LIST’s summer top stories

Every summer, LIST presents the highlights of the past year. If you missed our top stories, here's a little catch-up session.

Top story #1

Two composite structure students become LIST success story

Composite structures are widely used in many fields of engineering and there’s a major challenge in designing such materials requiring skills from a wide range of fields. So how can researchers in all the skills needed for composite structure exploration be found? That’s where the FULLCOMP project, funded by the European Horizon 2020 Programme, comes in, training a total of twelve early-career researchers with a cross-sector and interdisciplinary approach within an international framework, helping to improve the design of composite structures. LIST, as part of the programme, had the pleasure of welcoming two PhD student researches. Gaetano Giunta explained what FULLCOMP is all about.

Top story #2

Meet Industry 4.0 challenges thanks to LIST Data Analytics

At the dawn of the Industry 4.0, also known as “Connected Factory”, companies are seeking to optimise their decision-making process and businesses by making use of cutting-edge technologies. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, following those of mechanisation, mass production and automation, then becomes synonymous with digital transformation. At the core of a competitive interconnected global system, in which humans, machinery, systems and products are in constant communication, is data. Each event, action or value chain process represents key data which can be leveraged for better decision making, smarter production lines and optimised production flows. LIST developed this strong knowhow, which has already made it possible to support many of its national partners with their digital transformation, such as Ceratizit. Uzma Iffat, researcher in Data Analytics at LIST, tells us more about this successful Luxembourgish partnership.

Top story #3

LIST expertise in the service of NASA and ESA collaborative missions

In the light of increased climate warming, land surface drying and unsustainable draining of ground water, the availability of water resources is a major concern. It raises worldwide challenges, not only because of the impacts of water stress on ecosystems, but also due to water use rationalisation, consumption and management. Driven by his curiosity and passion for impact, LIST researcher Kaniska Mallick has developed a new state-of-the-art thermal remote sensing model, which makes it possible to monitor with high accuracy the phenomenon of evapotranspiration (ET) thanks to satellite data. Following a series of peer-reviewed international publications, this significant contribution opened the path to an ambitious and interdisciplinary project between ESA and LIST through NASA.

Top story #4

Data challenges of fusing remote sensing with ‘chaos’ of social media

Imagine if it was possible to combine data from sources such as satellites and radar, with the plethora of information hailing from people’s Twitter feed or Facebook posts, in order to try to obtain more accurate weather forecast maps? That’s the aim of LIST project PUBLIMAPE, one of the Institute’s recent success stories that has received FNR funding. LIST’s Pierrick Bruneau explained the thinking behind the PUBLIMAPE idea. “We know about getting satellite visible radar images to analyse information about floods, wild fires, all these kinds of phenomena. My area is quite different because I work mostly on machine learning and data science with user-generated content, so analysing text and multimedia data”.

Top story #5

Exploring the origins and fate of lunar water

 “That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”. This famous quote from Neil Armstrong, who in the late 1960s was the first man to walk on the Moon, has profoundly marked our history and knowledge. These first manned Apollo missions, however, led scientists to believe that the Moon was a bone-dry celestial body. It is only very recently that new exploration missions have revealed the existence of water ice pools in the polar regions of the Moon. At the dawn of space mining missions, this discovery opens new horizons and raises new research questions, to which Veneranda López Días, researcher at LIST, is trying to answer through pioneering projects with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Luxembourg Space Agency (LSA).

Top story #6

Making building more efficient and comfortable for occupants

Most of us have worked in stuffy, noisy, cold, hot, inefficient, or uncomfortable workplaces at one time or another. Sometimes it’s the building at fault, sometimes the behaviour of its occupants. The European Directive on Building Performance, related to increasing the energy efficiency of EU building stock, was revised in 2018, promoting more renovation as well as smarter buildings. In this context, LIST recently launched a research project entitled Post Occupancy Evaluation SYstem or POESY for short, to tackle issues surrounding uncomfortable or inefficient buildings. Principal Investigator from LIST’s Environmental Research and Innovation (ERIN) Department Annie Guerriero explained the idea behind the project.

Top story #7

A LIST model to help companies take advantage of data economy

At the centre of much news and controversies, the use of personal data is an issue known to all. The introduction in 2016 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by the European Union has nevertheless made it possible to provide a legal framework within which both private and public companies are subject to rights and obligations. Following a first collaboration with the CNPD (National Commission for Data Protection - 2017) to extract legal requirements relating to GDPR, LIST researchers Stéphane Cortina and Philippe Valoggia are developing a reference model from which it is possible to assess the technical and organisational capacity of a company to protect personal data.