in business planning for nanomaterials development across target economic segments of both Luxembourgish and surrounding markets.

The intern should be able to undertake specific tasks including:

Scientific and grey literature review in nanomaterials development and application, with focus on voluntary and regulatory markets
Investigation of market challenges, limitations, and long-term scenarios for derived industrial nanocomposites
Preliminary market analysis for NN technologies
Linking technological and market data

Student Internship for Immersion Program - Innovative Systems - Regulatory Technologies M/F

The “Business Analytics and Regulatory Compliance” Unit, in Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), is offering internships for Computer Science and Information Science students to gain hands-on experience in leading technologies like Open source scalable databases, Ontology, Semantic Technology, and related work could also include working with advanced text processing methodologies like unstructured information management, Text analytics and Natural Language Processing (NLP). This call is part of the Student Immersion Program, in which students from some of the top Universities in the world come to Luxembourg for internship opportunities with LIST. You will have a chance to work on concrete and value-creation projects led by different specialists from our Institution.

This is a learning opportunity for outstanding students formally engaged in University programmes around the world. The topics are hands-on and practical, covering computer science aspects such as implementing algorithms and developing software prototypes with XML schemas, designing applications on server/ client side using JavaScript/ Java/ Python, developing interactive queries on databases, cognitive computing and text analytics in the Legal informatics and Big Data infrastructure domain. It also includes gaining experience by working with Big Data and High performance computing infrastructures, both in the Open source (Apache ecosystem and more) and in the Commercial realm (SAP HANA and IBM Bluemix environments).

The candidate is expected to be passionate, hard-working with a strong computer science inclination, and must have a serious interest in application development along with the dedication to learn and implement text analytics concepts and ontology generation techniques. It is also expected that the candidate has had exposure working with open source Big Data architectures like Hadoop, Spark etc. The Immersion Program equips the student with the unique opportunity to learn, develop oneself and be of service in concrete activities and innovations at LIST.

During the period of your immersion, you will be part of several ‘hackatons’ and ‘insightatons’, particularly those of you with the aspirations of working in analytics and its industry applications.

Law student Internship for Immersion Program on Financial Innovative Systems - Regulatory Technologies – Business Analytics (M/F)

You will have the chance to work on concrete and value-creation projects led by different specialists from our institution who are engaged with world-class companies and enterprises. The Institute is opening a number of internship / trainee positions in its Information Technology for Innovative Services (ITIS) Department to be part of a deeply multidisciplinary experience.
Under the activities related to Legal Technology in LIST, we will conduct an empirical study on what kinds of human and ICT resources (e.g. human resources like lawyers, law firms, legal compliance group, and ICT resources like computer software deploying AI and Law etc.) are used by different parties (e.g. financial and credit institutes, regulators and others) involved in the financial regulation domain for operationalizing financial regulatory compliance activities (e.g. legal financial reporting and other legal and statutory financial requirements etc.).

These positions will be a six-month legal-research activity (that includes stakeholder analysis, survey questionnaires development, conducting interviews, data collection, validation and analysis) broadly on several sets of questions.

Master student in fabrication and investigation of nanoplasmonic sensors M/F

Noble metal (e.g. silver, gold) nanostructures and nanoarrays have ability to control and focus light into spaces of the order of molecular dimensions due to excitation of localized surface plasmons by visible radiation. The phenomenon has been taken advantage within devices for sensing of small molecules, relying on either response of the localized surface plasmon resonance to the presence of the molecules, or to enhance vibrational Raman or Fluorescence signals from molecules that are positioned in close vicinity to metal surface. In order to realize high performing plasmonic sensors, it is necessary to establish rational design rules by drawing correlation between metal nanostructure geometry and their optical/spectroscopic properties. The intern will take part in ongoing efforts in this direction, and will be engaged in preparation and optimization of metal nanostructured interfaces for molecular sensing.

This internship will take place in the Materials Research & Technology (MRT) department at LIST, within the “Nano-enabled medicine and cosmetics” research group, which has a strong experience in studies of nanostructure fabrication and structure-property relationship related to nanoplasmonic interfaces. The candidate will have ample opportunities for learning advanced characterization tools and advanced concepts in the interdisciplinary and rapidly emerging topic of nanoplasmonics.

The trainee’s tasks will be to:

Synthesis and surface functionalization of metal nanostructures in solutions and on planar substrates leading to preparation of micro or nanopatterned plasmonic surfaces
Optimize/test plasmonic sensing performance within microfluidic device configurations
Perform characterization of nanostructure geometry, physicochemical properties of surface, and optical/spectroscopic properties using instruments and advanced characterization platform in the department (SEM, XPS, Zeta potential, Ellipsometry, etc.)

Master student in fabrication and investigation of Nano-Bio interfaces M/F

Biological interfaces are encountered in a range of applications where a surface comes in contact with biological medium, e.g. Implanted scaffolds, patches or devices on or within the body, in-vitro diagnostics (IVD), vectors for delivery of active ingredients within body, surgical tools, or non-medical applications, e.g. food packaging, anti-biofouling in marine environments. The physicochemical and topographic characteristics of the interface are critical determinants of the ensuing quality and performance of the interface for the biomaterial application. The ability to tailor these characteristics is central to the optimization of biological interfaces, and requires ability to correlate material properties with the biological outcome. This internship project specifically concerns optimization of the surface chemistry and nanotopography of planar and three dimensional bio-interfaces used for the growth and expansion of stem cells.

This internship will take place in the Materials Research & Technology (MRT) department within the “Nano-enabled medicine and cosmetics group”, and be conducted in active exchange with the central materials lab and advanced materials characterization platform at MRT, LIST.

The trainee’s tasks will be to :

Be part of our inter-disciplinary efforts to draw processsurface chemistry correlations to identify optimal surface functionalization process parameters for attachment of small molecules, polymers and nanoparticles on to polymeric and glass surfaces
Optimize biomolecular attachment to the surface within microfluidic environment
Perform characterization of nanostructure geometry, physicochemical properties of surface, and optical/spectroscopic properties using instruments and advanced characterization platform in the department (SEM, XPS, Zeta potential, Ellipsometry, etc.)

The trainee will have an excellent opportunity to learn the concepts behind surface-functionalization using small molecules, polymers and nanoparticles, characterization of the surfaces and nanoparticles using state of the art tools (with hands on experience to different equipment), and understand considerations of quality assurance and benchmarking of the surfaces for technology-driven applications.

Master student internship in microfluidic synthesis of nucleotides and peptides M/F

Latest diagnosis methods of many health issues are performed through the detection of anomalies in the DNA and proteins. This detection process is done through the bio-conjugation of these macromolecules with other nucleotides or peptides. The progress of our understanding of genetics and proteomics has increased the demand for more control over the synthesis of these biopolymers. One of the main advances for their production has been the introduction of solid-phase synthesis, but the need of multiplex for complex assays requires to improve our ability to realize these chemical reactions in miniaturised environments.

This internship will take place in the Materials Research & Technology (MRT) department at LIST, within the “Nano Enabled Medicine and Cosmetics” research group, which has a strong activity in studies microfluidic devices for the manipulations of chemical reactions. The activities are in the framework of an ATRACT funded project NANOpH.

The trainee task will be to build pH-sensitive peptide or/ nucleotide libraries ready to be used for multiplexed synthesis of biopolymers in "Lab on a ship" devices. The job opens the opportunity to use state of the art electrochemical sensors and to work with characterization techniques that include NMR, Mass spectroscopy, XPS, SEM, and optical characterization techniques.

Internship in information sharing in mobility services (M/F)

This internship vacancy is created to understand the role of shared information in such services and the accompanied security and privacy risks when the information is abused. At this moment, Luxembourg is trying to optimize its transportation services to fulfill the digital Luxembourg blueprint. To this end, car-sharing and car-pooling services are becoming popular and many online marketplaces have been established, and at the same time the public transportation system is also trying to optimize its services based on collected travel information from end users.

You will have the chance to work on very practical security and privacy issues in real life, under the supervision of a well-established security expert. Moreover, you will have the chance to interact with mobility experts in LIST.

The objective of this project is to understand how personal information is collected and used in mobility services. Some well-known examples of such mobility services are Uber (US), Blablacar (Germany), and Krazoo (Luxembourg). By crawling the data, it is expected to understand how much personal information is collected by these services and what kind of profile the service can construct for each user.

Based on the collected data, the second objective is to investigate the security and privacy risks in these services, due to the shared information online and the potential cross-platform inferences.

At last, challenges and opportunities in exploiting aggregated personal data are expected to be clarified.

Bachelor or Master student internship in industrial design and 3D printing (M/F)

Tangible User Interfaces (TUI’s) capitalize on interactions based on physical objects and the physical space. A popular setup of TUIs is the interactive tabletop: physical objects can be manipulated on a table to interact with an application. Digital visualizations and feedbacks are projected onto the table or on an additional screen. See Maquil, V., De Sousa, L., Leopold, U. and Tobias, E. A geospatial tangible user interface to support stakeholder participation in urban planning. In Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management (GISTAM), 2015 1st International Conference on (pp. 1-8). IEEE.

To date, LIST has developed a series of tangible tabletop applications including geospatial applications and educational simulation environments.

Your mission is to prototype tangible objects’ design thanks to 3D printing or other means.

As a member of a multilingual and multidisciplinary team, you will complete the following tasks:

Perform a technology review on existing solutions
Get familiar with tangible user interfaces
Design the 3D objects based on requirements
Build a working prototype including a demo application
Document the activities performed and transfer the knowledge acquired, possibly through a scientific publication or the creation of a catchy demonstration video

Internship Program on Regulatory Compliance Technologies (M/F)

The “Business Analytics and Regulatory Compliance” unit, in Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), is offering internships for computer science students (master level students) for hands-on practice to gain experience on regulatory compliance technologies.
This call is part of a broader effort called Immersion Program, whereby students from top Universities in the world come to Luxembourg for internship opportunities with LIST.

Objective: To use different layers of semantic technologies such as XML, RDF, OWL, RuleML etc. for deploying regulatory compliance technology.

Tasks: (1) To use different XML schemas for digitally representing the content of law and regulations; (2) To use different “Ontology” and “Rule Markup” languages in order to develop interoperable knowledge bases for regulatory compliance; (3) To integrate the products of (2) into (1); and (4) To develop a prototype, Proof-of-Concept or integration of works carried out in (1), (2) and (3).

Student Internship for Immersion Program on Financial Innovative Systems - Regulatory Technologies – Business Analytics (M/F)

This is a learning opportunity for outstanding students formally engaged in University programmes around the world. The topics are all hands-on and practical, covering all forms of analytics, from building complex models from data to using different tools and engineering methods; focusing on one or more of the following domains and industries: legal informatics, data analytics, applied statistics, machine learning, big data and high performance computing infrastructures (open software solutions, HANA and Bluemix environments leading to cloud deployments); financial services innovative technologies, regulatory technologies, industry 4.0 and digital transformation in manufacturing, algorithms and software prototypes, coding and more.

You will not be expected to do all the above areas but you need to be passionate and hard-working, have a serious interest and minimum competence in some industry (finance or manufacturing or information technology or to be an attorney with strong technology interests or ready to address privacy or regulatory compliance in any industry). You need to have a strong career aspiration to work in some core subjects that emerge in the labour markets around the world, namely, business analytics or legal matters (privacy, regulations for different sectors), or have a strong background in (or learn more) applied statistics or in implementation of software of machine learning or cognitive systems ideas.

The immersion program aspires to provide you with a unique opportunity to learn and be of service in concrete activities, working on real-life problems that will help you prepare for your future employment or innovation aspirations (students interested in growing their own start-ups are very welcome too).

During the period of your immersion, you will be part of several ‘hackatons’ and ‘insightatons’, particularly those of you with the aspirations of working in analytics and applications in financial services and industry 4.0 problems.

Bachelor or Master student internship in “Software development for Life Cycle Assessment” (M/F)

The "Environmental Research and Innovation" (ERIN) department of LIST has an opening for an Intern position. The intern will be integrated in the Life Cycle Sustainability and Risk Assessment (LiSRA) Unit, which develops knowledge, transferable (software) technologies and practical methods for the integrative evaluation and management of the sustainability and toxicological risks of human driven systems.
The Life Cycle Sustainability and Risk Assessment (LiSRA) unit of the Environmental Research and Innovation (ERIN) is developing "ECOPACT", a software tool for simplified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), enabling companies, in particular SMEs, to obtain an environmental assessment of their product(s) with low investment of time and resources. A generic version of the "service as a software" is existing as a web application.
This first version supports eco-design initiatives in companies. A variant is being developed, dedicated to obtaining LCA results for environmental communication in accordance with the standard EN15804.

The aim of the internship project is to reinforce the structure of the software's code in order to stabilize it and to facilitate the programming of new functionalities. This is a pre-requisite for the further development of the software.

The internship will include the following main tasks:

Manual testing
Writing test cases based on existing functionality in the application
Writing automated UI tests
Stress testing
Fixing code quality issues using FindBugs
Minor development tasks
Minor continuous integration tasks

Master or Bachelor student Internship in Elaboration of graphical interface of a composite material software (M/F)

Bachelor or master student internship in Big Data technologies for Remote Sensing Data exploitation (M/F)

The "Environmental Research and Innovation" (ERIN) department of LIST has an opening for an Intern position.
The intern will be integrated in the e-Science unit, which focuses on data analytics & visualisation and their application to environmental and biological sciences.
There are more and more sensors that collect data about our environment. Remotely sensed imagery is one of the most promising, very fast growing sources of such data. The Copernicus Sentinels e.g. will soon produce 10TB of open data per day, such as SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and Optical images of high quality.

This data can be combined with “in-situ” data from airborn devices, and other sources.
The exploitation of this data is a huge challenge. The sheer volume is one of the biggest. Furthermore, a lot of “algorithmic intelligence” is necessary to benefit from the new quality of the raw material that comes more frequently, with higher resolution and from more sources.

ERIN is working on many aspects of the necessary innovation in this fast growing domain. From optimized and new algorithms for image processing up to infrastructure and general data analytical platforms for remote sensing and related data. The necessary “Big Data” software infrastructure is investigated, designed and put in place by ERIN’s E-Science unit.

The student will contribute to this ongoing effort by examining the state-of-the-art “Big-Data” technologies (based on Hadoop, Apache Spark, In-Memory computing, etc.) in the specific field of the analysis of remote sensing data.

What are the current technology stacks used in order to manage and exploit earth observation data? How do their accelerate the production and increase the quality of the analytical results? What are their pros and cons?

Bachelor or Master student Internship in Tangible User Interface hardware (M/F)

Perform a technology review on existing solutions
Develop the concept and design of the interactive tabletop
Build a working proof of concept including a demo application
Document the activities performed and transfer the knowledge acquired, possibly through a scientific publication

Bachelor or Master student Internship in Tangible User Interfaces (M/F)

Tangible User Interfaces (TUI’s) capitalize on interactions based on physical objects and the physical space. A popular setup of TUIs is the interactive tabletop: physical objects can be manipulated on a table to interact with an application. Digital visualizations and feedback are projected onto the table or on an additional screen. ReacTIVision (http://reactivision.sourceforge.net/) is an existing open source computer vision platform, tracking fiducial markers attached to the physical objects.
To date, LIST has developed a series of tangible tabletop applications including geospatial applications and educational simulation environments
Your mission is to extend the existing optical tracking software reacTIVision with new computer vision methods to support the detection of new object shapes.
You will complete the following tasks:

Perform a technology review on existing solutions
Get familiar with reacTIVision and tangible user interfaces
Design and develop the markers and related recognition methods
Build a working prototype including a demo application
Document the activities performed and transfer the knowledge acquired, possibly through a scientific publication

Master student internship in ElectroChemical Pattern Replication (M/F)

The successful candidate will join the Materials Research and Technology (MRT) department, which catalyses the translation of cutting-edge research on smart materials towards industrial innovation.
The aim of the internship is to contribute to the knowledge development of the ECPR (ElectroChemical Pattern Replication) processes. ECPR is a lithography based technique which allows the galvanic growth of micro- and nano- structured metallic features over large scale samples. The candidate will have to determine the appropriated electrochemical filling conditions of the ECPR molds as well as to determine how the key parameters (pressure, mold filling, etc…) interplay to lead to a good ECPR transfer (in term of roughness, thickness uniformity, etc). He will also contribute to the development of smaller size similar equipment. The targeted metallic features will be copper and nickel alloys based structures. The results gain by the candidate will directly be useful for an ongoing R&D project.

Sample characterisations will mainly be done with optical microscopy, mechanical profilometry, scanning electronic microscopy. Chemical composition characterisations of the films will be done with the onsite available techniques (EDX, TOF-SIMS and XPS eventually).

Master Internship in Polymer chemistry and Polymer processing (M/F)

The Materials Research and Technology Department (MRT) translates cutting-edge materials research into applicable technology, with about 150 collaborators. For this, the department cultivates close relationships and joint projects with both academic and industrial partners, and contributes to Luxembourg's and Europe's innovation agenda in Materials Research and Technology.
The internship position will assist our ongoing investigations on polymer blending and polymer modification. Focus will be put on the following tasks:

Polymer blending
Polymer reactive modification and blending
Characterization of the properties of the resulting materials
Potentially : ageing resistance characterization of those blends

This internship will consist in exploring a new aspect of our investigations: the addition of biobased polymers (such as aliphatic polyesters: PLA, PBS or potentially starch) in matrices of commodity plastics (e.g. PVC, PET, PVDF, PMMA, PC…) will be evaluated. Besides reactive conmpatibilization will be run.

Functional properties (mechanical, transparency, fire resistance, scratch resistance, UV resistance …) shall be connected to physico-chemical structure using different techniques (e.g GPC, IRTF, DSC, TGA …).

Finally, a selection of potential applications for the best blends should be envisaged.

Master Student Internship in Visual Sequence Mining (M/F)

The "Environmental Research and Innovation" (ERIN) department of LIST has an opening for an Intern position. The intern will be integrated in the e-Science unit, which focuses on data analytics & visualization and their applications.
Society at all levels is creating massive amounts of data at unprecedented rates. In particular, the share of unstructured data including text, audio and video, has become dominant. The automation of information extraction from large document collections is clearly a necessary step towards letting the user digest and make sense of their content. Traditional text mining approaches adopt a bag-of-words model where the words occurring in documents are taken as features, i.e. documents are considered as sets of words, without any notion of order. In contrast, sequential patterns retain the sequential nature of textual data and can be leveraged efficiently in the context of text classification. One of the most recurrent drawbacks of sequential pattern mining is yet the overwhelming number of resulting patterns.

During this internship, the successful candidate will investigate the use of state-of-the-art interactive data visualizations to carry out post-hoc analyses of sequential pattern mining results. The implemented system will allow the user to see, in situ, which documents match the patterns. The system will be evaluated against state-of-the-art competitors in the topic modelling field. In particular, the intern is expected to interact with LIST researchers specialized in plant cell wall biology in order to develop a tool supporting their literature review work.

Master student internship in Molecular Microbiology (M/F)

Better understand how catchments store and release water and chemical or microbial pollutants
Develop innovative technological solutions and new tools for keeping our water resources safe and secure
Develop knowledge and transferable technologies for sustainable water management

The goal of this M.Sc. project is to characterize microbial pathogens, and especially the food- and waterborne pathogen Campylobacter sp., isolated from surface water and sediments, using a whole-genome sequencing approach. This project is part of an international collaboration with partners from France and Luxembourg, concerning the (re-)mobilisation of chemical and microbial contaminants in water resources related to sediments and hydro-climatological parameters.

The work will be developed by the candidate according to the following work plan :

Definition of thesis structure (problem statement, objectives, expected outcomes) and literature review
Application of a whole-genome sequencing workflow for bacteria, using the Illumina (MiSeq) technology
Analysis of the genomic dataset using bioinformatics tools applied to microbial genomes; quantification of potential sources of surface water contamination with Campylobacter sp.; environmental health-related risk analysis
Participation in the detection of microbial pathogens in environmental (water) samples
Optimization of the overall workflow and procedures
Final project thesis manuscript and defence

Master student Internship in forest hydrology (M/F)

As a key player in research and innovation in Luxembourg, the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) covers with its employees the domains of materials, environment and IT. As an RTO (Research and Technology Organisation) and with its interdisciplinary impact-driven approach, LIST contributes to the development of Luxembourg’s economy and society.
Context of intervention

The successful candidate will join the “Environmental Research and Innovation” (ERIN) department. With a team of more than 170 scientists and engineers from life science, environmental science, and IT science, the department has the necessary interdisciplinary knowledge and skills to tackle major environmental challenges our society is facing today: climate change mitigation, ecosystem resilience, sustainable energy systems, efficient use of renewable resources, environmental pollution prevention and control.

Background and mission of the internship

The hydrological processes play a crucial role in the sustainable management of the forest ecosystems. As an example, they control the availability and exchange of nutrients at the interface between the regolith and the vegetation. Identification of water flow paths and quantification of water fluxes within the regolith is essential to understand the potential loss of nutrients to the rivers.

The objective of this internship is to quantify the nutrients and related trace element export to the groundwater and streamwater in a forest ecosystem. The selected candidate will combine the models NUTSFOR (to estimate transpiration fluxes) and HYDRUS-1D (to estimate drainage fluxes in the regolith profile) in order to better constraint the water exchanges between the regolith and the vegetation. She/he could rely on five years of intense hydrological (rainfall, throughfall, soil moisture and temperature, groundwater level, stream discharge) and chemical (nutrient and trace element concentrations) monitoring performed on a forest experimental site in Luxembourg.

Moreover, the selected candidate will be involved in the development of new field experiments for monitoring vegetation activity in forests (sap flow sensors + dendrometers).

Master student internship in thermal infrared remote sensing

Thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing is an important information source to assess ecological processes at the landscape scale, for instance evapotranspiration. However, satellite TIR data is available only at relatively coarse spatial resolution (e.g., 100 m for Landsat-8).
Innovative image fusion and thermal unmixing approaches have been developed with the aim to increase the spatial resolution of TIR images. These approaches will be tested, validated and compared with airborne TIR data and ground measurements available for a medium size catchment in Luxembourg.
The aim is to produce high spatial resolution maps of land surface temperature (LST) from TIR and VNIR satellite data using existing thermal unmixing methods. Patterns of LST will be linked with available ground measurements of soil temperature, soil moisture and topography information. The tasks will involve:

Pre-processing (geometric and atmospheric correction) of TIR and VNIR satellite data
Implementation of thermal unmixing methods
Validation of the high resolution LST maps with airborne data
Analysis of spatial LST patterns at landscape scale

Master student internship in Remote sensing (Reduction of predictive uncertainty in hydrological modelling using satellite soil moisture observation)

The successful candidate will join the “Environmental Research and Innovation” (ERIN) department. With a team of more than 170 scientists and engineers from life science, environmental science, and IT science, the department has the necessary interdisciplinary knowledge and skills to tackle major environmental challenges our society is facing today: climate change mitigation, ecosystem resilience, sustainable energy systems and efficient use of renewable resources, environmental pollution prevention and control.
The successful candidate will join the "Remote sensing and eco-hydrological modelling" group. The collaboration between remote sensing scientists and hydraulic modellers is targeting the extraction of hydrology-related information from satellite Earth Observation (EO) data as well as the reduction of numerical modelling-based hydrological predictions.
Motivated by climate change and its impact on the scarcity or excess of water in many parts of the world, several agencies and research institutions have taken initiatives in monitoring and predicting the hydrologic cycle at global scale. Such a monitoring/prediction effort is important for understanding the vulnerability to extreme hydrological events and providing early warnings. This can be based on a combination of hydro-meteorological models and remote sensing, in which satellite data can be used as forcing data, as calibration datasets or for regularly updating the model states. Many advances have been made in these domains and the near future will bring new opportunities with respect to remote sensing as a result of the increasing number of satellites suitable for monitoring water resources.

In the context of the internship, the main objective will be to investigate to what extent innovative techniques that allow for the estimation of soil moisture from satellite can help in reducing errors and uncertainties in hydro-meteorological modelling.

A conceptual hydrologic model requiring limited computational efforts will be used, thereby enabling early warnings for large areas. Such a model is generally calibrated using only discharge measurements. During his/her internship the candidate will set up a multi-objective calibration procedure based on both discharge measurements and satellite soil moisture observations in order to evaluate the added value of remotely sensed soil moisture data in the calibration process.

As a follow up of the internship, there is potentially an opportunity for the successful candidate to receive funding for a PhD grant in the same area of research.

The candidate will likely use the Murrumbidgee basin in Australia as a test case.

Master student internship in Flood mapping algorithm using optical and SAR data

The successful candidate will join the “Environmental Research and Innovation” (ERIN) department. With a team of more than 170 scientists and engineers from life science, environmental science, and IT science, the department has the necessary interdisciplinary knowledge and skills to tackle major environmental challenges our society is facing today: climate change mitigation, ecosystem resilience, sustainable energy systems and efficient use of renewable resources, environmental pollution prevention and control. The successful candidate will join the "Remote sensing and eco-hydrological modelling" group. The collaboration between remote sensing scientists and hydraulic modellers is targeting the extraction of hydrology-related information from satellite Earth Observation (EO) data as well as the reduction of numerical modelling-based hydrological predictions.
Frequently updated flood extent maps represent crucial information in the framework of disaster risk reduction and flood risk mitigation. However such maps cannot be obtained from field surveys alone.

In this general context, spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors such as the ones on board Sentinel-1 and COSMO-Skymed represent an important source of globally consistent and coherent information due to the microwave radiation’s sensitivity to the presence of surface water. Moreover, they provide synoptic views and are capable of quasi all-weather day/night observations. In SAR images, a high contrast between flooded and non-flooded terrain is due to the fact that smooth water surfaces reflect the incident radar signal in the specular direction.

Optical images such as Sentinel-2 and Landsat, can be used as well. Efficient methods for mapping flood extent using optical images rely on the possibility to distinguish water and non-water areas based on reflectance characteristics at different bands. Identification of water bodies can be conducted using indexes extracted from multispectral images, such as Normalized Difference Water Index.

The remote sensing scientists and hydraulic engineers at LIST have recently developed an automatic flood mapping algorithm based on SAR images. In the framework of the proposed internship we aim to continue developing the algorithm with the objective to increase its performances, especially in urban areas. To this aim, it is planned to include optical imagery in the processing chain in order to increase the classification accuracy.

As a member of the team the candidate will further contribute to the ongoing effort to create a collection of flood extent maps at global scale.

Master student internship in Evapotranspiration Partitioning

As a key player in research and innovation in Luxembourg, the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) covers the domains of materials, environment and IT. As a Research and Technology Organisation and with its interdisciplinary impact-driven approach, LIST contributes to the development of Luxembourg’s economy and society. The successful candidate will join the “Environmental Research and Innovation” department. With a team of more than 170 scientists and engineers from life science, environmental science, and IT science, the department has the necessary interdisciplinary knowledge and skills to tackle major environmental challenges our society is facing today: climate change mitigation, ecosystem resilience, sustainable energy systems, efficient use of renewable resources, environmental pollution prevention and control.
One of the major uncertainties in catchment or regional water budget originates due to dubious measurements or modeling of transpiration (ET) components of evapotranspiration (E). Theoretical approaches and measurements from multiples disciplines revealed the occurrence of complex feedback between ET, soil moisture, and biophysical state variables that modulate the soil, vegetation and atmosphere interactions. These feedbacks are nonlinear and put limitations to directly model ET by using the land surface parameterisations.

However, partitioning of E into its component fluxes in physically-based analytical modeling framework could be advantageous due its capacity to overcome the uncertainties in empirical parameterizations that are generally used to specify some of the internal states governing transpiration. Such modeling efforts need rigorous investigations before being used for large scale applications.

The proposed research will extensively test and evaluate the E partitioning framework of a physically-based E model (STIC1.2: Surface Temperature Initiated Closure, version 1.2) over a breadth of hydrologically heterogeneous landscapes and also across aridity gradients of Australia, North America and Africa in order to accurately characterize transpiration in a variety of natural ecosystems. This involves, (1) combining thermal remote sensing with Penman-Monteith and Shuttleworth-Wallace model to partition E and estimating evaporation (EE) and transpiration, (2) testing and evaluating the STIC1.2 E partitioning scheme using both tower as well as satellite-based land surface temperature, radiative and meteorological forcings, and (3) quantify uncertainty in ET estimates due to data and modeling uncertainties.

Master student internship in Remote Sensing (Creating water depth maps using satellite Earth Observation data)

We are seeking a highly motivated individual to join the “Environmental Research and Innovation” (ERIN) department. With a team of more than 170 scientists and engineers from life science, environmental science, and IT science, the department has the necessary interdisciplinary knowledge and skills to tackle major environmental challenges our society is facing today: climate change mitigation, ecosystem resilience, sustainable energy systems, efficient use of renewable resources, environmental pollution prevention and control. The successful candidate will integrate the “Remote sensing and eco-hydrological modelling” group.

The collaboration between the teams’s remote sensing scientists and hydraulic modellers is targeting the extraction of hydrology-related information from satellite Earth Observation (EO) data as well as the reduction of numerical modelling-based hydrological predictions.
Enhanced methods for monitoring temporal and spatial variations of water depth in rivers and floodplains are very important in operational water management. Currently, variations of water elevation can be estimated indirectly at the land-water interface using sequences of satellite EO imagery in combination with topographic data.

In recent years high-resolution digital elevation models (DEM) and satellite EO data have become more readily available at global scale. The successful applicant will join our internationally leading team working on developing a recently introduced approach for efficiently converting remote sensing-derived flood extent maps into water depth maps using a floodplain’s topography information.
These developments should enable large scale and near real-time applications and only require readily available EO data, a DEM and the river network as input data. The ongoing research targets the implementation of a hierarchical split-based approach that subdivides a drainage network into segments of variable length with evidence of uniform flow.

Further testing should evaluate the impact of the resolution and accuracy of the EO data and the DEM on the results. For this reason different DEM data sets, including the recently published high resolution high precision TanDEM-X data set, will be considered in the processing chain. Moreover, different satellite EO data sets, such as Sentinel-1, TerraSAR-X and Envisat ASAR will be used and results inter-compared.

A comprehensive evaluation of the obtained water depth maps with hydrodynamic modelling results and in situ measured water level recordings will be carried out on a number of test sites in the United Kingdom and Mozambique.

Master student internship in "Waste Water Treatment Plant Management" (M/F)

Better understand how catchments store and release water and pollutants, using new generations of environmental tracers and remote sensing methods
Develop innovative technological solutions and new real-time prediction tools for keeping our water resources safe and secure
Develop knowledge and transferable (software) technologies and practical methods for sustainable urban waste water management

Background

The sludge management in Waste Water Treatment Plants (WWTPs) is a cost-intensive operation. It can consume 20% to 60% of the total operating costs. The sludge management is handled through different stabilization technologies, such as aerobic digestion, anaerobic digestion, chemical stabilization, thermal stabilization (incineration). The management of such technological solutions requires the control of operational parameters (temperature, chemical additive, digestion time, ...). Often, in WWTPs, a SCADA system collects a huge set of information in real time. In order to achieve optimal control solutions, the decision makers need a tool/methodology to detect inefficiencies to decide for more optimal solutions.

Internship objectives

The goal of this M.Sc. project is to develop a data-driven decision making approach for the management and control of the sludge stabilization process in WWTPs. In his/her work, the student will review the literature to identify the most important operational parameters and evaluate the performance of the process. The student will develop a methodology based on a virtual environment and will test the approach on a data of real WWTPs.
The work will be developed by the candidate according to this working plan:

1)   Define preliminary Thesis structure (Problem statement, objectives, expected outcomes)
2)   Literature review of important KPIs and sensors
3)   Set up a simulated WWTP using available software (for example Matlab Simulink, Simba, STOAT )
4)   Develop a method/approach to compute and analyse KPIs of simulated WWTP
5)   Test method/approach for KPIs on data base of an existing WWTP
6)   Write thesis

Partners

LIST
University of Valencia (Spain)
University of Luxembourg
University in which the student is enrolled

Master Student Internship in Advanced Materials(M/F)

Context of intervention

The electrocaloric (EC) effect is a variation of temperature appearing in some highly polarisable materials when one applies an external electric field. This temperature change is reversible. In the context of finding new solutions for cooling applications, this EC effect could play an important in the near future as 1) its cooling power could be very efficient and 2) there is no need for using greenhouse effect refrigerant gases. However, this solid state effect needs a lot of investigations before being assessed properly.
Trainee mission Title: Heat pump based on the electrocaloric effect

In this study, we propose to develop a heat pump prototype based on EC materials. We have already selected optimized materials exhibiting large EC heat variations. These materials have to be shaped and arranged in order to exhibit large heat exchange with a dielectric fluid carrying heat in the pump prototype. Heat exchange, energy efficiency and large temperature variation are keywords in this internship. Temperature change and electrical characteristics of the used EC elements will also be determined in this study. LIST is well equipped in terms of specific characterizations – dielectric set-ups, IR camera, DSC – and owns a large and state-of-the-art platform dedicated to structural and chemical characterizations.

LIST has become a reference in Europe on electrocaloric materials, thanks to different collaborations and internal studies [X. Moya et al. Nature Physics 11 (2015) 202, D. Sette at al., APL Mater. 4, 091101 (2016), Liu et al., ACS Energy Letters (2016) and Liu et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. (2016)]. The intern will be part of an international and strongly motivated team and will have the funding to develop the different set-up improvements required.

Internship “Computational Implementation of Bio-Centric Metrics”(H/F)

The Life Cycle Sustainability and Risk Assessment (LiSRA) Unit of the Environmental Research and Innovation department (ERIN) of LIST is developing knowledge, transferable (software) technologies and practical methods for the integrative evaluation and management of the sustainability and toxicological risks of human driven systems. Its final purpose is to foster sustainable, technology driven eco-innovation in industry and to support sustainability oriented policy-making.

One of the major challenges concerns the assessment of man-made systems and activities from a bio-centric perspective. One of the indicators currently used to conduct this assessment is the Emergy, which accounts for the value of resources by considering nature's environmental work contributing to the availability of natural resources and their use in economic system. Among the cross-cutting topics of interest for LiSRA is the assessment of supply chains from an environmental, economic and societal standpoint. To this aim, a software prototype named SCALEM® has been developed for the implementation of Emergy calculation in complex technosphere systems.

The successful candidate will join the “Environmental Research and Innovation” (ERIN) department. With a team of more than 170 scientists and engineers from life science, environmental science, and IT science, the department has the necessary interdisciplinary knowledge and skills to tackle major environmental challenges our society is facing today: climate change mitigation, ecosystem resilience, sustainable energy systems, and efficient use of renewable resources, environmental pollution prevention and control.
The Internship will focus on the enhancement of the software SCALEM®.
More specifically, the candidate will work on two tasks:

Performing a comparison between the software SCALEM® and other existing methods, via the application to a selected case study
Working to the extension of the software SCALEM® to deal with the calculation of Network Analysis indicators. In SCALEM® the whole network representing the studied system is already represented as a graph, but no Network Analysis calculations are currently performed

Stage dans le cadre de l’avant-projet de loi sur la protection des sols et la gestion des sites pollués (H/F)

Le candidat sélectionné rejoindra le département “Environmental Research and Innovation” (ERIN). Avec une équipe forte de plus de 170 scientifiques et ingénieurs dans les secteurs des sciences de la vie, de l’environnement et de l’informatique, le département possède les connaissances et compétences interdisciplinaires pour relever les défis environnementaux majeurs aux quel notre société est confrontée de nos jours : atténuation du changement climatique, résilience des écosystèmes, les énergies durables, utilisation efficace des ressources naturelles, et la prévention et le contrôle de la pollution de l’environnement.
Dans le cadre de ses activités de conseiller du gouvernement en matière de politiques de l’environnement, le département ERIN a élaboré les bases méthodologiques et les principes de développement d’une grille des valeurs limites de concentration en polluants en prévision de l’ exécution de la future loi luxembourgeoise sur la protection des sols et la gestion des sites pollués.
Ce stage portera sur la collecte des données sur les propriétés physico-chimiques et des valeurs de référence toxicologiques (chronique pour la santé humaine) afin de réaliser la détermination de valeurs de déclenchement dans les sols pour une liste donnée de substances chimiques. Les résultats seront ensuite compilés dans un rapport entièrement rédigé en français.

Stage dans le cadre de l’avant-projet de loi sur la protection des sols et la gestion des sites pollués (H/F)

Le candidat sélectionné rejoindra le département “Environmental Research and Innovation” (ERIN). Avec une équipe forte de plus de 170 scientifiques et ingénieurs dans les secteurs des sciences de la vie, de l’environnement et de l’informatique, le département possède les connaissances et compétences interdisciplinaires pour relever les défis environnementaux majeurs aux quel notre société est confrontée de nos jours : atténuation du changement climatique, résilience des écosystèmes, les énergies durables, utilisation efficace des ressources naturelles, et la prévention et le contrôle de la pollution de l’environnement.
Dans le cadre de ses activités de conseiller du gouvernement en matière de politiques de l’environnement, le département ERIN a élaboré les bases méthodologiques et les principes de développement d’une grille des valeurs limites de concentration en polluants en prévision de l’ exécution de la future loi luxembourgeoise sur la protection des sols et la gestion des sites pollués.
Ce stage portera sur la collecte de données physico-chimiques, écotoxicologiques et toxicologiques de divers biphényles polychlorés (PCB), ainsi que sur la détermination de valeurs de déclenchement dans les sols pour ces mêmes substances en tenant compte de différents récepteurs qui sont les écosystèmes, la santé humaine et les eaux souterraines. Les résultats seront ensuite compilés dans un rapport entièrement rédigé en français.

Internship on Data flows in Smart Tourism (M/F)

LIST has developed an IT service platform (smart tools deployed on the web associated with mobile apps) offering travellers customized experiences, tailored to their preferences and their activities needs and constraints, not only at their holiday destination but from the moment they leave home till they are back, which includes mobility aspects. The platform is intended to be exploited in multiple touristic segments and scenario; one of these is Business Tourism.
We plan to extend the actual platform by developing a set of additional software components for smart tourism, fostering service personalisation and dynamicity.

The objective of the internship is to design, prototype and implement the touristic activities component.
Tasks include:

Design the data model for tourism activities.
Automate the use of social networks data for the identification of touristic activities and their evaluation.
Design and implement a crowd-sourced data gathering process.

Master student intern in Flame-Retardant polymer composite (M/F)

Subject

Flame retardancy is one of the specific requirements for materials used in industry. One of the methods widely used to retard flammability of polymeric materials consists of adding flame retardants to the polymer matrix. The general objective of this project is to develop new flame retardant formulations for polymeric materials.

Tasks

Definition of the new halogen-free flame retardants systems
Polymer composites processing and characterization
Study of thermal degradation and flame retardant properties of FR polymer composites

Internship in Computer Science (M/F)

The Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, and more especially the Trusted Supply Chain Unit, is interested in understanding and modelling the impact of the privacy on the information system and in developing a dedicated tool to support the private sector in carrying on specific privacy issues.

The internship will cover all the phases of a prototype development, from the specification analysis up to the deployment and validation. In this context, the objectives of the internship are:

Analysis and understand the requirements of privacy from scientific and professional sources.
Development of a dedicated prototype to fulfil the privacy requirements in the field of healthcare domain. This prototype will consist in a module for an existing models repository application,
Test and validation of the solution based on real values extracted from the ground. The prototype will be tested in the frame of the Maestro project and will aim at sustaining the privacy of sensitive data collected through medical sensors and probes in a living lab environment.