Luxembourg delegation to Japan: LIST highlights its materials and IT activities

On 26-30 November 2017, the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) participated in a State visit to Tokyo (JP).

The Luxembourg delegation was composed of Their Royal Highnesses the Grand Duke and his daughter, Princess Alexandra, Luxembourg's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy, Étienne Schneider, Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, Jean Asselborn, and Pierre Gramegna, Minister of Finance. In addition, an economic delegation composed of a hundred representatives of the business world accompanied the Luxembourg head of state. LIST was represented on both IT and materials sides, respectively by Prof. Eric Dubois, Director of the IT for Innovative Services (ITIS) department, and Francis Bell, Materials Senior Partnership officer. In this multi-sectoral mission, LIST’s business programme focused on Information & Communication Technology (ICT), Smart cities, industry 4.0 and manufacturing.

On 27 November 2017, together with members of the delegation, LIST attended the Japan-Luxembourg Business Forum. In this occasion was celebrated the 90th anniversary of the diplomatic relationship between Japan and Luxembourg. Over the last decades, the bilateral economic exchange had steadily been growing. During the conference, the current economic portrait of Luxembourg was presented to the audience and Luxembourg companies, as well as the institute, were able to establish contacts or deepen their relations with local companies in areas such as logistics, tourism and Information Technology (IT). 

New Opportunities and Challenges at Space conference

On 29 November was held the Luxembourg-Japan Space Conference dedicated to the “New opportunities and challenges in space”. In parallel with the conference, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between LIST represented by Francis Bell and the Tokyo-based space robotics company ispace Europe S.A. represented by Takeshi Hakamada, founder and chief executive officer (CEO). 

Through this MoU, ispace and LIST intend to strengthen their cooperation towards a first joint explorative mission, called "roving spectrometer", with the objective of prospecting lunar resources. In order to get there, the partners have agreed to conduct a series of joint research projects. A first project called MELUSINE, funded by the Luximpulse National Programme for Space, has already started in November 2017. A second project, having recently received a CORE PPP grant by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) will start in early 2018. With all this, there is reason to believe that these projects are the beginning of a long-term and fruitful collaboration between both partners.

Luxembourg is the first country in Europe to have a law on the exploration and use of space resources. The Grand Duchy is therefore seeking partner countries to discuss a legal framework at the international level. Agreements having already been concluded with Portugal and the United Arab Emirates, Japan is the third country with which such a cooperation agreement has been signed.

Following a well-organized programme, Francis Bell met with representatives of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to discuss on possible future collaboration activities. 

Multi-sectoral visits for LIST representatives

In the framework of the economic mission between Japan and Luxembourg, Prof. Dubois had the opportunity to visit FANUC Corporation, the international leader in industrial automation systems with head office in Japan and European Headquarter located in Luxembourg. The visit was inspiring for the institute's representative as he visited the company gathering about 4,000 employees and discovered about 4,000 robots in action building other robots. FANUC Corporation is good example of the implementation of an Industry 4.0. strategy privileging the use of IT for the preventive maintenance and reparation management of its machines, as well as the flexible organisation of the whole product and service supply chains.

At the end of the week, Prof Dubois visited two universities. At Keio university, he was introduced to R&D associated with connected vehicules and the management of fleet in urban areas. At the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Prof. Dubois visited the High-Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure  and was introduced to the development of new HPC dedicated to Big Data and artificial intelligence (a project quite similar to the one led by Luxembourg at European level).

LIST’s representatives also visited Toyota Mirai Showroom that was organised by Luxinnovation as part of Automotive Cluster. The Japanese government and companies like Toyota and Iwatani are working together to build a network of hydrogen fuelling stations-there are around a dozen across the country already, with the goal of 35 up and running by 2020. A big coming out party for the hydrogen society is planned for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, when hydrogen-fuelled buses will ferry athletes and fans around Olympic event sites (source fortune.com).

LIST ended this State visit with a meeting at the EU-Japan Centre for industrial cooperation to discuss on potential collaborative frameworks related to R&D activities between LIST and / or Japanese research structures.

In a nutshell, this enlightening State visit enabled LIST to present its activities in ICT, Smart Cities and Manufacturing industry to the main stakeholders in charge of international relations between Japan and Europe, and to discuss on future interconnections and on a common framework programme.

> For any further information about LIST visiting Japan, contact Prof. Dubois or Francis Bell via email.