Luxembourg
participation
in European
research
and innovation
projects
Research in Luxembourg –
a remarkable breakthrough
By Georges BINGEN
Over the past few years, public investment in research in Luxembourg has taken an
enormous step forward. In parallel, the quality of Luxembourg research has increased
considerably. This is demonstrated by Luxembourg’s participation in European research
programmes, which has almost doubled since 2007: 223 project participations in the 7th Framework
Programme (FP7) during 2007-2013, compared to 104 during FP6 in 2002-2007. The competition
between research teams is such that simply being selected for funding is synonymous with
excellence.
Participation in European research programmes has allowed the Grand Duchy’s research organisations to create or
strengthen international collaborations, and thus to contribute to enhancing the recognition of their researchers.
International cooperation is a basic requirement for European funding, and represents the greatest benefit for participants.
The funding programmes, in place since 1984, have substantially stimulated international cooperation in the research
field and enabled the best institutes to collaborate in order to achieve results they never could have obtained on their
own at national level.
For a country such as Luxembourg with a young research sector, participation in this type of international collaborations
has been essential. It was also crucial for other participants to recognise Luxembourg research institutes as equal
partners providing added value to projects. The remarkable increase in the number of projects financed indicates that
this quality test has been passed.
This brochure presents a range of projects co-funded by the European Union in which Luxembourg organisations
participate. Both the quality of the research conducted and the results obtained hold much promise for the future.
As the European Commission’s representative in Luxembourg and with my background as a researcher, I would like to
wish the Luxembourg institutes every success for the new European research framework programme, Horizon 2020,
which will cover the period 2014-2020.
Georges Bingen is the European Commission’s representative in Luxembourg
AMST
Advanced Multi-physics Simulation
Technology
Through the AMST project, the University of
Luxembourg has benefited from European
research funding.
Multi-physics – the great unknown
A large number of engineering applications involve granular material or a
particulate phase in combination with a gaseous or liquid phase. Applications for
this kind of materials mix can be found in diverse fields such as the pharmaceutical
industry, the food and processing industry, energy production or systems biology.
Everyday products such as coffee, corn flakes, nuts or fertiliser all depend on this field
of knowledge known as multi-physics.
Common to these applications is that much of the underlying physics is unknown and, to date,
processing is still dominated more by experience than solid knowledge. This is because controlled
experiments often involve inaccessible or hostile environments, such as the combustion of hazardous
waste. These “natural barriers” have so far prevented scientists from gaining deeper knowledge that
could be used to improve design and production processes.
New software to predict multi-physics outcomes
In order to overcome this obstacle, the AMST project is developing a new generation of software. AMST
stands for Advanced Multi-physics Simulation Technology, a type of software that can be used for a
wide range of such complex processes. Besides its versatile use, the software’s main advantage is its
independence from any experimental conditions. Despite this, it has proven its ability to predict very
detailed results. Scientists and engineers then analyse the data obtained in great detail in order to unveil
the underlying physics of the processes involved. With these theoretical insights complementing the
AMST was funded by the European
Commission within the 7th Framework
Programme (FP7) under Grant Agreement
323526.
empirical knowledge, our understanding of multi-physics has been considerably broadened.
Improved industrial design thanks to software-backed insight
There are many different application domains for the software. A first investigation deals with gasification
of wood.
Figure 1: Predicted conversion rates of individual particles during pyrolysis in a packed bed in
conjunction with the tar distribution in the gas phase
The predicted results include both the pyrolysis process of individual particles and the tar concentration
in the gas as a response to the interaction between hot air and wood particles. These results enable the
operation to be estimated for a particular reactor and allow access to details that could not have been
gained through measurements alone. A detailed analysis of results enables engineers to improve reactor
design for higher energy efficiency. Such reactors not only improve operating conditions, but also allow for
a more sustainable use of resources.
A strong international partnership for innovative engineering
These outstanding results were possible thanks to a partnership between Prof. Bernhard Peters
as the principal investigator at the University of Luxembourg, and the German SME inuTech with its
complementary expertise in designing software for multi-physics applications.
Strategic partners from the academic and industrial sectors, namely FLSmidth (Germany), the Lithuanian
Energy Institute (Lithuania) and Paul Wurth (Luxembourg), also made significant contributions thanks to
the expertise and industry-relevant applications that they brought on board. This enabled the AMST
project to close a large technological gap for research and industry, and will contribute significantly to
multi-physics research in Europe. It will make a strong impact on innovative engineering, sustainable
inter-sectorial collaboration and, above all, improve European competitiveness.
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: University of Luxembourg
FP7 Project No.: 323526
€ 444,216
Total costs: EU contribution: € 444,216
Duration: 48 months
(01/01/2013-31/12/2016)
Website: http://inutech.de/amst/
BETAJUDO
Beta-cell function in Juvenile Diabetes
and Obesity
Through the betaJUDO project, the University of
Luxembourg has benefited from European research
funding.
Diabetes: What happens in a young body?
In many countries of the western world, severe obesity is the primary
cause for the increasing number of people who develop type 2 diabetes
already in childhood and adolescence. As a partner of the EU project
betaJUDO, the Luxembourg Centre of Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the
University of Luxembourg is working to track down the causes and processes
of this metabolic disorder. LSCB researchers are analysing extensive data
material obtained in laboratory tests and clinical trials carried out by their
project partners. The long-term goal is to develop drugs that will, if not cure,
then at least halt the development of the disorder and associated health
problems.
The cause of the increase of type 2 diabetes amongst children and adolescents is quite clear:
obesity. But what exactly trigger diabetes in the bodies of overweight children? Researchers do
not have enough information to answer this question. Previous studies have revealed that many of
these children have high levels of insulin during early childhood, but that their insulin secretion then
gradually diminishes until, ultimately, the blood glucose level can no longer be controlled. Experts
suspect that insulin hypersecretion may be a portent of the metabolic disorder – and might hold the
key to better handling obesity and diabetes.
In the betaJUDO project, partners from hospitals, research institutes and pharmaceutical companies
work together to study the role played by insulin-producing islet cells in the pancreas in the course of
the disorder. With its expertise in bioinformatics, the LCSB is chiefly responsible for data processing,
analysis and security. “These tasks form an essential basis for well-substantiated results and their
interpretation,” says Dr Katharina Paulmichl of the University Clinic of Child and Adolescent Medicine
Salzburg, a clinician involved in the study.
This is a Collaborative Project
of the European FP7HEALTH.2011.2.4.3-2 programme.i
Understanding disorder development
Data are firstly obtained from laboratory cell tests. The researchers have already established a cell
system that depicts the course of insulin secretion over a period of time. Initially, the cells release
a great deal of insulin upon corresponding stimulation. Over the course of a few days, the insulin
secretion decreases. A process that takes several years in the body of a child thus happens in the
lab in just a week.
The scientists are studying the metabolism of these cells on several levels. The project partners from
the University of Geneva, for example, determine all proteins that are built within the cell at different
points in time. Scientists from Uppsala University, Sweden, conduct lipidomics and transcriptomics
studies. They measure the lipids, or fats, from the cell and determine which genes are activated in
the cell and transcribed into the messenger molecule RNA.
“In this way, we are trying to understand what metabolic pathways in the cells are potentially affected
by the disorder,” explains Dr Kirsten Roomp of LCSB. “In a second step, we study what happens
when we administer various drugs to the cells.” The tested drugs are currently used for treating
diabetes in adults since there are at present no drugs approved for child therapy.
In the clinical part of the project, data are collected from children who are undergoing medical
treatment for obesity. Using the Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT), for instance, physicians follow
how the insulin secretion of these children changes. They also study the distribution of brown fat
cells in the body and the fatty acid levels in the blood. In addition, by performing DNA analyses, the
researchers hope to identify genes that influence the onset of obesity and diabetes.
Luxembourg-based data analysis
To collect the results from the clinical tests at the respective locations in standardised form, the
LCSB researchers have prepared a data management portal into which physicians can directly enter
their measurement results. “We can thus unify and bundle the collected data from the respective
project partners and amass a larger cohort for subsequent analysis,” says Dr Roomp. “We hope the
laboratory tests will reveal similar metabolic mechanisms to which our DNA analyses also point. This
would give us clues as to new therapeutic targets.”
The plan for the next project phase is to test a first active agent in a clinical trial. The project partners
are currently selecting the best candidate in order to begin the clinical trial with the study of 50
obese children. “With a better fundamental understanding, and therapeutic strategies based upon
it, we ultimately expect an improved treatment for obese children and adolescents,” says Katharina
Paulmichl of Salzburg.
The Seventh Framework Programme for
Research and Technological Development
(FP7) was the European Union’s main financial
instrument to support European research during
the 2007-2013 period. The funding programme
continues under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of €79 billion (2014-2020).i
Participant:
University of Luxembourg
FP7 Project No.:279153
Total costs:
€ 7,900,000
EU contribution:
€ 6,000,000
Duration:
48 months (01/05/2012 01/05/2016)
Website:www.betajudo.org
BUTLER
uBiquitous, secUre internet-of-things with
Location and contExt-awaReness
Through the BUTLER project, University of Luxembourg
has benefited from European research funding.
Towards a secured Internet of Things
In the future, communication will no longer happen only between people,
but will also take place between home appliances, cars, buildings or
more generally any communicative device equipped with sensors and
actuators. In 2020, this “Internet of Things” is expected to enable the exchange
of information between billions of smart objects. The aim of the BUTLER
project was to enable a network of intelligent objects to support people in
their private and working lives.
The Internet of Things offers a wide range of opportunities for new products and services. At the
same time, scientists need to consider new technical challenges, for instance related to the low
power consumption, limited internal memory and narrow wireless communication range of some of
the devices used. A key priority is also to find ways of ensuring the interoperability of devices and
the privacy, security and reliability of data exchange over the Internet. The large number of low-cost
embedded devices involved and the variety of specific network protocols used need to be taken
into account.
The goal of the BUTLER project was to design and demonstrate a secured context-aware
information system, which would operate transparently and seamlessly to create a unified “smart
life” environment for Internet of Things users. BUTLER brought together a consortium of 19 partners
– innovative companies, research and academic institutions, end-user centric service providers
and business experts – from eight European countries: Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy,
Luxembourg, Spain and Switzerland. The Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust
(SnT) of the University of Luxembourg participated through its NetLab team headed by Professor Dr
Thomas Engel to build the necessary foundations for securing the Internet of Things.
BUTLER focused on five “innovation eco-systems” that are part of most people’s daily lives:
smart homes and offices;
smart shopping;
smart mobility and transport;
smart healthcare and wellness; and
smart cities.
A BUTLER for smarter homes and offices
The SnT’s IoT Lab, which was created during the BUTLER project, provided several examples of
Internet of Things network architectures and use cases.
In the smart home/office domain, for instance, ambient intelligence is used to improve the quality of
life of inhabitants, bringing together applications from the areas of energy efficiency, ambient assisted
living and human-building interaction. The IoT Lab designed a complete network architecture based
on 6LowPAN (IPv6 over Low Power Wireless Personal Area Networks) technologies dedicated
to temperature monitoring. This research “space” is now used by researchers to make additional
experiments on the IoT, such as security, routing, traffic analysis, scheduling, interoperability and
IPv6.
Security expertise from Luxembourg
The BUTLER services are based on state-of-the-art network communication protocols that
enable reliable communication using secured protocols that are adapted to the limited capacity
of the devices that are part of the network. The researchers involved used context information to
develop algorithms to improve trust, security and privacy that satisfy the needs of both users and
infrastructure providers. The main achievement of the BUTLER project is the release of an openplatform portal that provides a map of open technologies that can be used to create Internet of
Things applications. The platform can also be used to document their interoperability, relationships,
and reference to existing use cases, infrastructures and deployments.
The SnT team contributed to this development with its expertise in security and privacy handling in
innovation eco-systems. The contribution involved investigating trust, privacy and security at lower
layers (physical devices and networks) in order to defend and protect the confidentiality, integrity
and availability of data with lightweight cryptography. They also studied these issues at upper layers
(e.g. applications).
The participation in the BUTLER project gave the University of Luxembourg the opportunity to
establish cooperations that set the scene for further innovative and promising EU projects.
The Seventh European Framework Programme
for Research and Technological Development
(FP7) was the European Union’s main financial
instrument to support European research
during the 2007-2013 period. The funding
programme will continue under Horizon 2020,
the Framework Programme for Research and
Innovation, supporting a wide range of research
domains with a budget of €79 billion (20142020).
Participant:
University of Luxembourg
FP7 Project No.:287901
Total costs:€14,427,006
EU contribution:
€ 9,708,000
Duration:
36 months (01/10/201130/09/2014)
Website:www.iot-butler.eu
CASyM
Coordinating Action Systems Medicine –
Implementation of Systems Medicine across
Europe
Through the CASyM project, the University
of Luxembourg has benefited from European
research funding.
Establishing a systems medicine approach
Imagine you are ill and see the doctor. After a brief examination and blood
analysis, you receive an efficient, personalised treatment that is adjusted to
both your personal physiological makeup and your lifestyle. What sounds like
science fiction today could soon come closer to reality with the help of the FP7
project CASyM, funded by the European Union.
Within CASyM, clinicians, researchers, companies and funding organisations from across Europe
work together to bring basic life science research and everyday clinical practice together. Their effort
is based on the rapid development of a young scientific field called Systems Biology, which analyses
and describes biological entities such as cells, organs and whole organisms in an all-encompassing or
systems level.
CASyM’s ultimate goal is the efficient application of Systems Biology approaches in medical research
and practice leading to what is called Systems Medicine. To achieve this goal, the CASyM partners are
developing a road map, which is planned to guide the European efforts in establishing Systems Medicine
for the benefit of public health. CASyM was started at the end of 2012 involving 22 international partners.
It is not a stand-alone project but aims to incorporate and complement existing Systems Medicine
initiatives across Europe and to integrate new partners during its four-year funding period.
CASyM was funded by the European
Commission within the 7th Framework
Programme (FP7) under Grant Agreement
305033.
Translating innovation
Within Luxembourg, two partners are involved in CASyM: the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine
(LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg and the National Research Fund (FNR), Luxembourg’s national
research funding body.
CASyM is not a conventional research project but deals with the challenges of coordinating the integration
of different stakeholders’ interests such as:
Teaching of and training in Systems Medicine to produce a new generation of medical doctors and
scientists having interdisciplinary thinking;
Translation of innovation into devices, services and products usable in clinical practice by specifically
engaging small and medium-sized enterprises;
Triggering national funding bodies to develop proactive policies in support of a subsequent research
and technology development phase; and
Building and maintaining a solid networking structure among different stakeholder groups to
disseminate broadly the achievements of CASyM’s strategic concepts and results.
Systems Medicine actions at European level
The LCSB and FNR are mainly involved in the latter three activities promoting best practice, innovation and
the analysis of existing research programmes and setting up pan-European activities in Systems Medicine.
The extensive knowledge on Systems Biomedicine as one of the central pillars of Luxembourg’s research
landscape is a key component that led to participation of the LCSB as a founding partner of CASyM.
Luxembourg is in fact one of the few countries in Europe that already have a scientific programme on
Systems Medicine in place. Through CASyM, the Grand Duchy benefits from gaining visibility and helping
shape the future direction of the European efforts in the field of Systems Medicine. What is a central goal
of the CASyM project for the whole of Europe is already taking place for the partners within the project: in
addition to discussing the scientific and clinical challenges of Systems Medicine, exchange about common
funding schemes is taking place; here, Luxembourg is recognised as a specifically active and ambitious
player in Systems Medicine.
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: University of Luxembourg
FP7 Project No.: 305033
€ 204,645
Total costs: EU contribution: € 180,707
Duration: 48 months
(01/11/2012-31/10/2016)
Website: www.casym.eu
CONFINE
Community Networks Testbed for the Future
Internet
Through the CONFINE project, the University of
Luxembourg has benefited from European research
funding.
Connected communities for the internet of the future
Classic public WiFi networks offered by one main provider are currently
being complemented by community-based ones, where individual WiFi
subscribers open their WiFi access to other users. These emerging communitybased networks are a successful model for the internet of the future in Europe
and around the globe. In order to further develop and exploit this concept, the
CONFINE project aims to federate existing community networks constituted
by more than 20,000 nodes and offer an open platform available for developing
and testing new, experimental technologies. The University of Luxembourg’s
Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) has contributed
to this initiative with a study on how to handle data protection and confidentiality
in community-based networks.
CONFINE brings together community networks, research institutions, non-profit organisations and
SMEs from Austria, Belgium, Greece, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom and
integrates and extends three existing community networks: Guifi.net in Catalonia, Spain, FunkFeuer
in Vienna, Austria and AWMN in Athens, Greece. These community networks incorporate a large
and wide variety of commodity wireless and optical links, heterogeneous WiFi nodes, different
routing protocols and applications. They also have a large number of end-users who benefit from
an innovative model of self-provisioning using unlicensed and public access.
Creating a testbed for new technologies
By having integrated these networks, the project has developed a unified access to an open and
user-friendly testbed with tools that allow researchers to experiment with services, protocols or
applications on real-world community IP networks. The testbed is available for anybody interested in
developing and testing experimental technologies for open and interoperable network infrastructures.
CONFINE has organised two open calls to offer their facilities to external experimenters from
academia, industry and other community networks. The SnT’s Secan-Lab group, headed by
Professor Dr Thomas Engel, participated in the first call. The SnT proposal was part of the 5
proposals out of 37 that were accepted for funding.
How to ensure privacy in open networks
Community-based WiFi networks are valuable for users who can gain internet access in new
locations, but they are not without dangers. When users connect to a community network, they
access a domain controlled by a potentially untrustworthy operator. It is possible for owners of guest
access points to obtain private information of users and link it to individuals, for example by analysing
cookies, visited IPs, unencrypted session data or fingerprinting physical devices. Nowadays, this
does not even require special skills as deployable hacker tools are freely available and easy to use.
Finding ways of ensuring that private data remains confidential is therefore crucial.
The Secan-Lab’s project studied data protection and confidentiality issues. How can existing
privacy-preserving routing techniques that the lab has developed be transferred and tailored to the
needs of users in community-based networks? CONFINE provided the lab with an ideal opportunity
to test methods that it has specially designed for environments with limited resources and no central
point of trust, such as community networks.
The SnT researchers deployed their own state-of-the-art, privacy-preserving routing algorithms to
measure performance indicators such as latency and throughput as experienced by the end-users.
As a result, the Secan-Lab was able to recommend measures that will allow users to surf the
internet via community-based networks without worrying about their privacy.
The Seventh European Framework Programme
for Research and Technological Development
(FP7) was the European Union’s main financial
instrument to support European Research
during the 2007-2013 period. The funding
programme will continue under Horizon 2020,
the Framework Programme for Research and
Innovation, supporting a wide range of research
domains with a budget of € 79 billion (20142020).
Participant:
University of Luxembourg
FP7 Project No.:288535
Total costs:€6,236,671
EU contribution:€4,942,000
University of Luxembourg budget: €50,000
Duration:
48 months (UL participation:
01/02/2013 – 31/05/2014)
Website:www.confine-project.eu
CONTRAST
An individually adaptable, BNCI-based,
remote controlled Cognitive Enhancement
Training for successful rehabilitation after
stroke including home support and monitoring
Through the CONTRAST project, the University
of Luxembourg has benefited from European
research funding.
Regaining autonomy after a stroke – a major health challenge
Stroke is the most common neurological disease. It is also the most common
cause of life-long impairment in adulthood and of institutionalisation, implying a
change from a self-determined, independent life to extensive or complete dependence
on others. The CONTRAST project aims to bridge the gap between the institutional
rehabilitation and the continuous training and monitoring of the impaired function and
health parameters at home for stroke patients.
The incidence of stroke increases with age, and from age 55 to beyond 85 in men and 65 to beyond 85
in women, the incidence increases proportionately with every decade of age. In the year 2000, 16% of
Germany’s population was older than 65. Due to demographic changes, this percentage is expected to
rise to 33% by the year 2030. These figures are similar in other western European countries and pose
a challenge to all health systems and institutional care. It is thus evident that improving daily functioning
after stroke, which includes the improvement of cognitive functions and the monitoring of health and
social parameters, is a timely and critical task. These improvements will help stroke patients enjoy a life
that is as independent as possible in their home environments.
After a stroke, most patients are confronted with two important types of impairment. Firstly, they may experience
severe cognitive problems, such as difficulties with attention, memory, language, learning, reasoning, problem
solving or decision-making; and secondly, they may have to deal with severe motor impairment.
Both aspects may increase their dependence on other people, prompting feelings of lost autonomy and
helplessness, and this often accelerates the development of depression. Early interventions to maintain
or restore independence, which is linked to better well-being and overall management of daily life, is
therefore of paramount importance.
Providing efficient and innovative rehabilitation at home
Unfortunately, a huge gap exists between institutionalised rehabilitation and management of strokeaffected people in their home environments. Rehabilitation efforts mostly terminate abruptly when patients
are discharged from hospitals, and so do efforts to monitor any changes in motor and cognitive functions,
daily life activities in social integration, health parameters (e.g. heart rate, blood pressure) and quality of life.
CONTRAST bridges this gap by developing easy-to-use auto-adaptive human-machine interfaces (HCI) for
better cognitive function and psychological well-being, which can be used in the sub-acute rehabilitation
phase and at the patients’ home. This is achieved by so-called neurofeedback training. Neurofeedback
training involves the recording of the neuronal activity of the brain with EEG (electroencephalography) and
feeding it back to the user in real time. This allows a person to learn how to alter their EEG, which then can
improve cognitive functioning. Training modules are tailored to the individual and remote data processing
and support systems are now designed to allow for continuous monitoring of health parameters to evaluate
individual progress and for shared patient-expert decision-making.
CONTRAST’s core interventions to improve the recovery after stroke are training modules, which address
attention and memory. Nevertheless, psychological well-being is also an important target of intervention,
since depression is frequent after stroke and hampers cognitive functions and functioning in daily life.
Therefore, CONTRAST provides accurate, adaptive, individually tailored interventions to improve both
cognitive functions and affective states.
An inter-disciplinary project consortium
CONTRAST is a collaborative scientific project supported by the European Union for the “Cognitive
Enhancement Training for Successful Rehabilitation After Stroke”. Consortium partners include
academic and clinical experts from disciplines such as clinical psychology, neuropsychology, neurology
and psychophysiology. By bringing together a multidisciplinary team including universities, companies,
hospitals, rehabilitation centres and user groups, CONTRAST combines the expertise from all relevant
stake-holders, i.e. academics, clinicians and patient organisations.
The members of the team are uniquely qualified to achieve the aims of this project as they have
long-standing expertise in key research areas such as neuropsychological assessment, bio- and
neurofeedback, cognitive training with patients after stroke, telemonitoring, supervision, home support,
product development and dissemination practice, which are necessary for the success of CONTRAST.
In addition, they represent a cross-section of EU countries with partners in Luxembourg, the Netherlands,
Germany, Austria, Spain and Italy. This ensures input from countries with different healthcare systems,
which will help to contribute to a more harmonised, cutting-edge approach to rehabilitation after stroke.
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: University of Luxembourg
FP7 Project No.: 287320
€ 628,073
Total costs: EU contribution: € 472,654
Duration: 36 months
(01/11/2011-31/10/2014)
Website: www.contrast-project.eu
COPHES (FP7) and
DEMOCOPHES (LIFE+)
COPHES - European coordination action
on human biomonitoring
DEMOCOPHES - Demonstration of a
study to coordinate and perform human
biomonitoring on a European scale
Through the COPHES project, CRP Gabriel Lippmann has benefited
from European research funding.
Comparing biomarkers across Europe
In our daily lives, we are constantly exposed to chemical substances. Thanks to
human biomonitoring (HBM), we can assess whether and to what extent these
substances enter our bodies. By measuring the concentration of chemicals in body
fluids or tissues, biomonitoring can provide valuable information on environmental health
effects and, in some cases, even help address potential health risks. The DEMOCOPHES
project makes it possible to compare specific biomarkers in 17 European countries.
In the FP7-funded project COPHES, “Consortium to Perform Human Biomonitoring on a European
Scale”, a common European approach for human biomonitoring surveys was developed that was tested
for its feasibility in the Life+ funded project DEMOCOPHES in 17 European countries. DEMOCOPHES
looked at biomarkers for mercury, cadmium and phthalates as well as environmental tobacco smoke in
human hair and urine. Luxembourg was one of six countries that also measured bisphenol A.
The chemicals were chosen because it is important to understand how much we are exposed to them
in our daily lives. The information can help us understand patterns of exposure and reduce it where
necessary. The participating institutions produced data on the distribution of specific biomarkers and
related lifestyle data among defined study populations which, for the first time, are comparable on a
European scale. These comparable data are an important step towards European reference values.
Unique Luxembourg participation
The Luxembourg participation in the two sister projects was unique among the participating countries
since it comprised a public research centre (CRP – Gabriel Lippmann), a state laboratory (Laboratoire
National de Santé, LNS) and an NGO (Initiativ Lievensufank – IL). The Environment and Agrobiotechnologies (EVA) department of CRP – Gabriel Lippmann participated in both projects and was
responsible for coordination, method development, statistics and reporting. LNS analysed the hair and
LIFE Project No.: LIFE09 ENV/BE/000410
COPHES was funded by the European
Commission within the 7th Framework Programme
(FP7) under Grant Agreement No. 244237.
urine samples from 60 mother-child pairs for mercury respectively for cadmium, creatinine and cotinine.
The Analytical chemistry Platform of EVA performed the analysis of the urine samples for bisphenol A,
parabens and triclosan. IL was responsible for the field work. An additional asset in Luxembourg was
the interest in these studies expressed by the Minister of Health, Mars Di Bartolomeo: “I can ensure the
political interest in performing HBM studies on a national scale in Luxembourg also in the future.”
Cohort and quality control
The study covered children aged 6-11 years and their mothers aged 45 years and under. Fieldworkers
collected hair and urine samples from a total of 120 volunteers. Mothers provided details on their living
environment, nutrition, smoking behaviour, and other information that could help to explain the levels of
the biomarkers measured in hair and urine.
“Organising the field work was demanding. Our field workers had to show a lot of flexibility to make
appointments when the mother-child pairs were available at home for the extensive interviews and
sample collection. The key to success was that we had no drop-outs or refusals to participate,” says
Maryse Arendt at IL who coordinated the field work in Luxembourg.
The laboratories analysing the samples were selected through a strict quality assurance process.
Statistical analysis and interpretation of the results was performed in each country as well as at EU level.
Results
In Luxembourg, the results were presented to the participants in a workshop in the presence of the
Minister of Health. During the project period, broad press attention raised the awareness of the general
public for human biomonitoring. Overall, no biomarker values measured in samples from Luxembourg
exceeded established health guidance values for any of the biomarkers.
On a larger scale, DEMOCOPHES mercury results from all of Europe were used in a publication issued
in January 2013. The monetary benefits of controlling mercury pollution were estimated to be €8 to 9
billion per year for the entire EU.
“When we started we had no idea where this endeavour would lead us,” says Arno Gutleb, project
coordinator in Luxembourg, “but looking back we have achieved a lot in respect of human biomonitoring.
We have also built up trust between the persons and institutions involved in Luxembourg.”
Now that the feasibility of an EU-harmonised approach has been demonstrated, policy-makers can start
to envisage a European survey programme using the lessons learned.
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: Centre de Recherche
Public Gabriel Lippmann
FP7 Project No.: 244237
€ 29,383
Total costs: EU contribution: € 24,000
Duration: 36 months
(01/12/2009-30/11/2012)
www.eu-hbm.info
Website: CUbRIK
Human-enhanced time-aware
multimedia search
Through the CUBRIK project,
CVCE has benefited from European
research funding.
Searching in the age of multimedia infobesity: when
human and social intelligence works hand in hand with
computational power
In today’s society we are surrounded by a vast sea of information — we find
ourselves constantly bombarded by a bewildering array of messages via different
platforms from media organisations, advertising agencies, and even from our friends and
families. The ability to search for specific information amongst image, video and audio
material is therefore becoming crucial for many industrial and social activities. The CUbRIK
project provides an open solution that combines human intelligence and machine
processing capabilities to offer new prospects for multimedia search in the digital era.
Today’s search engines are powerful, complex tools but they are monolithic, offering no possibility for
technology and content providers or applications integrators to design and deploy tailor-made solutions that
generate relevant results at a reasonable cost and in an environment that promotes reuse and economies
of scale. The CUbRIK project, which is the culmination of almost ten years of research, aims to develop
an entirely new category of products. As the project’s scientific leaders are fond of saying: “The CUbRIK
project follows in the footsteps of Stanley Kubrick, one of cinema’s most creative directors who was never
afraid to challenge stereotypes, in that it aims to deliver real innovation to multimedia search.”
Complementary actions
The project activities can be broken down into three complementary strands. The first one focuses on
technological development. This aspect leverages scientific and technical progress in various areas,
including architectures that can be used to harness human expertise and large quantities of content;
multimodal search techniques; and the analysis of social and human data. To put it simply, CUbRIK allows
you to build your own search engine using different components that you can put together like Lego bricks.
The CUbRIK project has received research funding
from the European Union, grant FP7-287704.
The second strand integrates human and social aspects and aims to combine machine computing
capabilities with human capabilities to enhance the precision of the results obtained. CUbRIK uses
techniques such as crowdsourcing and microtasking to channel human sensitivity, rationality and
cooperation skills within an architecture that draws on both processors and human brain cells.
The final, third strand is the deployment of a relevant marketing strategy. The marketing strategy developed
for CUbRIK involves creating an open space where innovators can test the features of the system and
confirm the relevance of the combined use of machine, human and social data. Communities of practice
will be set up to enable external players to develop multimedia search and extraction applications.
External contributors from various spheres, including search application developers, content owners,
technology providers, software integrators, social and community network managers, researchers and
SMEs, will be invited to start testing the platform.
CUbRIK has developed two applications that showcase the platform’s capabilities and illustrate the
generative power of the concepts implemented within the project. The first application is geared towards
research in history and digital humanities; the second is aimed at the world of fashion.
Building the social graph of European integration history through audiovisual archives
Historical research has traditionally focused on mainly text-based primary or secondary sources. But with
the widespread adoption of new information and communication technologies, images and videos are
becoming increasingly important sources for the humanities. CUbRIK has developed an application within
the field of European integration history that can be used to explore the relationships between political
figures whose faces appear together in a broad corpus of audiovisual material. This application combines
automatic face recognition with interaction and validation tools involving groups of experts. As Dr Lars
Wieneke, a researcher in CVCE’s Digital Humanities Lab, explains: “This is a heuristic tool which will be built
up through the contributions made by its users — it does not impose a preconceived reality.”
Helping European SMEs spot fashion trends
The fashion world is always on the lookout for new ideas and innovations that can be used to develop
new products or launch new collections. CUbRIK has developed a fashion-based application that will
allow garment producers and distributors to engage in a permanent dialogue with their clients so that they
can identify their preferences and pinpoint the latest market trends by analysing interactions on social
media. The project provides small and medium-sized companies with tools that were previously only
available to larger-scale enterprises. Companies can also use the application to launch open innovation
processes with their clients so that they can work together to develop new trends.
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance
sur l’Europe (CVCE)
FP7 Project No.: 287704
€ 314,480
Total costs: EU contribution: € 250,560
Duration: 36 months
(01/10/2011 - 30/09/2014)
Website: www.cubrikproject.eu
DECanBio
Novel MS-based strategies to Discover
and Evaluate Cancer Biomarkers in urine:
Application to Diagnosis of Bladder Cancer
Through the DECanBio project,
CRP-Santé has benefited from
European research funding.
Defining biomarkers to spot bladder cancer
The European FP7 project DECanBio brought together a consortium of clinicians
and researchers in genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics to identify and
validate biomarkers that hint at a recurring bladder cancer. The Centre de Recherche de
la Santé (CRP-Santé) joined forces with researchers and clinicians from France, Spain,
Greece, Switzerland, and Germany to develop a simple test to spot this.
Bladder cancer is a common cancer in Western Europe, and although in general treatments are initially
quite effective, there is a very high recurrence rate (some 50% of the patients may develop a new
cancer in the two years following the treatment). To detect patients with a high recurrence potential, the
development of a simple diagnostics test that can be performed routinely using urine samples instead
of periodical cystoscopy would constitute a major benefit for the patients. It would also have a positive
effect on the overall costs of the treatment.
Identifying biomarkers
In this context, the project aimed in the first phase to perform an extensive discovery study including
a genomics approach of bladder cancer tissue samples and a proteomic analysis of urine samples of
patients diagnosed with bladder cancer in different stages and the corresponding controls. In addition,
extensive literature mining was performed to include the relevant information available for this disease.
The combined results of these investigations resulted in an extended list of nearly two hundred candidate
proteins that represented the basis of the verification studies performed in Luxembourg.
DECanBio was funded by the European
Commission within the 7th Framework Programme
(FP7) under Grant Agreement 201333.
The Luxembourg Proteomics Clinical Center (LCP) is headed by Bruno Domon. Together with a group
of scientists, Professor Domon was intensively involved in the second phase of the project to validate
the discovery results for potential routine clinical tests, i.e. to detect proteins differentially expressed in
tissue samples. The hypothesis is that such proteins will be shed from the bladder tumour into the urine,
and thus be detectable in urine samples. Major efforts were devoted to design mass spectrometry
based assays to measure peptides representative of the proteins of interest and hence could be used
as biomarkers.
Collaboration with the private sector
In brief, the Luxembourg Proteomics Center has developed a platform based on mass spectrometry,
an analytical technique that allows precise quantifying of molecules in complex biological samples. The
laboratory has built expertise in this field, leveraging recent technology developments which are based
on high-resolution instruments. Through a collaboration with the company ThermoFisher, one of the
world leaders in bio-analytics, the centre had early access to these technologies, which has allowed the
implementation of clinical applications such as measuring protein biomarkers in urine samples. LCP has
a well-established collaboration with ThermoFisher Scientific in Bremen (Germany) and San Jose (USA)
with the aim of applying new mass spectrometry techniques to clinical applications.
The European project on bladder cancer has resulted in determining over forty differentially expressed
proteins, which have been examined in a study to define a small panel of markers (ideally 5 or 6) that
could be used routinely in clinical practice.
This last step is still on-going as is the final assay, and its approval as a diagnostic test needs extensive
validation in a large population to assess its specificity and selectivity. Such a study has to be part
of a follow-up project to valorise the findings of a pure research programme. However, the practical
implementation of clinical tests requires a large-scale study and prior regulatory approval. Such largescale follow-up projects could typically be conducted in collaboration with industrial partners such as
diagnostics companies, or with publicly funded EU projects.
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: Centre de Recherche
Public de la Santé
FP7 Project No.: 20133
Total costs: € 528,780
EU contribution: € 399,600
Duration: 53 months
(01/03/2008 - 31/07/2012)
Website: www.decanbio.eu
DECIDE
Diagnostic Enhancement of Confidence by an
International Distributed Environment
Through the DECIDE project,
Alzheimer Europe has benefited from
European research funding.
Enabling earlier diagnosis of dementia
DECIDE stands for “Diagnostic Enhancement of Confidence by an International
Distributed Environment”. This FP7 project brought together 13 partners from
five European countries, with the Italian GARR Institute as leading partner. Its aim was
to develop and launch an e-service that allows the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and
other neurodegenerative diseases.
From the end-user perspective, the main advantages of the service developed by DECIDE are its
reliability and user-friendliness. The treating physician needs only a computer with a web connection and
a standard Internet browser to use the service. This is possible thanks to the so-called grid and cloud
computational resources made available by the European Grid Initiative (EGI) and the high-bandwidth
network connectivity provided by the European GEANT network, as well as other national research and
higher education networks.
Comparing scans to thousands of cases in a matter of minutes
The resources developed by this project fit into the everyday routine of doctors attending to patients
affected by Alzheimer’s disease. To give a simple illustration, a neurologist can upload a Magnetic
Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan of a patient who is showing signs of mild cognitive impairment. The
DECIDE system then compares this scan with thousands of existing images in the system. Less than
half an hour later, the neurologist receives a report comparing dozens of indicators of dementia within the
scan. The physician is then able to make a more timely and accurate diagnosis than would have been
DECIDE was funded by the European Commission
within the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) under
Grant Agreement RI-261593.
possible without this service. Patients also benefit, as early diagnosis means earlier access to therapy,
including more appropriate inclusion in clinical trials.
Principal Investigator Dr Fulvio Galeazzi comments: “DECIDE enables a physician at any remote hospital
to analyse an MRI or a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan in a few minutes, whereas the same
task on a single computer might take weeks or months.”
Alzheimer Europe – connecting science and society
Even though Luxembourg-based Alzheimer Europe did not contribute to the scientific development per
se, its equally important role was to communicate the project outcomes to relevant parties in society. It
is important to patients with Alzheimer’s disease and to their caregivers and families to learn about new
treatment methods in their domain and to have access to this crucial information in a language they can
understand. But science communication and the dissemination of research results are also endeavours
close to the European policymakers’ hearts.
Thanks to the contribution of project partners such as Alzheimer Europe, a wider non-scientific audience
can be reached. Jean Georges, Executive Director of Alzheimer Europe, says: “We are pleased that our
participation in FP7 projects has provided a new link between the scientists who seek a better understanding
of dementia and the people who live with Alzheimer’s disease and all other forms of dementia.”
DECIDE to set the scene for a wider commercial roll-out
Even though DECIDE ended in March 2013, the service will continue to operate. However, a proven
track record is often needed by the medical community before it embraces a new technology such as
DECIDE. Therefore, a commercial roll-out would now require a follow-up project. The Italian Ministry of
Health has already approved funding for several such follow-up projects involving DECIDE technology. In
addition, a group of leading European memory clinics has been approached as potential DECIDE users
and the use of the service in other FP7 projects is also being studied.
Alzheimer Europe is also involved in other EU-funded projects in the field of dementia and neurodegenerative
diseases, such as NILVAD and PACE, two FP7 projects, PharmaCog, EMIF and AETIONOMY, all funded
under the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI).
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: Alzheimer Europe
FP7 Project No.: 261593
€ 94,680
Total costs: EU contribution: € 84,423
Duration: 30 months
(01/01/2011-30/06/2013)
Website: www.eu-decide.eu
DIAMONDS
Development and Industrial Application of
Multi-Domain-Security Testing Technologies
Through the DIAMONDS project,
itrust consulting has benefited from
European research funding.
Developing technologies for IT security testing
Over 90% of software security incidents are caused by attackers exploiting
known software defects. The DIAMONDS project was focused on addressing
the increasing need to develop efficient and automated techniques and tools for
systematic testing of highly secure IT systems in various fields such as banking, transport
and telecommunication. The project was part of the ITEA2 programme and involved
industrial and research partners from six different European countries, including
Luxembourg-based itrust consulting.
One method for evaluating computing and network security used in the DIAMONDS project was
penetration testing, or pentesting, which is based on simulating an external or internal software attack.
“The DIAMONDS project allowed itrust to hire its first researcher and expert in pentesting in 2011,”
explains Carlo Harpes, itrust’s managing director and DIAMONDS project manager. “His mission was
to develop tools for collecting and analysing malware and accelerating penetration tests, and finally
to design a security management tool.” The scale of activity has expanded since the launch of the
project, and today itrust’s Pentesting Team consists of six people and is expecting to have a turnover of
€450,000 in 2013.
New security tools
From November 2010 to autumn 2013, itrust spent a total of €305,000 on the research performed
within DIAMONDS. 60% of these costs were funded by the Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy
DIAMONDS
and Foreign Trade. The company developed an innovative information sharing platform called ISIS
(Information Security Improvement System) whose aim is to improve risk analysis and to measure the
maturity of security by integrating test results in the risk assessment. DIAMONDS also enabled itrust to
develop new ethical pentesting methodologies and implement new features in its pentesting tool TRICK
Tester. Thanks to these developments, certain tasks can now be automated and performed without the
physical presence of a pentester.
In addition, itrust designed an efficient tool for reverse engineering called malwasm, which allows the
analysis of unknown codes. “By using malwasm, clients get a view of the malware their systems have
been infected with,” explains Stéphane Emma, who developed this open source tool. “The tool enables
clients to look at a malware in the same way as a film with a video player; they can go forwards and
backwards in the execution and discover the criminal activity which is generally well-hidden among
innocent computer operations.”
“The importance of participating in research and development projects is evident, as many of the tools
and techniques developed in projects such as DIAMONDS are now used for providing services to itrust’s
customers,” says Matthieu Aubigny, itrust’s head of research and development. “To conduct efficient
malware research, we need a set of samples to analyse. As this data is the key knowledge of all antivirus tools, the providers don’t make samples available for researchers. DIAMONDS made it possible
for us to collect 3 million malware samples in 3 months and make them available for researchers via the
website malware.lu.”
Luxembourg’s first private CERT
The methods developed within DIAMONDS gave itrust the possibility to establish the first private
Computer Security Incident Response Team in Luxembourg (CSIRT, synonym for CERT). As a result, the
company’s service Malware.lu CERT is operable and assists clients from the private and governmental
sectors that have been attacked by malware.
“Malware.lu CERT has been listed as ‘trusted introducer’, which means that other CERTs trust us to
share information on attacks. In addition to incident response, we offer an On-Demand Malware Analysis
Service (ODMAS), reverse engineering and malware analysis training,” Paul Rascagnères, Service
Manager of malware.lu CERT, concludes.
The ITEA2 programme is part of
EUREKA, a European intergovernmental
initiative launched in 1985 that supports
research and technological development
(R&D) projects. By promoting R&D
projects run by enterprises in transnational
collaboration in all technology areas, EUREKA
aims to strengthen the productivity and
competitiveness of European industry.
Participant: itrust consulting
Project No.: ITEA 2 Call 4 09018
Total costs (for participant):€ 305,000
National contribution
(to participant): € 183,000
Duration: 32 months
(01/10/2010-31/05/2013)
Website: www.itea2-diamonds.org
ENERCOM
Polygeneration of energy, fuels and fertilisers
from biomass residues and sewage sludge
Through the ENERCOM project,
Soil-Concept SA has benefited from
European research funding.
Treating sewage sludge intelligently
EU Member States have the obligation to collect and treat domestic and industrial
wastewater from urban areas under the Urban Wastewater Directive. This
mandatory treatment is very costly, thus it is important to re-use the by-products.
Soil-Concept has developed a range of innovative ways to deal with the problem of
sewage sludge. From pioneering a new, improved process to produce compost out of
sludge and green waste, the Diekirch-based company has recently progressed to taking
the same base materials and using them to generate heat, electricity and biomass fuel
pellets, in addition to compost.
Soil-Concept has always been a visionary leader in terms of innovative wastewater treatment solutions,
pushing the limits of R&D further. One of Soil-Concept´s best-known R&D projects is named ENERCOM.
The purpose of this €5.2 million project, with funding from the Seventh Framework Programme for
Research and Technological Development (FP7), was to develop a process in which multiple energy
products would be created from sewage sludge and green waste. Known as polygeneration, the
process would result in the production of electricity, thermal energy and solid fuels in the form of biomass
pellets, as well as compost and fertiliser.
From sewage sludge to renewable energy
Unknown long-term effects of substances such as PCB, AOX, heavy metals or hormones combined
with high transport costs for compost have led to a growing rejection of this type of use. The end result
of ENERCOM was to be a new, safe, environmentally friendly and cost-effective way to dispose of
sewage sludge while maximising energy output and reducing greenhouse gases. The new gasification
process converts organic materials into a synthetic gas called syngas. Syngas is itself a fuel and is more
ENERCOM was funded by the European
Commission within the 7th Framework Programme
(FP7) under Grant Agreement 218916.
efficient than combusting the original fuel, e.g. green waste. It is considered to be a form of renewable
energy and can be used to generate electricity.
Partners from all over Europe gathered for this project: Soil-Concept and L.E.E from Luxembourg, IfaS and
B.A.U.M from Germany, Kuhbier from Belgium and Kaunas Technological University from Lithuania. However,
the main contribution came from Luxembourg since the different components of this innovative polygeneration
demonstration plant are all situated in Diekirch at the composting site owned by Soil-Concept. Luxembourg
engineering and environmental knowledge has been used in every single step of the project.
Spin-off creation
An important output of ENERCOM was the creation of the spin-off company Synerco by three of its partners
– BISANZ Anlagenbau GmbH, LEE s.àr.l. and Soil-Concept S.A. Synerco offers comprehensive project
services in power plants using fuels that include biomass, refuse-derived fuel (RDF), coal and sewage sludge.
The main challenge in the beginning of this project concerned communication, but the consortium
rapidly found solutions after a few meetings. “Organisation and exchange of information/data or results
may sometimes require special attention when working with different partners because the dependence
on each other’s performances is strong,” Thorsten Klaes of Soil-Concept explains.
A contribution to wastewater treatment in the EU
The technology that has been developed during the project could potentially be applied to any sludge
and organic matter treatment plant in the European Union. This would represent more than 3,000 existing
plants and the equivalent of 70 TWh in terms of recoverable energy. Considering population growth
worldwide, demand for energy-efficient wastewater treatment will increase steadily over the coming
years. This flexible technology thus has a bright future ahead and can be implemented everywhere on
existing systems as well as future ones.
At the EU level, the development and use of this technology for treating wastewater residues could be
useful to help implement the EU regulatory framework on water (in particular the Urban Waste Water
Treatment Directive, but also the Water Framework Directive).
Project developers are grateful to the Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy and Foreign Trade as well
as to Luxinnovation, the National Agency for Innovation and Research, for their support throughout the
project. “ENERCOM will bring a greener future and the unconditional support of all actors was crucial for
its completion,” Mr Klaes concludes.
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: Soil-Concept S.A.
FP7 Project No.: 218916
€ 3,500,000
Total costs: EU contribution: € 1,200,000
Duration: 60 months
(03/11/2008-02/11/2013)
Website: www.soil-concept.lu
EpiPGX
Epilepsy Pharmacogenomics: delivering
biomarkers for clinical use
Through the CONTRAST project, the University
of Luxembourg has benefited from European
research funding.
A vision of personalising medicine for epilepsy patients
EpiPGX is a FP7-funded project that brings together clinical researchers,
geneticists and computational biologists from leading centres across Europe to
link genomics and treatment outcomes for patients suffering from epileptic seizures. The
University of Luxembourg leads the projects’ efforts in systems biology modelling and
data integration. The project, led by Prof. Sanjay Sisodiya from the University College
London, UK and running over four years, aims to ultimately contribute to a personalised
medicine strategy for epilepsy patients.
Seizures affect 3% of all people across their lifespan and are the most common severe neurological
condition. Epilepsy is an umbrella term for a variety of conditions characterised by seizures. Besides brain
lesions, tumours and traumatic head injury as causes there is also a strong genetic component involved.
Unfortunately, treatment options are still limited. While some patients respond immediately to available
drugs, about one quarter are not helped by any medication and only face the adverse drug reactions, such
as weight gain, liver dysfunctions or psychiatric conditions. Specific genes have been linked to adverse
drug reactions in the form of a severe rash, a life-threating condition called Steven-Johnson-syndrome.
Unravelling the interactions of drugs and genetics
EpiPGX aims to understand why only some patients can be treated successfully. It is therefore investigating
how the genetic makeup influences the response to different existing medications. Unravelling the
interactions of drugs and genetics could in the long run personalise treatment and reduce ill-effects of
anti-epileptic drugs.
Although seizures occur frequently in the population, epilepsy is not one singular condition. It describes
a wide range of seizure types, frequency and severity, all of which are known to influence the therapeutic
outcome. The FP7 framework is essential for achieving this goal since only such a pan-European project
allows gathering a significant number of epilepsy patients. Combining efforts within EpiPGX, with its total
funding volume of €6 million, allows statistically significant numbers of patients, for several patient groups,
to be brought together.
Interpreting genome data
EpiPGX has established common standards to extract the relevant data from existing clinical reports.
Patient data is shared in depersonalised form so that only the treating clinician knows the patient who
has consented to the study.
The role of the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB), one of the interdisciplinary centres
of the University of Luxembourg, is primarily in systems biology and the interpretation of the genome
data. To build resources for the extract of 20,000 patient histories from a collection of existing records
as well as new cases that serves as a front-end for the 12 participating clinical centres, a database
was built in conjunction with DeCODE Genetics, a leading genetics company located in Reykjavik,
Iceland. The LCSB is driving the design and oversees the data integration using the resources of its
Bioinformatics Core, a team led by Dr Reinhard Schneider focusing on data management and analysis.
The real challenge lies in the interpretation: reading the sequence of a genome leads to a large number of
variants between any two individuals – in the order of 30,000 positions between two unrelated Europeans.
A “disease gene” – a gross simplification anyway – cannot be identified by reading the sequence alone.
Identifying a singular gene leading to a change in e.g. drug metabolism requires the utilisation of knowledge
from biomedical and biological literature, a special focus of the LCSB’s Bioinformatics Core.
An individual variant of a gene might predispose for a particular reaction to drug treatment but genes
do not work alone. All genes interact in multiple ways in living organisms. These interactions might be
disturbed and lead to conditions such as epilepsy. Detecting the combination of variants that influence
each other is challenging on all levels from computation to experimental validation and methods for
identifying them are in constant development which several groups at the LCSB contribute to with expert
knowledge in statistics, machine learning and biological data analysis.
EpiPGX joins the forces of scientists and clinicians across Europe to enhance the treatments of epilepsy
using modern genetics methods. Overcoming language differences between the scientific disciplines
requires more effort than those between scientists from different countries. In the second year of the
project, the consortium is well underway to perform the first analyses with the aggregated data.
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: University of Luxembourg
FP7 Project No.: 279062-2
€ 398,336
Total costs: EU contribution: € 298,752
Duration: 48 months
(01/11/2011-31/10/2015)
Website: www.epipgx.eu
ETRIKS
European Translational Information &
Knowledge Management System
Through the eTRIKS project, the University of
Luxembourg has benefited from European research
funding.
The data healers
Countless medical trials have been performed for drug research over
the years and have generated huge collections of data, however with
almost no compatibility between them. Yet, lying dormant within them are
valuable clues for new therapeutic approaches, waiting to be discovered – if
only we could make the data comparable and interpretable. With the EU
project eTRIKS, the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of
the University of Luxembourg is helping to uncover this treasure of knowledge.
As head of the Bioinformatics Core Facility of the LCSB, Dr Reinhard Schneider ensures that the
data generated during research projects at the LCSB exploited as deeply as possible. His team
of computer specialists, physicists, mathematicians, bioinformaticians and biologists provides
the scientific and technical requirements for this task. Every scientist at the LCSB is aware of the
importance of including the Bioinformatics Core Facility in research projects at an early stage:
preferably already in the planning of the experiments as well as in the design of the data structures
in order to ensure that the needed infrastructure, such as data storage and compute power, will be
available to run the analyses smoothly.
Exploiting industry data
Dr Schneider also receives requests for collaboration from outside, for instance from the
pharmaceutical industry. “Industry has entire mountains of data waiting to be reanalysed with
modern bioinformatics techniques,” Dr Schneider says. How so? Big pharmaceutical companies
are research establishments in their own right whose activities cover the entire spectrum of drug
development, from identifying targets for new drugs to developing active substances and conducting
preclinical and clinical trials. Different companies will often study the same disease and collect
relevant data independently from each other. Since they are competitors, they have no concerted
or uniform way of structuring and analysing the data collected. “A valuable treasure of information is
waiting if we can only uncover it,” Dr Schneider confirms.
The European Commission agrees and wants to help reveal this treasure to improve healthcare
and bring new drugs onto the market. Hence the creation of the Innovative Medicines Initiative
(IMI), a public-private partnership in which the public sector and companies collaborate on different
projects such as eTRIKS. The eTRIKS consortium brings together large pharmaceutical companies
– from Johnson & Johnson to Astra-Zeneca, Bayer and Sanofi-Aventis – with research institutes
such as the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, CNRS in Lyon, and the LCSB.
“The collaboration takes place in the precompetitive phase, of course,” Dr Schneider stresses, given
that nobody wants to share knowledge that offers a competitive edge.
Cross-study analyses
Dr Schneider describes the basic intentions of eTRIKS as follows: “Each company involved has
studied numerous diseases. It is obvious that substantially more information can be found through
analysing the entirety of their data instead of looking at individual studies one by one. Together with
our eTRIKS partners, we have developed the standards, methods and techniques for meaningfully
combining the existing data and making them ready for new analyses.” In 2014, eTRIKS joined
forces with other initiatives to develop a common software platform for knowledge management in
pharmaceutical research called tranSMART. “This platform provides various technologies that can
considerably accelerate drug research,” he says.
In the scope of eTRIKS, Dr Schneider’s team is responsible for preparing the data – “data curation”,
as he describes it: “You can imagine it as if a truck had dumped tons of data in the yard. These
data have to be standardised, ordered and stored away neatly labelled for bioinformatics to be
able to do anything with them.” A Sisyphean task, Dr Schneider admits, but a rewarding one. “We
benefit in three ways from eTRIKS,” he says. “Firstly, by obtaining knowledge to use in our scientific
work to progress more rapidly in the LCSB’s core research fields of neurodegenerative diseases
and Parkinson’s disease. Secondly, by getting new bioinformatical tools with which we can better
analyse our own data. And thirdly, through insights into how we should design experiments in order
to make them compatible with other ones and gain more from larger data sets.”
Now that the eTRIKS methodology is publically available on tranSMART, medical development
in general can also benefit. “The pharmaceutical industry has invested considerably in IMI and
contributed its own developments to tranSMART,” Dr Schneider reports. “It now has the opportunity
to plough through its existing data once more and find new research approaches for new active
substances.” The hope is that this will lead to better drugs at reasonable development costs.
The Seventh Framework Programme for
Research and Technological Development
(FP7) was the European Union’s main financial
instrument to support European research during
the 2007-2013 period. The funding programme
continues under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of €79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant:
University of Luxembourg
FP7 Project No.:115446
Total costs:€23,020,937
EU contribution:€10,309,818
Duration:
60 months (01/10/2012 –
01/10/2017)
Website:www.etriks.org
EUBORDERSCAPES
Bordering, Political Landscapes and Social
Arenas: Potentials and Challenges of Evolving
Border Concepts in a post-Cold War World
Through the EUBORDERSCAPES project,
CEPS/INSTEAD has benefited from European
research funding.
We can’t escape borders!
The EUBORDERSCAPES is a European research project co-financed by the
EU’s 7th Framework Programme. Launched in June 2012, the project tracks
and interprets conceptual change in the study of borders. The central objective is to
analyse the evolving concept of borders in relation to fundamental social, economic,
cultural and geopolitical transformations that have taken place in the past decades. The
major research task lies in understanding the complex construction of borders and their
impacts in Europe.
Researchers from CEPS/INSTEAD have the lead of a work package which focuses on the bordering
and cross-border integration processes within cross-border urban regions. Eight additional partners are
involved: the University of Eastern Finland, the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, the Institute of Geography
Russian Academy of Sciences, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the University of Gda sk, the
Leibniz Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning, the social science research laboratory
Pacte (CNRS), and the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
This international research consortium aims to investigate how economic interactions and cross-border
governance networks – that have emerged as a result of European integration and globalisation – have
influenced political, social and institutional points of view, and concepts relative to borders in Europe and
elsewhere.
Researching the influence of cross-border integration
The principal objective of the work package led by CEPS/INSTEAD is to examine how the process of
cross-border integration can modify our understanding of state borders and how it has affected notions of
borders at different levels. On this basis, three main research questions have been identified. The first area
EUROBORDERSCAPES was funded by
the European Commission within the 7th
Framework Programme (FP7) under Grant
Agreement n°290775.
of research concerns the significance of borders and deals with the attitudes and perceptions of local and
regional actors involved in the territorial restructuring of twin cities and cross-border metropolitan regions.
The second area of research highlights the process of cross-border integration that occurs within the
cross-border urban spaces under scrutiny. The objective is to analyse the forms and types of crossborder urban integration, and the drivers and hindrances that shape this process.
The third and final area of research seeks to tackle the functioning and the meaning of specific crossborder urban regimes at work in Europe. The aim is to develop a more integrated and comprehensive
approach which gives room for the different dimensions analysed in the first two areas of research
(i.e. the functions attributed to borders and the degree of integration) and investigates the modes of
governance associated with these processes.
Research strategy
A joint conceptual framework for all the case studies selected has been defined with input from the
partners with their various disciplinary backgrounds. In order to conduct empirically grounded research
on the aforementioned research questions, an eclectic and pragmatic working method has been
adopted. It includes an inductive approach which uses qualitative methods (mainly through interviews
with local and regional actors), and a deductive approach based on theoretical frameworks which aims
to test hypotheses in order to validate the theoretical models. The combination of these two approaches
will allow researchers to collectively frame their research and will facilitate the comparison of their results.
Using Luxembourg as a case study
The cross-border metropolitan region of Luxembourg will be one of the twelve case studies selected in
order to cover a diverse range of geopolitical contexts, various urban dimensions and different levels and
nature of cross-border integration (see Map 1). In the first months of the project, the overall approach and
research questions related to the work package have been presented and validated by all partners. The
next points will consist of the preparation of the intensive research phase (design of the questionnaire
and selection of the actors to be interviewed) and the fieldwork which will start in 2014.
Map 1 - Location of case studies
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: CEPS/INSTEAD
FP7 Project No.: 290775
€ 442,800
Total costs: EU contribution: € 343,500
Duration: 48 months
(01/06/2012 - 01/05/2016)
Website: www.euborderscapes.eu
EAwareness
Europeana Awareness
Through the EUROPEANA project, the
Bibliothèque Nationale du Luxembourg has
benefited from European research funding.
Facilitating access to digital works to boost the knowledge
economy
With 27 million works accessible free of charge on the web, Europeana is
Europe’s major digital library. The National Library of Luxembourg is the main
partner of this project in Luxembourg. By working on the issues of the rights and
metadata related to these works, the BnL is facilitating the exchange of digital works
and knowledge via this catalyst for innovation.
Access to digital knowledge is a key factor in enabling research and innovation to take shape more
rapidly and effectively. The cultural sector is reinventing itself to take advantage of the new opportunities
arising from these technological developments such as in “Digital Humanities”. However, to allow access
to existing digital works on a European scale, certain obstacles need to be cleared. It was with this in
mind that the European Commission set up the Europeana project, in which the National Library of
Luxembourg (BnL) has been actively participating since 2009. Europeana is, in the eyes of the public,
first and foremost a search engine which contains links to some 27 million digital works, available from
thousands of Europeana institutions. These works include text, video and audio files, digital images, etc.
Digitising the heritage
The BnL contributes to the resources of Europeana some 65,000 digital works from its digitisation
projects. It has set up a vast digitisation programme, starting with newspapers and journals accessible
on the web (www.eluxemburgensia.lu), on the iPad (“BnL-elux” application) and in the new discovery
tool www.a-z.lu. The works provided by the various Luxembourg contributors, of whom the main ones
apart from the BnL are the National Archives of Luxembourg, the Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur
l’Europe, Plurio.net and the National Museum of Natural History, could pass the 100,000 mark this year.
Picture caption: the Minister for Culture, Octavie
Modert, during the presentation of the Europeana
Licensing Framework on 28 November 2011
Crossing the barriers
“Europeana aims to be a catalyst for the cultural sector, helping it to adapt to the needs of the knowledge
society and to innovate more”, says Patrick Peiffer, head of the Europeana project at the BnL. “Together
with the network of European libraries, museums, archives, publishers, collective management organisms
and IT companies, we are working to implement the Europeana strategy.”
The free exchange of metadata (data about works) related to the works is already a reality and Europeana
is a leading “open data” project since mid-2012. But certain obstacles are still preventing digitisation as
such of works in several European member states. These obstacles vary in size but the first and without
doubt the biggest is copyright, not in its essence, but due to its slow adaptation to the new state of
affairs created by the digitisation of our past, analogue, culture.
Rights questions
The BnL, first through the Europeana Connect project, then by joining the Europeana Awareness
project, has been working on the questions related to licenses and rights in works. “Until now, all the
works available and accessible via Europeana come from the public domain. These are works in which
copyright has expired. But a work does not come into the public domain until 70 years after the death of
the author”, notes Mr Peiffer. This means that the majority of works produced in the 20th century cannot,
today, be put online and risk being forgotten forever.
“For many works, the so-called ‘orphan works’, it is not possible to identify or locate the author or, if
relevant, to identify or locate their heirs”, Mr Peiffer explains. The recent European Directive on orphan
works will partially solve this problem, but it requires a diligent search for each and every work. For
mass digitisation with millions of works, alternative mechanisms are therefore required and have been
implemented in many countries, for example in France and Germany.
The new virtual frontiers
The heart of the current project is to bring together in the same analytical grid the national transpositions of
the Directive on orphan works and the alternative mechanisms for rights clearance for mass-digitisation,
in order to analyse their potential for interoperability and possibly propose a system operating on a
European scale. For the majority of alternative mechanisms are limited to national territories, endangering
the very goal of Europeana.
Clearing the obstacles to the sharing of knowledge in a rational way, which respects the economic interests
of the various parties, represents a sizeable challenge for the project. The history of the media is studded
with technological revolutions which lead to new niches and adaptation of the legal framework. Achieving the
objectives of Europeana is essential for the development of a Europe of knowledge, our shared digital future.
Photo: Bibliothèque nationale
The Competitiveness and Innovation
Framework Programme (CIP) supported
innovation activities, provided better access
to finance and delivered business support
services in the regions. It helped to develop
the information society and promoted the
increased use of renewable energies and
energy efficiency. Covering the period from
2007 to 2013, CIP was endowed with an
overall budget of € 3621 million.
Participant: Bibliothèque Nationale du Luxembourg
Ministère de la Culture
CIP Project No.: 297261
Total costs (for participant): € 93,096
EU contribution (to participant): € 74,476
36 months
Duration: (01/01/2012-31/12/2014)
Website: www.europeana.eu, www.pro.europeana.eu
FREESIC
Free Secure Interoperability Communications
Through the FREESIC project, the University
of Luxembourg has benefited from European
research funding.
Communication interoperability in crisis management
In this modern day and age with all its complexities and inter-actions, emergency
services and civil protection agencies across Europe are faced with growing
challenges that require effective coordination and interoperability across several
organisations when responding to and managing major incidents. Within this context, the
aim of the FREESIC project was to create a solution that would allow highly secure and
cost-effective interoperability between communication infrastructures all over Europe.
Interoperability barriers in relation to communication systems still exist at regional, national and European levels
between Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) organisations. Such barriers often have an impact on
the effectiveness of PPDR agency responses, especially during a crisis. They also limit the data flow in dayto-day operations where access to such shared information considerably improves situation awareness.
Coordination across borders and cultures
The need for effective coordination and interoperability can cross state boundaries and involve the
deployment of specialist resources from one country to another. To achieve optimum effectiveness
between agencies, good communications systems that enable seamless and reliable information
exchange are necessary. It is also important to take into account the fact that different agencies, whether
in the same or in different countries, use different processes, procedures and protocols and also have
different hierarchical governance structures, cultures and indeed organisational aims and objectives.
The FREESIC project has developed a cost-effective innovative solution addressing technological,
organisational and legal issues. It builds effective and secure interoperability systems for emergency
response organisations so that communications and information exchange can be carried out in the
most challenging of circumstances. The solution has been elaborated by a transnational partnership
involving organisations from the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and the United
FREESIC was funded by the European
Commission within the 7th Framework
Programme (FP7) under Grant Agreement
285205.
Kingdom. The University of Luxembourg has led the work in the fields of acceptance and scenario
testing by users as well as dissemination and exploitation of the project results.
Developing a universal gateway
The vision of the FREESIC partners was to develop a solution that would allow the interconnection of responder
agency communication systems without major investment and close to zero operational costs, while making
it possible to continue using existing communication systems. The solution developed is based on a universal
gateway with customisable adapters that enable third party infrastructures to be connected to the FREESIC
Unified Communication Network. End-users will handle network management tasks through the collaboration
site based on web 2.0 components that allow users to configure their own interoperability attributes.
PPDR organisations connected to FREESIC will then be able to exchange required information with
partner agencies regardless of state borders via the FREESIC Gateway. Agencies can even ask their
system integrators to develop an adapter to the FREESIC Gateway that connect their own communication
system with the FREESIC platform. Any kind of communication system can be easily integrated at minor
costs.
Thanks to the FREESIC collaboration web, the interoperability platform is operated in a decentralised
way based on web 2.0 principles. This is done in accordance with transparent interoperability rules
enabling the interconnection of an organisation´s communication system.
Considering actual user behaviour to spur solution acceptance
FREESIC focuses on potential end-user expectations, habits and constrains with a special emphasis on nontechnical barriers that first responder organisations in Europe face when attempting to set up interoperability
with partner agencies. FREESIC project partners have consulted on such non-technical barriers with over 50
stakeholder organisations across 10 EU states. Furthermore, involvement with a wide range of end users has
resulted in a series of suggested solutions to these identified barriers. This interaction also enables the user
interface of the FREESIC collaboration web to be adapted to end-users’ expectations, habits and vocabulary,
and provides an interoperability tool with which they can quickly become familiar.
The first FREESIC test and evaluation was conducted in Slovakia in May 2013. The first prototype
was used as the main communication channel for first responders during a civil protection exercise
called “FREESIC Nitra 2013”. The main task was to create near real conditions for emergency teams
handling crisis situations. The FREESIC partners received feedback from real end-users and evaluated
the developed communication platform.
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: University of Luxembourg
FP7 Project No.: 285205
€ 595,200
Total costs: EU contribution: € 480,400
Duration: 30 months
(01/02/2012-31/07/2014)
Website: www.freesic.eu
FSI-HARVEST
Numerical Modelling of smart energy harvesting devices driven by flow-induced vibrations
Through the FSI-HARVEST project,
the University of Luxembourg has benefited
from European research funding.
Developing independent energy supply for micro-devices
The aim of energy harvesting is to scavenge energy from the environment in
order to power electrical devices, such as sensors placed at remote locations
without external power supply. Targeted sensor applications include meteorological,
geophysical and engineering monitoring instruments but also future medical devices
operating inside the human body when electrical energy can be extracted from a
surrounding flow – air, water, or even blood.
The project FSI-HARVEST is investigating a new class of “piezo-electric energy harvesting devices”
for renewable energy resources. The research conducted by project coordinator Andreas Zilian at the
University of Luxembourg is funded by an individual Career Integration Grant (CIG) from the European
Commission’s Marie Curie programme. The project’s European dimension is based on existing as well
as new collaborations with complementary research groups in France and Germany.
Mr Zilian moved his scientific activities to the University of Luxembourg in 2011. Prior to this, he established
a research team in the field of Computational Mechanics at the University of Braunschweig in Germany,
where he also contributed as Director and Dean of Studies of the international and interdisciplinary MSc
programme “Computational Sciences in Engineering”.
FSI-HARVEST was funded by the European
Commission within the 7th Framework
Programme (FP7) under Grant Agreement
PCIG11-GA-2012-322151.
Generating power with smart materials and clever interactions
The galloping of bridges and cables or the flutter of aircraft wings generated by surrounding flows is
what engineers call structural excitation. They have been striving to suppress these harmful movements
in different ways. A dramatic example of the effects of so-called flow-induced vibrations is the collapse
of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940, which boosted modern research in aeroelasticity and general
fluid-structure interaction.
The key idea of the smart devices developed in FSI-HARVEST is to invert the traditional ambition to
avoid the potentially dangerous interaction of structure and the surrounding fluid, and instead harness
the available flow energy through controlled aero/hydro-elasticity effects. In this way, potentially harmful
fluctuations are used to provide independent power supply to small electrical devices.
Possible applications are numerous. They include micro electro-mechanical systems, monitoring
sensors at remote locations or even in-vivo medical devices. With these devices being “smarter”, they
depend less on local energy storage and also require less effort to maintain them.
Modelling and experimentation, complementing each other
This energy converter technology simultaneously involves the interaction of the structure and the
surrounding fluid, the electric charge accumulated in the material (piezo-elasticity) and a controlling
electrical circuit. In order to understand the observable properties of such future devices and to increase
their robustness and performance, the project will develop a mathematical and numerical model of
the complex physical system and further use it for systematic computational analyses. Experimental
investigations complement the simulation approach and are used to validate the mathematical model
and the simulation framework.
These numerical and experimental investigations into the overall system enable scientists to determine
the optimal design of these “smart energy harvesters” by taking into account electric power supply under
varying exterior conditions. “Computer simulations of such complex physical systems allow us to look into
details that are not directly available through experiments”, Dr Zilian explains. “They make it possible to
identify and understand the phenomena involved which are necessary to optimise engineering designs.”
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: University of Luxembourg
FP7 Project No.: 322151
€ 500,000
Total costs: EU contribution: € 100,000
Duration: 48 months
(01/09/2012-31/08/2016)
Website: www.uni.lu
HeERO2
Harmonised eCall European Pilot – Phase 2
Through the HeERO2 project, POST
Luxembourg has benefited from European
research funding.
Developing a pan-European in-vehicle emergency call service
eCall is a vehicle safety system that will automatically call 112, the EU’s single
emergency number, in case of an accident. By transmitting a pre-defined set of
data that includes the exact geographic location and vehicle type, the system ensures
that emergency services arrive at the accident site faster. POST Luxembourg is one of
the Luxembourg partners participating in the European Union funded project HeERO2,
which aims to prepare, carry out, coordinate and test pan-European eCalls.
eCall is a system that will allow your car to call the emergency services for you if you have an accident
or even an incidence of ill health while driving. The in-vehicle emergency call can be generated either
manually by the vehicle‘s occupants or automatically via the activation of in-vehicle sensors (such as the
deployment of the car’s airbags). Once activated, the in-vehicle system establishes a voice connection
directly with the relevant Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). At the same time, details about the car
(type, possible number of passengers) and its GPS location will be sent to the PSAP operator who
receives the voice call via a data connection.
A wide-range partnership
eCall is developed within the framework of two consecutive European projects: HeERO1 and HeERO2.
The first phase, HeERO1, began in January 2011 with nine partners from Croatia, the Czech Republic,
Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and Sweden who started to work on an
interoperable and harmonised in-vehicle emergency call system.
Luxembourg joined the second phase of the HeERO project – HeERO2 – in January 2013. HeRO2 is
scheduled to run until the end of 2014 and includes the roll-out of pilot tests across Europe in order to
ensure the success of eCall when it goes live in January 2015. Partners from six additional countries –
Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Luxembourg, Spain and Turkey – joined the second project phase.
Implementing eCall requires the collaboration of all the actors in the eCall chain: in-vehicle system
manufacturers, programmers, engineers, telecommunications operators and emergency services.
The Luxembourg project partners of the HeERO2 project are the national project coordinator, HITEC
Luxembourg S.A., a public authority, the “Administration des Services de Secours”, a telecommunications
service provider, POST Luxembourg, three vehicle electronics providers, Fujitsu TEN, NXP, FICOSA and
ISMB who contributes to the testing of the localisation accuracy.
The initial preparation of the project, from its submission to the acceptance of Luxembourg as a project
partner, was a joint effort between the project partners and the initiators of the HeERO project. It was
completed with the help and support of Luxinnovation, Luxembourg’s National Agency for Innovation
and Research.
Gearing up national networks to handle eCalls smoothly
It is very important to test eCall in each country to ensure that the country specific environment is taken
into account as well as the wider European aspects. POST Luxembourg has an important role to play in
ensuring that the national network will be able to handle the unique format of eCalls so that their delivery
can be ensured and we are upgrading our systems accordingly.
Integrating dangerous goods services
In addition to the overall project objective, each participating country also has a specific area of eCall to
consider and particular skills to bring to the project. Luxembourg is giving special attention to the handling
of dangerous goods transportation and the integration of transporters. The Luxembourg partners are
already working together with the European Space Agency (ESA) on another project called DG-Trac that
establishes a tracking and tracing service for specific types of dangerous goods transports. Luxembourg
plans to integrate this project into the HeERO2 eCall procedures to add heavy transport vehicles to the
potential list of vehicles covered by eCall.
How the proposed eCall/DG-Trac integration will work
For the test phase, several transporters and cars from HITEC Luxembourg and POST Luxembourg have
been equipped with special IVS systems provided by Fujitsu TEN, NXP and FICOSA. Several field tests
were planned where the eCall was simulated both automatically and manually by operating the in-car
device controls.
Kate Yeadon from POST Luxembourg says: “At first we thought the tests would run smoothly as there
didn’t seem to be that many parameters to manage. But this idea was quickly nipped in the bud! The
testing showed the value of working together with all partners from inside and outside Luxembourg, as
we were able to resolve unforeseeable issues more quickly as a team.”
The Competitiveness and Innovation
Framework Programme (CIP) supported
innovation activities, provided better access
to finance and delivered business support
services in the regions. It helped to develop
the information society and promoted the
increased use of renewable energies and
energy efficiency. Covering the period from
2007 to 2013, CIP was endowed with an
overall budget of € 3621 million.
Participant: POST Luxembourg
FP7 Project No.: 325075
€ 6,090,000
Total costs: EU contribution: € 3,000,000
24 months
Duration: (01/01/2013-31/12/2014)
www.heero-pilot.eu
Website: IOT6
Universal Integration of the Internet of Things
through an IPv6-based Service Oriented
Architecture enabling heterogeneous
components interoperability
Through the IoT6 project, the University of Luxembourg
has benefited from European research funding.
Smart living with IoT6
The Internet has revolutionised our society over the past few decades
by offering a computer-based communications platform with enormous
potential. The next step will be the “Internet of Things”, which will enable
communication between virtually any kinds of objects that can be provided
with unique identifiers and transfer data over a network. The FP7 project IoT6
aimed to exploit the potential of the new Internet protocol IPv6 for overcoming
the current shortcomings and fragmentation of the Internet of Things.
IPv6 is the latest version of the Internet protocol (IP) that provides an identification and localisation
system for computers across the Internet. IPv6 will exponentially increase the number of IP
addresses that can be provided compared to its predecessor, IPv4. This is an important advantage
for the future Internet of Things, which will extend the Internet to an enormous amount of devices
other than computers. IPv6 also offers other advantages for the Internet of Things, including better
security features and solutions that support the mobility of end nodes.
Exploring IPv6 potential
The IoT6 project brought together a consortium of innovative companies, research and academic
institutions, end-user centric service providers and business experts from seven European countries
– Austria, France, Luxembourg, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom – and Korea
to research the potential of IPv6 and related standards to support the future Internet of Things. An
international team at the University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability
and Trust (SnT), headed by Professor Dr Thomas Engel, contributed with its expertise in security
and privacy handling in distributed environments.
IoT6 was funded by the European
Commission within the 7th Framework
Programme (FP7) under Grant
Agreement 288445.
The SnT team was confronted with the main challenges and objectives of IoT6, which were to
research, design and develop a highly scalable and secure IPv6-based service-oriented architecture
to achieve interoperability, mobility, cloud computing integration and intelligence distribution among
heterogeneous smart things components, applications and services. The project notably explored
multi-protocol interoperability with and among heterogeneous devices, device mobility and mobile
phone networks integration to provide ubiquitous access and seamless communication, and cloud
computing integration with Software as a Service (SaaS).
Large-scale security monitoring
The NetLab team of the SnT worked in particular on security aspects of the Internet of Things. The
team’s contribution to the project involved large-scale monitoring to detect abnormal events in an
IoT6 deployment, such as rogue devices or conducted attacks from internet to Internet of Things
devices, a review of cryptographic solutions for small things which are limited by their computational
and energy resources, and the design of an alternative stack for the Internet of Things based on
information-centric networking including the necessary security functions. The team also performed
an evaluation of smart routing (content-based forwarding) through multiple technologies including
software defined networking.
After three years of research, the IoT6 project provided recommendations on the exploitation of IPv6
features for the Internet of Things. Another successful result was the hardware and software design
and realisation of an IoT6 gateway called SmartBoard.
In addition, the project also produced an SME handbook, a user-guide aiming to assist SMEs in
setting up IoT6-like infrastructures in order to create new businesses. In addition, IoT6 contributed to
over 40 scientific publications. The participation in IoT6 provided the University of Luxembourg with
the opportunity to establish cooperations that set the scene for further innovative and promising EU
projects.
The Seventh European Framework Programme
for Research and Technological Development
(FP7) was the European Union’s main financial
instrument to support European Research
during the 2007-2013 period. The funding
programme will continue under Horizon 2020,
the Framework Programme for Research and
Innovation, supporting a wide range of research
domains with a budget of €79 billion (20142020).i
Participant:
University of Luxembourg
FP7 Project No.:288445
Total costs:€4,144,648
EU contribution:€2,958,000
Duration:
36 month (01/10/2011 –
31/09/2014)
Website:www.iot6.eu
NHPS
Heterogeneous Networks for Public Safety
Through the HNPS project, HITEC
Luxembourg has benefited from European and
national research funding.
Integrating communication networks for public safety
When a major disaster strikes, a number of public safety organisations need
to intervene – the police, ambulance staff and the fire brigade, for example.
Generally, each organisation uses its own communication system. The aim of the
NHPS project was to develop a heterogeneous network concept for future European
Public Safety communications. This was based on the integration of different
networks, including ad hoc deployable systems. The project consortium focused on
the integration of existing communication systems, including professional mobile
radio systems, and took the latest developments in the area of next-generation
network architectures and network management into consideration.
“Although communication networks are available nearly everywhere, public safety organisations struggle
with interoperability issues. This situation provided the initial motivation to begin the project,” explains
Harold Linke, Manager Research & Technology Projects at HITEC Luxembourg. “In the case of a large
emergency involving multiple participating organisations, it is very likely that these entities will use different
communication technologies as well as services. This means that in a worst case scenario, they will not
be able to communicate and/or work together.”
A public-private partnership to ensure innovative results
When the HNPS project started in July 2008, 14 project partners from industry and public research
teamed up to respond to this challenge. The consortium was led by HITEC Luxembourg S.A. and
Celtic-Plus is an industry-driven European research
initiative to define, implement and provide public
and private funding to common research projects
in the area of telecommunications, new media,
future Internet, and applications and services
focusing on a new “Smart Connected World”
paradigm. Celtic-Plus is a EUREKA ICT cluster and
is part of the inter-governmental EUREKA network.
It is open to any type of company covering the
Celtic-Plus research areas, large industry as well
as small companies or universities and research
organisations.
included partners from France, Germany and Spain as well as three additional Luxembourg partners:
POST Luxembourg, Lion Systems and the Ministry of State – Government Communications Centre. The
Luxembourg participants were supported by the Ministry of the Economy and Foreign Trade.
The heterogeneous network concept developed by the HNPS project allowed the rapid integration of
available communication resources in the event of a crisis or disaster. It also supported the daily operations
of public safety agencies by optimising resource allocation and providing a set of advanced digital services.
A “living lab” approach with the end-user in mind
HNPS was conceived to be a user-centred project. This means that the project consortium organised
five demonstrations, with four of them being public to present intermediary results to the end-user
community and gather early feedback.
The main requirement for developing the project’s innovative concept was the integration of different
solutions and networks. The project integrated multiple communication networks such as fixed radio
networks (TETRAPOL, TETRA, WiFi, WiMAX, UMTS, and satellite communication for long distance
connections with backhaul) as well as rapidly deployable networks for intervention sites (WiMAX,
Wireless Meshed Network (WMN), and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN).
In addition, the project consortium developed new and integrated applications to enable end-users to
communicate efficiently and to share information independently from their organisational entity. Solutions
for video and image sharing and analysis were integrated and dedicated headquarter applications
deployed. HITEC Luxembourg provided, for example, a web 2.0 portal solution for information sharing
in a temporary headquarters and a mobile application to allow end-users in the field to gather and
communicate essential information in near-to-real time.
“The project paved the way for new solutions, which are already, or will soon be, available to the European
public safety community. The input of the HNPS project has been used in several public safety solutions,
e.g. emergency.lu (www.emergency.lu) and Alpine Search and Rescue for Italy and Slovenia (AlpSAR –
www.alpsar.eu)”, Mr Linke points out.
Excellence award
HNPS was carried out within the framework of Celtic-Plus, an ICT “cluster” which belongs to the intergovernmental EUREKA network. The impressive project results were recognised when the consortium
received the Celtic Excellence Award in Bronze in 2012, in recognition of its valuable contribution to the
European public safety community.
Created in 1985, EUREKA is an
intergovernmental organisation for marketdriven industrial research and development.
It coordinates national funding on innovation
with the aim to boost European industrial
productivity and competitiveness. Having
passed EUREKA’s stringent assessment
procedures, a project is conferred the wellknown EUREKA label.
Participant: Hitec Luxembourg SA
Project No.: CP5-010
Total costs (for participant):€ 779,217
EU contribution (to participant): € 441,000
Duration:42 months
Website: (01/07/2008 - 31/12/2011)
www.celtic-initiative.org
OUTSMART
Provisioning of urban/regional smart
services and business models enabled by
the Future Internet
Through the OUTSMART project, the University
of Luxembourg has benefited from European
research funding.
Developing Future Internet platforms for efficient supply
in cities
New ways of transmitting information over the Internet are appearing constantly:
computers are becoming more powerful, mobile devices such as smartphones and
tablets are widely used, and other objects – vehicles, building automation systems and
factory equipment, for example – are also hooked up to the Internet. Wifi and cellular networks
allow users to be connected to the network in a variety of places. While this leads to many
advantages, such as the development of innovative “smart” services that are tailor-made to
suit users’ needs and contexts, there are also severe shortcomings in terms of privacy,
security, performance and reliability for the transmission of sometimes sensitive information
over the Internet. The University of Luxembourg participated in the OUTSMART project in
order to help develop a reliable framework for the Internet of the future.
The Future Internet (FI) context can best be summarised as “everything always connected everywhere”.
The Future Internet initiative deals with the design, evaluation and deployment of technologies in order to
adapt the network to current and future needs arising from the Internet’s omnipresence.
Optimising supply and access in urban areas
Within this context, the goal of the OUTSMART project was to harness the Future Internet by developing five
innovation eco-systems. These eco-systems, covering smart transportation, waste management, water and
sewage, street lighting and smart metering, will facilitate the creation of a wide range of pilot services and
technologies that contribute to optimising supply and access to services and resources in urban areas.
The eco-system for waste management, for example, monitors fill level (and contents) of public waste
OUTSMART was funded by the European
Commission within the 7th Framework
Programme (FP7) under Grant Agreement
285038.
baskets. Its aim is to optimise routes of refuse collection vehicles, increase the general sense of duty
for public cleanliness and raise citizens’ awareness by indicating overloaded waste baskets and “muck
corners”. The aim of the water and sewage eco-system is to monitor water quality and sewers, including
an early-warning system.
Intelligent street lighting and smart metering allows dynamic adaptations of the lighting depending on the
presence of human beings and the level of darkness. These systems also include almost real-time monitoring
and reporting of the energy consumption. The smart transportation eco-systems will compile all data on the
current traffic situation in a city – including both public transport such as buses or trains and private vehicles –
to help users choose the best paths to rapidly arrive at a destination and avoid being blocked in traffic jams.
The overall aim of these innovation eco-systems is to contribute to a more sustainable utility provision
and, through increased efficiency, lower the strain on resources and on the environment. In order to
develop such advanced services and technologies, an industry-driven approach works best, involving the
whole value chain, from city authorities, utilities operators and ICT companies to academia. OUTSMART
services and technologies are based on an open and standardised infrastructure as envisioned by
the FI Private Public Partnership (FI PPP) and provided by a service framework designed to facilitate
provisioning, development and access.
Security expertise from Luxembourg
OUTSMART brought together a consortium of successful and innovative companies, research and academic
institutions, end-user centric service providers and business experts from eight European countries: Denmark,
France, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Serbia, Spain and the United Kingdom. An international team at the
University of Luxembourg, headed by Prof. Dr Thomas Engel, contributed with its expertise in security and
privacy handling in distributed environments to the OUTSMART innovation eco-systems.
The contribution of the Luxembourg team involved investigating domain management, as well as the
dependability and trust requirements of the OUTSMART architecture, with a particular focus on identifying
suitable Quality of Service (QoS) and security mechanisms. It developed a framework for analysing a
large collection of network traffic by combining data mining techniques and cloud-based solutions (i.e.
Hadoop/Map-Reduce). The tool developed enables the real-time traffic of a real operator in Luxembourg
to be analysed in order to figure out botnet communications.
Participation in the OUTSMART project has given the University of Luxembourg the opportunity to
establish cooperations that set the scene for further innovative and promising EU projects.
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: FP7 Project No.: Total costs: EU contribution: Duration: Website: University of Luxembourg
285038
€ 342,080
€ 256,560
24 months
(01/04/2011-31/03/2013)
www.fi-ppp-outsmart.eu
QFT-2-MOT & 3-FOLDS
From Quantum Field Theory to Motives and
3-manifolds
Through the QFT-2-MOT & 3-FOLDS project,
the University of Luxembourg has benefited
from European research funding.
Arithmetical surprises from the quantum universe
The classical notion of trajectory in physics has its foundation in common sense:
the position and the velocity of an object can be predicted by computations and
measured at a given time. As opposed to the classical universe, the behaviour of
elementary particles is elusive. Only the probabilities of physical events can be predicted.
These probabilities are sums of all possible trajectories of the quantum system from the
initial to the final state.
The Quantum Field Theory (QFT) aims to predict the probabilities of the interactions of elementary
particles. Its predictions have been put through the test many times, and have come through unscathed.
Almost 50 years ago, QFT predicted the existence of the Higgs particle to explain why fundamental
particles have mass. The CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland/France made headlines last year
when it finally confirmed the existence of this particle.
Despite its very precise theoretical predictions that have been confirmed time and again in experiments,
the mathematical aspects of QFT have been surprising researchers. The FP7 project “From QFT to
motives and 3-manifolds”, in which the University of Luxembourg is involved, targets one of these
intriguing mathematical problems arising from QFT.
QFT-2-MOT & 3-FOLDS was funded by
the European Commission within the 7th
Framework Programme (FP7) Marie Curie
Actions under Grant Agreement PCIG11GA-2012-322154.
Some numbers are more equal than others, according to the quantum universe
The numbers arising from the computations of probabilities in general are not particularly notable. They
can be fractions of natural numbers or transcendental numbers, and their decimal representations can
have any number of digits including infinity.
While considering the quantum events, however, the known computations in quantum field theory result
in a very particular class of numbers, which are known as multiple -values. These numbers are of great
interest in number theory. Even though they are transcendental in general, they are described by finite
data, in other words, they are not as generic as transcendental numbers are expected to be.
The multiple -values are nested sums where arguments are integers.
A priori, there is no reason for obtaining these numbers. Their presence hints at new arithmetic structures
of the quantum system that we were not aware of. Up until recent progress had been made with the
project, it was not known whether these particular numbers, multiple -values, must always be present
or whether it is just a coincidence for the computations that we are capable of realising today.
Geometry behind the numbers
The area of a triangle whose base length and height are rational numbers can only be a rational number.
On the other hand, the area of a circle with the rational radius r is π r2, i.e., it must be a multiple of the
most famous transcendental number, π = 3.1415926…
The “From QFT to motives and 3-manifolds” project investigates the geometry behind the elementary
particle physics to uncover the mystery behind the persistence of multiple -values. The idea behind
the solution to the puzzle is not more sophisticated than the elementary computations of the area of
geometric shapes. Together with Professor Matilde Marcolli from Caltech, the project consortium has
started an ambitious programme aimed at reformulating the problem in a suitable geometric setting. This
approach proved successful in explaining the puzzle of numbers in the quantum universe.
The arithmetic properties investigated in the project suggest that the quantum universe has some additional
symmetries that we cannot completely formulate yet. The advances in this research area, and this project
in particular, represent interesting progress towards a better understanding of the quantum universe.
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: University of Luxembourg
FP7 Project No.: 322154
€ 100,000
Total costs: EU contribution: € 100,000
Duration: 48 months
(01/11/2012-31/10/2016)
Website: www.uni.lu
STIMULATE
Sustainable e-mobility services for
elderly people
Through the STIMULATE project, CRP
Henri Tudor has benefited from European and
national research funding.
New travel planning platform to meet the needs of seniors
Elderly people enjoy taking trips but, owing to a loss of independence due to
mobility or health constraints and apprehension about the use of new
technologies, they can feel a lack of confidence when travelling. STIMULATE, an Ambient
Assisted Living (AAL) project initiated and coordinated by Dr Djamel Khadraoui at CRP
Henri Tudor, has developed an online web platform that allows the elderly to plan their
trips according to their individual constraints and preferences, and a complementary
mobile application to provide assistance while on the move. Already tested by seniors
on four group trips in different locations around Europe, the platform will soon be made
available for wider use.
Complementary web and mobile multi-modal trip-planning services
The platform consists of two parts: a web application for planning trips accessible via desktop computer
and mobile devices, and a hybrid mobile application to provide assistance during travel. Three main
travel packages, developed by project partner Cybercultus, are available: “Special offer”, which includes
package offers, “Tailored travel”, which generates a customised offer based on criteria selected by
users, and “Do it yourself”, a bespoke offer that allows elderly users to select a set of criteria and put
together their entire holiday package. As Damien Nicolas, STIMULATE project manager at CRP Henri
Tudor, explains, “STIMULATE provides a platform for booking holidays that takes into account seniors’
preferences and needs, helping them to feel comfortable while travelling.”
The hybrid mobile application developed by CRP Henri Tudor provides on-the-move travel assistance,
STIMULATE was funded by the European
Commission within the Ambient Assistant
Living Programme under Grant Agreement
aal-2010-3-044.
including a daily schedule of activities and their descriptions, and real-time multi-modal route planning
between activities, accommodation, and the nearest health services. This calculates the best route
between two locations, combining appropriate forms of transport that can include car, public transport
and/or walking, depending on the user’s mobility needs. In addition, users can call local emergency
services directly from the application. “We applied our expertise to optimise multi-modal route planning,
enabling the application to determine the best mix of transport options for seniors based on their individual
mobility constraints,” Damien Nicolas explains further. Based on feedback from early users, the app will
also provide extensive offline information and an easy-to-read user interface.
Providing tailored activity recommendations
An important focus of the project was to develop a profile-based recommendation system. Activities
offered should be interesting to users but, again, take into account their individual physical capabilities.
Four types of key criteria were identified: level of physical health, autonomy, vision and hearing. By
matching different criteria contained in a user’s profile with criteria describing the difficulty level of activities,
the system provides a list of suggested activities, ordered by degree of suitability for the individual.
However, the choice remains with the user. As Damien Nicolas emphasises, “It is important to avoid stigmatising
seniors who face mobility or other constraints. We make recommendations by ranking the activities, but we
still display the full list of options so that all users can freely choose which activities they want to do.”
Promising tool for Europe-wide travel planning
Currently in the closing stages of the project, STIMULATE will organise a final pilot trip, this time in
partnership with the Luxembourg seniors’ organisation RBS – Center fir Altersfroen A.s.b.l. The platform
will be transferred to a service provider that will aggregate travel information from many sources, providing
information on offers from different tour operators as well as details about different destinations, and act
as a central point of contact during travel.
The senior travel market is large and growing, with over 33 million European travellers over 65 having
made four or more overnight trips in 2011. Despite the recent proliferation of travel applications,
STIMULATE is well positioned on the market by meeting the specific needs of seniors both before and
during travel. STIMULATE will help to improve their travel experience by enabling them to be sure that
their assistance, health and mobility needs will be met during their trip, giving them the peace of mind
and confidence to flexibly explore their destination.
The Ambient Assisted Living Joint
Programme (AALJP) promotes market and
user driven activity and funds applied projects
that will be two to three years from market at
project completion. Systematic involvement
of end-users improves market acceptability.
The AAL Programme supports social,
technological and business innovation for the
benefit of older adults.
Participant: Centre de Recherche
Public Henri Tudor
€ 1,748,019
Total costs: National contribution: € 572,000
Duration: 26 months
(01/09/2011-31/10/2013)
Website: www.tudor.lu/en/projects/stimulate
www.stimulate-aal.eu
STORE
Sustaining access to Tissue and data
from Radiobiological Experiments
Through the STORE project,
IBBL has benefited from European
research funding.
Sustaining access to tissue and data from radiobiological
experiments
In 2012, IBBL (Integrated BioBank of Luxembourg) participated in a European
Seventh Framework (FP7) project that aimed to sustain access to tissue samples
that were exposed to radioactivity. IBBL scientists assessed the robustness and
reproducibility of laboratory methods that were proposed by the project’s consortium.
When combined with new genetic and molecular technologies, archives of data and biological tissue
from radiation experiments carried out up to 60 years ago could provide new insights into the impact of
radiation exposure on a person’s health. Over the last three years, a framework project supported by the
European Union within the FP7 Euratom programme has set up an international platform to share data,
biomaterials and methods from past, current and future radiobiological experiments. The project entitled
STORE (for Sustaining access to Tissue and data frOm Radiobiological Experiments) is coordinated by
the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (Bfs) in Germany and involved 8 European partners, including
IBBL (Integrated BioBank of Luxembourg).
An ideal biobanking partner
This was the first project funded by the European Commission for which the recently established biobank
was selected. A fact that pleased Catherine Larue, PhD, MBA, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of IBBL,
who comments: “It is fantastic to have been part of a European-wide project and we hope to become a
partner in many other framework programmes in the future. Luxembourg’s location in the heart of Europe
STORE was funded by the European Commission
within the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) under
Grant Agreement 232628.
and its growing reputation as a hub for biomedical research should further attract international attention,
collaboration and funding. I believe that our advanced and integrated infrastructure as well as our high
quality services and staff make us an ideal biobanking partner for EU research consortia.”
Validation is key for consortium standard operating procedures (SOPs)
Apart from setting up infrastructure for the physical storage of samples and data, the STORE consortium
also developed the necessary standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the evaluation of the archived
tissue samples. This includes protocols for the isolation of DNA, RNA and proteins from tissue samples
stored in the form of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) blocks.
As a partner of this FP7 project, the IBBL Biospecimen Research team has tested and verified all
methods proposed by the STORE consortium for the isolation of DNA, RNA and proteins from FFPE
tissue. The team used tissue samples provided by STORE and IBBL’s own reference material to assess
critical factors such as inter-operator reproducibility and robustness of the methods with regards to
fixation, source and age of the sample. Olga Kofanova, PhD, the Biospecimen Research Scientist at
IBBL who led the work, comments on the results: “The validation work demonstrated that good quality
RNA, DNA and proteins can be recovered from FFPE tissue and the STORE SOPs are reproducible
and robust.”
In addition to confirming the suitability of the consortium’s methods, the results support the use of quality
control methods by biobanks to assess the quality of molecular derivatives extracted from such tissue
samples. All validated methods are now proposed by the store consortium as standard SOPs which can
be used by the international biobanking community.
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: Integrated BioBank of
Luxembourg (IBBL)
FP7 Project No.: 232628
Total costs: € 1,309,223
EU contribution: € 983,987
Duration: 42 months
(01/04/2009 – 30/09/2012)
www.rbstore.eu
Website: TCMCANCER
Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Postgenomic era: identifying lead therapeutic
compounds against cancer
Through the TCMCANCER project,
CRP-Santé has benefited from European
research funding.
Using novel plant compounds for cancer treatment
Even though advanced therapies are available, cancer is still one of the leading
causes of death in humans. The biggest concerns with current therapies include
serious side effects the drugs cause in the human body as well as drug resistance which
often appears upon prolonged treatment. The main aim of the TCMCANCER project
was to identify and characterise novel lead therapeutic compounds against cancer
based on current knowledge from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
Most modern medicines are derived from plant compounds, and plants are still considered to be
an inexhaustible source of bioactive molecules that can be used to treat human diseases. In the
TCMCANCER project, CRP-Santé joined forces with three research laboratories from Europe and
China: the University of Bergen, Norway, the Modern Research Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine
(affiliated with the Second Military Medical University) in Shanghai and the Institute of Medicinal Plant
Development Beijing (affiliated with Peking Union Medical College). The partners were selected for their
complementary expertise in molecular and cell biology, plant biochemistry, pharmacology, and oncology.
The project, which was coordinated by CRP-Santé, was supported by the International Research Staff
Exchange Scheme (IRSES) of FP7.
The partners screened over 900 purified compounds from medicinal plants for anti-cancer activities and
to purify and identify additional compounds from plant extracts. The mechanism of action of five selected
active compounds was further studied at the molecular and cellular levels.
Researcher exchange
The four-year project included personnel exchanges between the two European and the Chinese
partners totalling 90 months. Sixteen young Chinese scientists visited CRP-Santé and the University of
Bergen between March 2009 and February 2013, with an average stay of 3 months. They participated
in the screening of purified compounds for anti-cancer activities as well as in studies on the molecular
mechanisms of five selected purified compounds. Nine scientists from Europe visited the Chinese partner
labs to acquire skills in compound purification and identification. Exchanges, research activities and results
were discussed at workshops in Shanghai (2009), Luxembourg (2011), Beijing (2012) and Bergen (2013).
Drug discovery research
With the new competences, researchers from CRP-Santé have embarked on drug discovery research,
a field with great potential for novel therapeutic applications. Two former exchange scientists from
China have joined CRP-Santé to reinforce the research team. The research focuses on bioactive plant
compounds not only with anti-cancer but also with antiviral activities.
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: Centre de Recherche
Public de la Santé
FP7 Project No.: 230232
Total costs: € 237,600
EU contribution: € 237,600
Duration: 48 months
(01/03/2009-28/02/2013)
Website: www.crp-sante.lu
V-FEATHER
InnoVative Flexible Electric Transport
Through the V-FEATHER project, CRP
Henri Tudor has benefited from European
research funding.
Bringing sustainable freight delivery to urban centres
The demand for urban freight delivery is increasing across Europe. Despite the
widespread focus on reducing CO2 emissions in cities and adopting more
sustainable modes of transportation, this need continues to be met through the use of
traditional delivery vans and trucks, which adds to existing congestion and pollution in
urban centres. V-Feather is an FP7 project initiated by industrial partners interested in
finding a sustainable, flexible solution for urban last mile delivery. It is developing a
completely new modular electric light duty vehicle, from initial concept to working
prototype.
The V-Feather vehicle is based on a modular building block concept that uses active, adaptive structural
architecture. This means that it consists of multiple connected modules: a cab module where the driver
sits, and one or more freight modules of different sizes and types. These can be added or removed over
the course of the delivery route based on real-time requirements to increase capacity, improve agility, or
transport special freight such as refrigerated goods. This enables better flexibility and cost reductions. As
project manager Wassila Mtalaa, researcher at CRP Henri Tudor, explains: “It is expensive for a company
to buy five delivery vans, but with this vehicle they can buy, for example, two cabin modules and six
freight modules, and adapt the configuration based on changing order sizes.”
Agile vehicle to meet real-time delivery needs
CRP Henri Tudor is participating in the V-Feather project within the context of its MOBILITY innovation
programme. The Centre is responsible for providing recommendations for the eco-design of the vehicle as
V-FEATHER was funded by the European
Commission within the 7th Framework
Programme (FP7) under Grant Agreement
n° 285727.
well as developing a new system for last mile delivery known as Deposit Rapid Recharge and Recollect (D3R),
a method that allows vehicles to drop off modules at delivery points and continue in a smaller configuration.
A key advantage of this system is that it extends the range of electric vehicles. “The problem with electric
vehicles is that they have limited range, so cities are only using them for residential mobility,” Dr Mtalaa
explains. The V-Feather vehicle, on the other hand, will be optimised for last mile delivery. “Due to the vehicle’s
modularity,” she says, “we can deliver all around the city, leaving modules to recharge at different locations
and picking them up again later to provide battery power to the rest of the vehicle.”
From concept to working vehicle
V-Feather brings together industrial and research partners from Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, the
Netherlands and the United Kingdom, around the ambitious goal of designing the new electric modular
vehicle from the ground up. It will define the vehicle specifications, develop and simulate the modular
vehicle and fleet management concept, manufacture a working prototype and, finally, test it in a real
environment. The resulting vehicle will benefit both delivery providers, who will be able to increase their
agility, and cities, which will benefit from cleaner air and better traffic flow.
The vehicle’s development comes at the right time, coinciding with the increasing focus on electric mobility
in Luxembourg. As Dr Mtalaa points out, “It’s in line with national objectives to promote electric vehicles.
The planned installation of electric charging stations across the country will not only benefit private cars, but
also make it easier to introduce electric freight vehicles, such as V-Feather, onto the market.”
The Seventh European Framework
Programme for Research and Technological
Development (FP7) was the European
Union’s main financial instrument to support
European research during the 2007-2013
period. The funding programme continues
under Horizon 2020, the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation,
supporting a wide range of research domains
with a budget of € 79 billion (2014-2020).
Participant: Centre de Recherche
Public Henri Tudor
FP7 Project No.: 285727
€ 240,304
Total costs: EU contribution: € 180,228
Duration: 40 months
(01/07/2012-31/10/2015)
Website: www.green-cars-initiative.eu/
projects/v-feather
Luxinnovation – National Contact Point for EU funding
As the Luxembourg National Contact Point (NCP) for
Horizon 2020 puts special emphasis on bringing
Horizon 2020 and related EU Research and Innovation
EU funding to small and medium-sized enterprises
funding programmes, Luxinnovation is proud to support
(SMEs). The Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) provides
your research endeavours. Our mandate is provide
specialised support for innovative SMEs. In Luxembourg,
information, specialist advice and on-the-ground guidance
the EEN is represented by Luxinnovation, the Chamber of
to applicants for EU research and innovation funding.
Commerce and the Chambre des Métiers.
Building on our decade-long experience of EU funding
Luxinnovation,
programmes, we are able to respond to questions on
Agency
for
has
been
the
National
Innovation
and
where to get up-to-date information on programmes and
Research,
calls for project proposals, what programmes are the
making the Luxembourg economy more
most suitable for you or where and how to find European
innovative for over 25 years. The Ministry
partners.
for
Higher
has
appointed
Education
contributing
and
Luxinnovation
to
Research
as
NCP.
Despite an effort to make rules more consistent and
European R&D funding has been gaining
simple within Horizon 2020, it is vital to know the “do’s and
importance, and not only because of the
don’t’s” of the EU funding process to submit a successful
financial opportunities involved. It is only
project. Luxinnovation has established a series of tools
by cooperating with European partners
to support research organisations and companies, such
that important projects for the future can
as information, strategic input, partner search, project
succeed.
proposal assistance and support for project promoters.
Advice on European R&D funding is, however, only one
As NCP, we are not isolated but cooperate with our
of Luxinnovation’s many service lines. Our wide range of
counterparts all over Europe, as well as with consultants and
services allows us to create synergies to assist you even
the European Commission. This allows us to continuously
better. Regardless of whether you are a novice or an EU
improve our service, so that you may benefit from best
research and innovation funding veteran, your NCP is
practice and experience gathered on a European level.
there to assist you.
LUXINNOVATION GIE
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Phone (+352) 43 62 63-1
[email protected]
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www.luxinnovation.lu
www.horizon2020.lu