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In conversation with our young researchers: Dr Sofie Waltl

Data-intensive research.

Housing markets form an integral part of the economy and everyone is affected by housing price fluctuations, either directly as owners or indirectly as renters. Accordingly, housing markets are monitored by many parties including policy makers, investors, landlords and planners. House price indices are an important tool for assessing housing markets, although standard indices are probably not fully capturing and understanding the complex dynamics of these markets.

How much does the housing market affect the economy? How to measure aggregate house price movements? Are measurement tools fit for purpose?

Sofie Waltl, a postdoc researcher at Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) and assistant professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), is developing methodology to improve economic measurement tools mainly for housing-, wealth- and inequality-related issue.

A mathematical approach to economics

Through her various research projects, Sofie Waltl showed that standard house price indices are not enough to fully understand and capture the dynamics in housing markets. Indeed, standard index construction techniques might be imprecise to detect changes in the general tendency of house price trends. This issue is critical as the relation between prices and rents varies quite significantly within a market.

To address this challenge, the economist designs new techniques or adaptations of existing techniques to enhance the assessment of housing markets. This also includes exploring other types of data collection including surveys and experimental techniques. Having several types of data all describing the same phenomenon allows her to study also how people think about their decisions.

“I work on developing methodology to improve economic measurement tools mainly for housing-, wealth- and inequality-related issues. Due to my work on housing topics, I also drifted a bit towards policy-evaluation and design. In particular, I recently worked on rent control policies in a historic setting in St. Petersburg and currently a recent debate about rent control in Berlin.”

“All projects have in common being very data-intensive and I’m fascinated employing all kinds of data sources: hard to access historic sources and messy web-scraped data up until neatly collected experimental, survey and administrative data. In short: I love data and how to filter the information I am interested in from a bulk of numbers.”

Dr Sofie Waltl

Research, what else?

After graduating in mathematics from the University of Graz in Austria, Sofie Waltl was interested in applying what she had gained. To her studying mathematics leads to a certain way of thinking : “you acquire profound skills to discover meaningful paths through chaos, find creative problem-solving skills and are used to intellectual complex moves”. Following a conversation with one of her supervisors she realised that mathematics played a key role for economists to build precisely defined models from which exact conclusions can be derived with mathematical logic. And so the economist emerged.

“While writing my Master’s thesis and after a couple of internships, I was quite convinced that research was the thing I wanted to do. I’ve always had a bit the feeling that research is kind of a natural fit.”

Dr Sofie Waltl

Why Luxembourg as a research destination?

To Sofie Waltl, “working in such a multi-disciplinary research setting is very fruitful.”

“There is a lot happening in a rather small place and communication across institutions works quite well at the level of researchers. I believe that this is something rather hard to find in large countries – simply because you cannot just physically pass by at every single institution you are interested in without having to travel large distances.”


Dr Sofie Waltl

An FNR CORE programme grantee

On top of holding a postdoc position in LISER, Sofie Waltl successfully applied for a large-scale research grant as a principal investigator by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) CORE programme.

Her research project, entitled Are People Aware of their (Housing) Wealth? Assessing Owner-Estimated Home Values in Survey and Experimental Data, seeks to develop accurate measurement of the stock of housing wealth, its distribution within society, and heterogeneity in (housing) wealth.

Through this programme, she can hire young researchers, target more complex research designs and just scale up by increasing the number of research papers she is working on as well as the number of research collaborations worldwide.

More about FNR CORE programme

About living in Luxembourg

The researcher likes the multi-cultural flair in the city of Luxembourg. In particular, she enjoys the local culture and the many activities in the city, especially during summertime.

“On a normal day in Luxembourg, I usually would have used at least some words from 2-4 languages – just on my way from home to work. I really like the combination of locals and people from everywhere.”

Dr Sofie Waltl

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In conversation with our young researchers: Dr Huizhu Sun

How can research help Luxembourg to maintain its international competitive position as a financial marketplace? Huizhu Sun is a Junior Research & Associate in the Luxembourg Institute of Science […]

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Inside Research Luxembourg Latest news Sustainable & Responsible Development

In conversation with our young researchers: Dr Susheel Bhanu Busi

Biofilms in high-alpine streams.

As climate change melts away frozen landscapes, high alpine ecosystems are threatened. While we think of them as too extreme to harbor life, we know they’re not only habitable, but they are major ecosystems. In these environments, cold-adapted microorganisms are not only surviving but growing. Understanding how these tiny organisms can thrive in such extreme conditions is a priority.

How does microbial life survive in harsh ecosystems like glacier-fed streams? What functions do biodiversity and ecosystem provided by these communities have? Why it has become urgent to study them?

Dr. Susheel Bhanu Busi is a Postdoctoral Researcher with a molecular microbiology background in the Systems Ecology group at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) at the University of Luxembourg. He is studying how biofilms and the domains within like archaea, bacteria, viruses and (micro)eukaryotes adapt to life in alpine streams originating from glaciers.

Microrganisms colder than ice

Glacier-fed streams are harsh ecosystems dominated by microbial life organised in benthic (at the bottom of a body of water) biofilms, yet the biodiversity and ecosystem functions provided by these communities remain under-appreciated.

To better understand the microbial processes and communities contributing to glacier-fed stream ecosystems, the microbiologist uses high throughput sequencing. Low biomass and high inorganic particle load in glacier-fed stream sediment samples may affect nucleic acid extraction efficiency using extraction methods tailored to other extreme environments such as deep-sea sediments.

Originally a wet-lab researcher, manipulating liquids, biological matter, and chemicals, Dr Susheel Busi now straddles both the wet- and dry-lab, focusing on computational methods, to study biofilms in alpine streams. In practice, he used an adapted phenol-chloroform-based extraction method which resulted in higher yields and better recovered the expected taxonomic profile and abundance of reconstructed genomes. His studies provide a first systematic and extensive analysis of the different options for extraction of nucleic acids from glacier-fed streams.

“I believe that my current research into biofilms in alpine streams sheds light on how archaea/bacteria/viruses/microeukaryotes adapt to the cold and harsh environments. More importantly, it sheds the light on the rapid pace at which we are losing high alpine ecosystems due to accelerated global warming, and climate change in general.”


Dr Susheel Bhanu Busi

Research to make the world a better and safer place

Dr Susheel Bhanu Busi’s research journey started as an undergrad at the Madras Christian College in Chennai, India. Looking through the ocular of the microscope he got fascinated by the idea of motility in bacteria. Subsequently, his research led him to a Master’s in Biomedical Sciences at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland in the USA, where he worked on culturing a probiotic bacterium resistant to both high-temperatures and a low-pH.

“The idea was to use this commercially in both food and animal-feed preparations without losing viability of the bacterium and incidentally this also brought me a patent.”

Dr Susheel Bhanu Busi

The researcher’s interest in biofilms and the interactions therein grew as a PhD student at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

“My PhD work identified not only biomarkers of colon cancer allowing for non-invasive screening, but also certain bacteria that may one day be used as potential therapeutics.”

Dr Susheel Bhanu Busi

Why Luxembourg as a research destination?

Having lived in the USA for 10 years, the microbiologist was seeking a new challenge. He was already aware of Luxembourg, specifically of Prof. Paul Wilmes. “The prospect of working with one of the leaders in the field of multi-omics, coupled with the very collaborative environment the LCSB offered was as good a reason as any to come here. Looking back, I wouldn’t have chosen any other way!”

To Susheel Bhanu Busi, “Luxembourg punches well above its weight in the sense that despite being a smaller country, the research community is both diverse and internationally acclaimed.”

“The resources made available to researchers via the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR), coupled with the vast levels of expertise across many areas of Science, not just at the LCSB, but also the LIH, LNS, LIST would be ideal for researchers at all career levels. Most importantly, the interdisciplinarity of the research happening across the several labs make Luxembourg one of the premier destinations for microbiome and multi-omic research.”

“From my experience in the USA, I can attest to the world-class facilities available here in Luxembourg for those involved in small animal model research. The microbiome research infrastructure such as the Sequencing Platform at the LCSB speaks for itself, with its highly integrated role in many research projects across many Life Science disciplines. The same holds true for the Metabolomics platform, where many future microbiome studies will eventually gravitate towards.”


Dr Susheel Bhanu Busi

Interdisciplinarity and collaboration

Belonging to the Systems Ecology group at the LCSB, Susheel Bhanu Busi has been involved in many collaborative research projects in Luxembourg.”When I first started in the Systems Ecology group with Prof. Paul Wilmes, I had the opportunity to work on the ‘Colonization, succession and evolution of the human gastrointestinal microbiome from birth to infancy’ project in collaboration with Dr. Carine de Beaufort, specialising in paediatric diabetology at the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL), and the Integrated BioBank of Luxembourg (IBBL).” He is also currently working on a project looking into the evolution of antibiotic resistance in mice in collaboration with Dr. Elisabeth Letellier from the Department of Life Sciences and Medicine (DLSM).

Dr Susheel Bhanu Busi is a member of the Luxembourg Society of Microbiology, which every year brings together all researchers and stakeholders involved in Microbiology in Luxembourg and further fosters a collaborative environment.

International collaborative studies with labs in Bangladesh, Germany, India, Switzerland and the USA span from antimicrobial resistance and animal models to extending bioprospecting efforts in other ecosystems. For instance, the glacier-fed stream biofilm project is a collaboration with Prof. Tom Battin at the Stream Biofilms and Ecosystems Research (SBER) lab at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland.

“The research environment in Luxembourg, especially at the LCSB is amazingly interdisciplinary and fosters collaborations both within the country and also internationally. “

Dr Susheel Bhanu Busi

About living in Luxembourg

Having grown up in India and then lived in the USA, Susheel Bhanu Busi finds that Luxembourg is a happy median between the two countries.

“Luxembourg has the accessibility and ease of access to many things governing one’s life, that the States offer, with the mix of family-oriented values that are reminiscent, to me at least, of home (India)”

Dr Susheel Bhanu Busi

More about the Systems Ecology Group of LCSB

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Inside Research Luxembourg Latest news Sustainable & Responsible Development

In conversation with our young researchers: Dr Martín Fernández Sánchez

Migration issues.

The number of international migrants has increased remarkably during the past decades, rising from 85 million in the 1970s to more than 280 million nowadays. The prospects are that migrant flows will grow even faster in the near future due to climate change and conflicts. As a result, there is more and more interest among policymakers and society to understand who migrates and why, the consequences for both sending and receiving countries, and how to design better policies that could increase the gains from migration while reducing its potential costs.

What are the long-term consequences of migration for the hosting and sending communities? How cultural norms are conveyed though migration? What is the role of migrant networks and information in shaping migration decisions or migrants’ economic performance?

As part of the Crossing Borders Research Programme of the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER), postdoc Martín Fernández-Sánchez examines migration issues through the lenses of history. Adopting a long-term / historical approach, the economist reassesses existing questions with new data and methods while exploring novel questions, which were impossible to address until now.

An interdisciplinary approach to tackle migration issues

Focusing on migration issues, Martín Fernández-Sánchez works at the intersection of development, history, and cultural economics. As such, the economist relies on major historical episodes that have particular features making them a perfect laboratory to examine broad questions in a causal manner. In other words, he looks for particular settings that create so-called natural experiments in which certain individuals or communities are quasi-randomly exposed to the aspect studied. In history, the post researcher is looking to a setting that mimics as close as possible a randomised control trial, such that some individuals are being “treated” and others part of a comparison group.  These “natural experiments” often originate because of regulations, changes in policies, displacements of people due to wars or natural disasters.

The Spanish national researcher describes his approach as interdisciplinary. Indeed, the type of questions he explores means relying on other social sciences such as history, sociology, anthropology, etc. Such an approach not only nurtures his knowledge of the context under study but also guides him asking the right questions, building a conceptual framework that could help understand the results and explore the mechanisms underneath, and to have a better idea of the subtleties that may make the findings hold (or not) in other settings. 

In practice, he combines different sources of data and methodologies. For instance, he brings together historical data coming from a variety of sources and contemporary administrative and survey data. When it comes to methodology, he relies on the most rigorous techniques of causal inference borrowed from econometrics to establish causal links.

“My research examines migration issues through the lenses of history, which offers several advantages and has the potential to challenge current views/conclusions as well as to inform and reshape migration policies. Moreover, I not only consider economic aspects of migration but also examine other dimensions such as how they can shape cultural norms and political outcomes, as these may lead to changes in our societies that persist long after the arrival/departure of migrants. Studying past migration episodes helps us to better understand current ones and to the design the best policies for the future.“

Dr Martín Fernández-Sánchez

Research as a revelation

The economist’s first approximation to research occurred during his last year of bachelor at the University of Vigo. As he got more and more interested in economics and passionate about research, a career in academia became clear to him. Miraculously, as he describes his journey, Martín Fernández-Sánchez earned a grant from a private foundation to do a Master in Economic Research in Cambridge before joining the Paris School of Economics to follow a Master in Public Policy and Development and eventually complete his PhD.

“I think that my studies in economics (which raised my awareness about large disparities in income and living conditions across countries) together with my personal experiences deeply shaped the way I see life. I came to realise that where you are born is the most important factor determining your future opportunities and international migration is the great leveller that could help improve the life of millions of people around the globe.”

Dr Martín Fernández-Sánchez

Why Luxembourg as a research destination?

To Martín Fernández-Sánchez, “Luxembourg has created a very dynamic environment in which people are eager to share ideas and collaborate to exciting projects. Similarly, there are many funding opportunities that can be pivotal depending on the needs of your specific research. Finally, the position of Luxembourg at the heart of Europe is very advantageous, making it very easy to reach other research hubs in Europe such as Paris or London.”

“I chose Luxembourg for a number of reasons. First, because of its current research excellence and the great prospects looking forward. Both at LISER and the University of Luxembourg there are excellent researchers working on migration issues and there is a clear ambition to keep bringing great scholars, finance frontier researcher, and support research activities.”

“Another attractive feature of Luxembourg is that it offers everything one could ask any major European city and, at the same time, it feels very close to nature. I really enjoy this dualism and balance between a cosmopolitan and a laid-off life.”


Dr Martín Fernández-Sánchez

Interdisciplinarity and collaboration

Belonging to the Crossing Borders Research Programme led by Frédéric Docquier, Martín Fernández-Sánchez is currently collaborating with other researchers on a project seeking to understand how access to information affects domestic migration in Africa. He is also involved in a project assessing the influence of migrants’ skills and networks on their economic performance in collaboration with Frédéric Docquier and Fabio Mariani from UCLouvain.

“LISER is quite of a unique place as it gathers together social scientists from different disciplines (such as economics, geography, and others) and strongly encourages collaboration among them. This interdisciplinarity is a great asset as very often, there are particular technical needs or tools that certain colleagues may have expertise on and that help us progress much faster. Similarly, people with other backgrounds tend to look at issues from a different angle, which contributes to make our research better.”

Dr Martín Fernández-Sánchez

Crossing Borders Research Programme at a glance

Assess historical and recent cross-border flows and understand their root drivers

Use innovative sources of data to study the interplay between different forms of mobility

Analyse the economic and societal consequences of migrant flows for all parties concerned

Provide stakeholders and the civil society with databases and expert analyses that help understanding migration flows and the consequences of policy actions

Develop tools to help policy decision-makers maximize the gains and/or minimize the cost of current and future migrations

Build projection tools to anticipate future movements

Contribute to the training of PhD researchers on these topics.

More about LISER Crossing Borders Research Programme

About living in Luxembourg

The researcher sees the country as very diverse and international. He particularly likes the cultural scene and how close we can be to nature.

“For a music lover as myself, I must say that the music scene in Luxembourg is pretty amazing, with places like Philharmonie, Rockhal, den Atelier, Kulturfabrik, and many others.”

Dr Martín Fernández-Sánchez

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In conversation with our young researchers: Dr Sunday Ojochegbe Okutachi

K-Ras protein and cancer.

For over 40 years since its discovery, researchers around the world have been working to develop drugs against the K-Ras protein with very little success. This protein is involved in about 15% of all cancer cases worldwide.

In 2020, cancer was the second leading cause of death in the world. We expect the global cancer burden to continue to rise as a result of lifestyle changes, increased life expectancy and a growing ageing population. Dr Sunday Ojochegbe Okutachi, a newly graduated doctor in cancer biology of the department of Life Sciences and Medicine at the University of Luxembourg, is developing new compounds that act against major chaperones of K-Ras in the cell.

Mutations in the KRAS gene associated with 15% of all human cancers

Ras proteins were among the earliest identified oncogenes. Being implicated in approximately 19% of all human solid tumors, those proteins are the most frequently mutated oncogenes in cancer.

Major breakthroughs have recently led to the clinical development of the first direct and covalent inhibitors of the K-RasG12C mutant. Yet, the majority of K-Ras driven cancers are not G12C mutated.

To effectively treat K-Ras mutated and/or K-Ras driven cancers, the need to pursue multiple direct and indirect therapeutic strategies including the targeting of K-Ras trafficking chaperones as well as the synergistic targeting of different nodes in K-Ras mediated signaling pathways will be crucial. Hence, Sunday Ojochegbe Okutachi focuses on identifying novel isoform specific inhibitors of Ras protein signalling.

“The overarching aim of my research is to identify novel small molecules that can interfere with K-Ras membrane localisation through the inhibition of K-Ras trafficking chaperones by both covalent and non-covalent binding. To this end, we designed and developed relevant assays for the in vitro and in cellulo characterisation of small molecules against the trafficking chaperone proteins CaM and PDE6D.”

— Sunday Ojochegbe Okutach

Research as a vocation

The cancer biologist grew up in a relatively rural city in Nigeria. His experience with the direct consequences of poor healthcare instilled in him a strong interest to pursue a career that attempts to proffer solutions to the issue. Hence, he naturally took interest in the life sciences and graduated valedictorian in Biochemistry in his bachelors programme. Then, he secured a scholarship to study Translational Oncology in the UK where he also graduated with distinction.

The exposure to the interface between basic research and clinical oncology practice informed his subsequent decision to go deeper into the cancer drug discovery and development process. To this end, he joined the cancer cell biology and drug discovery group of Professor Daniel Abankwa at University of Luxembourg to pursue his PhD in 2018.

“I am deeply committed to helping fight disease both at the scientific and on a private level. My long-term desire is to help bring useful healthcare solutions to people. As such, I will be working at the interface between basic research and translational outcomes in the molecular diagnostics industry. Also, I recently founded a cancer nonprofit that helps in increasing cancer awareness and organise fundraising to support cancer preventive and diagnostic activities in my home country of Nigeria.”

Sunday Ojochegbe Okutachi

Why Luxembourg as a research destination?

To Sunday Ojochegbe Okutachi, “Luxembourg is at the forefront of many research fields. Researchers from here regularly publish in high impact and open access journals. Research is well funded and innovation is greatly encouraged. If you are looking for a highly dynamic, international and globally competent scientific environment, Luxembourg is the place for you.”

“As Prof. Abankwa is a leading expert in Ras biology, It was a great opportunity to work in his lab in Luxembourg. Also, Luxembourg has one of the most innovative, agile and competent research programs out there. Through various initiatives, Luxembourg continuously attract some of the best academics across the globe, as a result, the research environment is filled with highly competent, international and diverse professionals. All these factors informed my decision to execute my PhD in the only Grand duchy in the world.”

— Sunday Ojochegbe Okutachi

A robust research environment fostering collaboration

Working in the laboratory of Prof. Daniel Abankwa, Sunday Ojochegbe Okutachi executed his research project at the University of Luxembourg in collaboration with scientist from Finland and the NCI-Ras initiative in the USA.

“Luxembourg has a very robust research environment that supports innovation and collaborative research. “

“The country invests heavily in obtaining state-of-the-art equipment in biomedical research. Consequently, researchers are able to carry out their work with minimal hassle. Indeed, the commitment of the relevant authorities to make the country a leading scientific hub is highly commendable.”

Sunday Ojochegbe Okutachi

About living in Luxembourg

The researcher sees the country as very safe, family oriented, welcoming and socially generous. These very positive experiences largely instructed his decision to stay in the country beyond his PhD.

“Luxembourg has one of the highest standards of living in the world, its extremely charming medieval castles, beautiful and safe streets are solid reasons to live here. In addition to these, what I love most about the country is that it is a great place to have and raise a family.”

Sunday Ojochegbe Okutachi

Sunday Ojochegbe Okutachi recently completed his PhD, entitled Characterization of novel covalent and non-covalent drugs against K-Ras surrogate targets.

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Researchers X Entrepreneurs: Beltran Borja Fiz Pontiveros

Beltran Borja Fiz Pontiveros.

Beltran Borja Fiz Pontiveros is a former post-doctoral researcher of the Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT). He’s also an entrepreneur, being Chief Executive Officer of digitalUs, an SnT’s spinoff to be.

There are plenty of reasons why a researcher can be an entrepreneur. Many have broken the mould and become successful entrepreneurs. An inspiring example is Beltran Borja Fiz Pontivero who developed a unique technology dedicated to empower compliance officers.  

Research to make direct impact

After earning his Master’s degree on machine learning in Barcelona and working as an IT consultant in Luxembourg, Beltran Borja Fiz Pontiveros embarked on a PhD with SnT in the University of Luxembourg. With the support of the research centre, Beltran was encouraged to test his research work with private partners.

“Not only does SnT focus on publishing papers but also on making an impact on the economy. This philosophy surely fed my entrepreneurial mindset and encouraged me to develop scientifically proven technology.”

— Beltran Borja Fiz Pontiveros

After completing his PhD on transactional enhancements for public blockchain-based distributed ledgers, the Spanish-Luxembourgish national pursued his scientific career as a post-doctoral researcher in SnT.

Working in the field of digital footprint, Beltran’s research specifically focused on a project that aimed to de-anonymise online users by trying to link information they made publicly available to other media sources. While being involved in the FinTech Horizon 2020 project, which focused on sharing risk management use cases between European partners to increase the efficiency of supervisory activities, Beltran realised that compliance officers faced data collection challenges.

“One of the advantages we have as researchers is to look for novelty. Being able to identify what hasn’t been explored yet gives an undeniable edge. It’s all about agile development.”

Beltran Borja Fiz Pontiveros

Together with his research team and the support of FNR, he worked on a methodology to match the same entity across multiple publicly data sources.

To Beltran Borja Fiz Pontiveros, academic research is a stepping stone to achieve empowering careers.

“Research gives me the opportunity to do something I truly believe in.”

Beltran Borja Fiz Pontiveros

An ecosystem that fosters entrepreneurship

Beltran credits Luxembourg’s academic environment for fostering entrepreneurial ventures and interdisciplinarity.

“SnT has built an incredible community of researchers and entrepreneurs from different horizons. Some people are exploring space topics, some others are focusing on image recognition or fraud detection. In the end, it gives you great versatility when combining topics.”

Beltran Borja Fiz Pontiveros

Case in point: digitalUs, the startup company Beltran’s co-founded, utilises face recognition technology which was easily incorporated thanks to Georgios Varisteas. The company’s CTO previously built an autonomous vehicle platform, wherein image recognition was one of the main components

Luxembourg as a research and business destination

“Luxembourg’s ecosystem is unique. On the one hand, it is a human-sized country where all players are approachable. On the other hand, Luxembourg is so international that you can have access to Europe and the world easily.”

Beltran Borja Fiz Pontiveros

Find out how digitalUs empowers compliance officers.

Go further

From lab to startup: legAI

By combining automatic reasoning, data analysis and legal expertise, computer scientists from the University of Luxembourg have developed a solution that automates critical tasks so that […]

From lab to startup: digitalUs

Whenever you go online, you leave a digital trail of information footprint. It says where you’ve been, how long you’ve been there and what you’ve been doing. […]

Researchers X Entrepreneurs: German Castignani

German Castignani is a former research associate of the Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) and current research fellow at the University of […]

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Inside Research Luxembourg Latest news Sustainable & Responsible Development

In conversation with our young researchers: Adelene Lai

Environmental Cheminformatics.

With over 350,000 environmental chemicals registered for production and use across the world, there are simply more than researchers can analyse. Increased computational resources are critical.

PhD candidate Adelene Lai at Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) is an environmental cheminformatician who develops workflows, algorithms, and software to help identify environmental chemicals.

16% of annual deaths worldwide attributed to air, water, and soil pollution

Adelene Lai’s research explores how to make the most of computational resources, software and databases to analyse and understand the thousands of measured chemical signals.

The researcher explains that “we measure thousands of signals in a single sample, but we understand very few.” Indeed, the approach to assessing environmental chemicals remains “one-by-one”, though they exist in multitudes as complex mixtures (“soup”) in our environment.

“Recent boosts in computational power and improved tools have also been essential for analysing large amounts of measured data, which for environmental samples is very important, as there are typically many samples from multiple locations and timepoints, e.g. water samples from multiple sites throughout Luxembourg over multiple months.”

Adelene Lai

Environmental Chemistry to be in its own Big Data phase

The cheminformatician develops workflows, algorithms, and software to help identify environmental chemicals.

“Environmental Chemistry is approaching its own Big Data phase, and we need to do things in increasingly automated and ‘smart’ ways. For example, we developed a highly automated workflow to help the Swiss authorities identify unknown chemicals in wastewater coming from industrial sources using Open tools and databases.”

Adelene Lai

More recently, the scientist teamed up with the Luxembourgish Water Management Agency to help identify pharmaceuticals and pesticides in local surface water, where Adelene concentrated on database mining, data curation, and data visualisation.

Why Luxembourg as a research destination?

“Three main reasons: the Schymanski group at LCSB is visionary, unique, and interdisciplinary in its approach to identifying environmental chemical pollutants; Luxembourg has a strong emphasis on Open Science, specifically at the LCSB through Responsible and Reproducible Research (R3); and the research culture in Luxembourg is very dynamic and open to new ideas.”

— 3rd year PhD candidate Adelene Lai is an environmental cheminformatician

Adelene Lai is a member of the group of FNR ATTRACT Fellow Associate Prof Emma Schymanski. Adelene has been selected to attend the prestigious 2021 interdisciplinary Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in June 2021.

Excerpts from Spotlight on Young Researchers: Identifying environmental pollutants

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Researchers X Entrepreneurs: German Castignani

German Castignani is a former research associate of the Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) and current research fellow at the University of Luxembourg. He’s also a successful entrepreneur, being Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Motion-S, SnT’s first ever spinoff launched in 2014.

Research and entrepreneurship have more in common than we often think. German Castignani is one such role model who took the entrepreneurial leap, contributing to making smart mobility a reality. 

An Entrepreneurial Researcher

After earning his Master’s degree and working in the private sector in Argentina, German Castignani did a research internship in France, which piqued his interest in research.

“Something that really cleared my choice to become a researcher has been the strong focus we can put on a single subject, putting all our energy and mind-set to achieve a scientific goal. This is something that as an engineer is difficult to achieve.”

— German Castignani

After completing his PhD in wireless networking in France, the Italian-Argentinian national came to Luxembourg, where he added an entrepreneurial touch to his vehicular telematics research, co-founding the SnT’s first spin-off Motion-S.

Working in the field of vehicular telematics, German Castignani’s research specifically focuses on how to make use of driving data, including GPS,sensors and car-data to provide driver risk profiles based on road safety statistics. Together with his research team and the support of a Ministry of Economy RDI project, he worked on a methodology for data augmentation and mapping of driving patterns to well-known contributory factors for road accidents to build objective risk scores. Thanks to this methodology, it is possible to cluster drivers into well-defined risk categories, as well as provide a risk score based on how exposed the driver is to road fatalities.

To German Castignani, research instigates entrepreneurial mindsets and dedicated skills.

“As a researcher, we need to work hard to find the balance between the economic aspects related to the commercialisation of a research-based product, and the continuity of the research activity, to make such a product continuously evolve in the right direction.”

German Castignani

Today, the research activities of Motion-S are also supported by the National Research Fund (FNR) through an Industrial Fellowship Ph.D. project, in which the company focus the main trends in the usage of car-data to understand new risks and insurance-related pricing models in the connected and automated vehicle era.

An entrepreneurial success story

German Castignani encourages researchers to launch a start-up, citing for example the satisfaction of seeing their research become a reality.

“This is a fantastic adventure I can recommend to any researcher that is eager to see his ideas being deployed and spread in real-life.”

German Castignani

Motion-S provides fleets telematics, on the one hand, delivering premium analytics to companies doing tracking and fleet management, and insurance analytics and risk assessment, on the other.

Recently, the company has successfully fundraised EUR 1m from Group <a>, a leading automotive equipment supplier in Latin America. Thanks to this investment, the startup is set to continue designing smart solutions with further integration of data providers and platforms while developing new mobility profiling algorithms to better explain mobility costs, going beyond risk analytics.

Luxembourg as a research and business destination

“Luxembourg is a well-established place to perform both applied and fundamental research. The diversity of the origin of the researchers, the variety of research topics and the very complete funding scheme that cover all the subjects and degrees of careers, make Luxembourg one of the best places to carry on research projects.”

German Castignani

More about Smart mobility: What does the future hold?

Discover how Motion-s contributes to smart mobility

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Luxembourg researchers receive prestigious international award

Dr Andy Chevigné and Dr Martyna Szpakowska from the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) were awarded the prestigious 2019 Galien Prize for their outstanding contribution to molecular pharmacology.

Dr Andy Chevigné and Dr Martyna Szpakowska from the LIH Department of Infection and Immunity (DII) were rewarded for their outstanding contribution to molecular pharmacology during a virtual ceremony on Tuesday, December 8th, in the presence of Frank Vandenbroucke, Belgian Minister of Public Health and Social Affairs, and of representatives of pharmaceutical companies and healthcare hubs. The Galien Prize is traditionally organised in Belgium and Luxembourg by Roularta HealthCare on a yearly basis and crowns the most significant discoveries in the fields of pharmacology, drug development and medical devices.

Dr Martyna Szpakowska and Dr Andy Chevigné ©LIH

The two LIH researchers were commended during an online ceremony for their continuous achievements in advancing the understanding of the relevance, role, function and pharmacology of atypical chemokine receptors (ACKRs) and their ligands. ACKRs are “molecular switches” that interact with small molecules known as chemokines, thereby regulating cellular mechanisms such as cell growth and survival and consequently influencing a variety of physiological and pathological processes, including immune responses and immunosurveillance. Due to their involvement in several inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, as well as in many cancers, ACKRs have recently emerged as highly promising potential drug targets, although their biology is currently insufficiently understood.

The 2019 Galien Prize in Pharmacology is a recognition of Dr Chevigné’s and Dr Szpakowska’s efforts over the last eight years to extend their research activities and establish the first molecular pharmacology academic laboratory in Luxembourg. The research laboratory of “Immuno-Pharmacology and Interactomics” is located at the LIH Department of Infection and Immunity and co-supervised by the two laureates. The main objectives of their research group are to investigate the roles of chemokines and their receptors in immune disorders, cancer, viral infections and neuro-inflammatory diseases, ultimately leading to the development of drugs targeting these molecular components.

As part of the award ceremony, Dr Chevigné presented his team’s work to the expert audience through the presentation “Understanding the molecular pharmacology of human atypical chemokine receptors”.

“We are humbled and grateful to the jury for this unique opportunity. The Galien Prize is the highest accolade for pharmaceutical research and development and competition was indeed very strong. I am therefore extremely proud of the work we have been able to accomplish so far. This achievement will give additional visibility and credibility to the research performed at LIH and in Luxembourg in general” states Dr Chevigné, Principal Investigator and Group Leader of the Immuno-Pharmacology and Interactomics group.

“Receiving the prize has been even more gratifying considering that it has been awarded to Luxembourgish researchers for the first time in 38 years! This is a further confirmation of the excellent international reputation of our institute and of the Grand Duchy as a whole”, adds Dr Martyna Szpakowska.

“Our goal is to perform research that can be translated into concrete applications with tangible benefits for patients. The award of the Prix Galien to our scientists is a confirmation of the success of our efforts in this direction”, states Prof Markus Ollert, Director of the LIH Department of Infection and Immunity. “I also take the opportunity to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the organisers of this initiative, as well as to the Luxembourg National Research Fund, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research and the charitable initiative ‘Télévie’ for the generous and unwavering support”, he concludes.

Organised yearly by Roularta HealthCare, editor of the “Journal du Médecin/Artsenkrant”, the Galien Prize in Pharmacology consists of a gold medal and a sum of EUR 5,000. It is granted to a scientist or group of scientists under the age of 40 performing clinical or fundamental pharmacology research within a Belgian or Luxembourgish academic institute.

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Highly Cited Researchers: Luxembourg in the spotlight

Research, written on a blackboard.
Three Luxembourg researchers – Dr Bohn, Professors Stéphane Bordas and Alexandre Tkatchenko – are featured in the 2020 edition of the prestigious international ranking, the “Highly Cited Researchers” report.

On November 18th, Clarivate™ released its annual “Highly Cited Researchers” report, recognising the world’s most influential academics. Three Luxembourg researchers – Dr Bohn, Professors Stéphane Bordas and Alexandre Tkatchenko – are featured in the 2020 edition of this prestigious international.

Dr Torsten Bohn

Dr Torsten BOHN © LIH

For the second consecutive year, Dr Torsten Bohn, Group leader of the Nutrition and Health Research team of the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) Department of Population Health (DoPH), was featured in the list of the most cited global scientists in the field of Agricultural Sciences of the 2020 edition of Clarivate’s “Highly Cited Researchers” ranking. Over the past decade, Dr Bohn has been publishing 119 papers indexed in Web of Science™ and obtained a total of 5,477 citations. Dr Bohn’s research focuses on nutrition and health impact, with special attention to nutrient and secondary plant bioactives bioavailability, dietary patterns, inflammation and oxidative stress.

“I am currently developing our public health and nutrition research activities at LIH in line with the institute’s translational and transversal vision”, explains Dr Bohn. “Indeed, this research axis has a significant translational dimension. Nutrient absorption and availability are tightly linked to various health aspects, such as cardiometabolic diseases, one of the DoPH’s major research areas, as well as being a key element in unravelling the mechanisms underlying the relation between the microbiome, immunity, oxidative stress and inflammation, which are also the priority of the LIH Department of Infection and Immunity (DII). Not to mention the proven connections with cancer research carried out at the LIH Department of Oncology (DONC). Being distinguished as an internationally influential scientist is not only an immense honour, but also an unparalleled opportunity to uphold the institute’s visibility and reputation as a global centre of excellence in transversal and translational research”, he adds.

Prof Stéphane Bordas

Prof Stéphane Bordas
© University of Luxembourg

Stéphane Bordas is a full professor in computational mechanics and founding director of the doctoral programme in data and computational sciences. His research activities focus on the development of data-driven numerical methods for engineering and medicine. The multidisciplinary approach combines mathematical skills with computer science tools while taking into account needs and expectations from practitioners. Prof. Bordas has published over 130 articles in international journals and is Editor in Chief of Advances in Applied Mechanics and Associate Editor of Data Centric Engineering.

Prof Alexandre Tkatchenko

Prof Alexandre Tkatchenko
© University of Luxembourg

Alexandre Tkatchenko is full professor in theoretical chemical physics and Head of the Department of Physics and Materials Science (DPhyMS). His research activities focus on new methods combining physical models with machine learning to discover novel phenomena in complex molecular systems and to apply them to real-life problems. Prof. Tkatchenko has published more than 160 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals with an h-index of 63 and more than 20,000 citations to his articles.

The Highly Cited Researchers list is published by Clarivate and comprises 6,167 researchers from more than 60 countries and regions. The “Highly Cited Researchers” report can be accessed here.

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When the drugs don’t work

Chemical compounds can have several stable forms – with dramatic consequences. A physicist at the University of Luxembourg can predict when this can occur: he has develop methods to precisely calculate the stability of molecules. These tools are now used by hundreds of scientists worldwide. They could also help understand why the new coronavirus is so contagious.

This article was originally published by the Luxembourg National Research Fund

It happened again. In 2008, the Parkinson drug Neupro had to be recalled from pharmacies, because it appeared that some of the pills were less soluble than the original and could not be properly absorbed by the body. A similar case had happened a decade earlier with the HIV drug Norvir.


Prof Alexandre Tkatchenko | ©️ FNR / Rick Tonizzo

The problem lies in the solid formulation of the drugs, explains Alexandre Tkatchenko from the University of Luxembourg. It should ensure that they can be correctly absorbed by the body and released. But sometimes, the crystalline structure has several stable forms with different properties. A very slight change in the production facility can then create batches of drugs which are not soluble and therefore cannot be absorbed by the body.

“Not only do we need to know which microbes are involved but above all what they really do,” explains the biologist. “The interplay between certain bacteria and a disorder will happen via molecules which can trigger a cascade of reactions in the body, for example, by interfering with biochemical pathways. What we aim to do is to “Chemists can monitor production if they are aware that the drug has several stable forms,” says Tkatchenko. “But sometimes they don’t know it is possible. This is where my work can be very useful, by alerting them of the possibility.”

Wave matters

The Russian-born physicist studies the behaviour of large molecules with unprecedented detail. Crucially, he takes into account the effects of quantum physics, the theory which describes the microscopic world in terms of overlapping waves.

“Many models until now neglected quantum effects or used simplifications too crude to be accurate. Our work has shown that they are actually crucial in many cases and were behind the problem of the Parkinson drug Neupro.”

His team has been developing computer simulations of molecules for a decade now, improving them bit by bit. These algorithms are published and reused by hundreds of physicists, biologists and chemists worldwide, including many working in pharmaceutical companies.

“Our methods have been used to analyse at least 50 different drugs, but I don’t always know who uses them: sometimes they cite us, sometimes not. But the important thing for me is that my work is useful to others.”

Quantum life

The same techniques are useful to study proteins, large molecules made of thousands of atoms and involved in numerous mechanisms in living organisms. The Luxembourg team recently discovered that quantum effects play an essential role in the way proteins fold, a fundamental process where they acquire the shape that enables them to function.

“Proteins often work by locking into other macromolecules, like a key fits only a specific lock. Our calculations have shown that quantum effects related to the wave characters of electrons make the unfolded protein more stable when it is diluted in water, which is always the case in living organisms. This shows that quantum physics, which has been used in inanimate devices like lasers or microchips, has an impact on life itself.”

Tkatchenko’s models could help explaining the virulence of some pathogens, such as the novel coronavirus.

“It is known to attach to ACE2, a protein situated at the surface of human cells which are in particular found in lungs. Other coronaviruses bind to the same receptor, but SARS-Cov-2 does it much more strongly, which probably contributes to its high contagiousness. To understand this strong binding, we want to look in detail at the way the viral protein, which has the shape of a spike, locks into ACE2. I expect that quantum effects play an important role.”

Machine learning meets quantum mechanics

The key for the reliable analysis of complex molecules is to find models which are precise enough without taking too much computing resources. 

“We have now developed a very robust model to describe the way distant parts of molecules influence each other. But an additional part deals with forces at short range. As it actually depends on the configuration of the first part it should be solved again and again at each step of the calculation, which requires a lot of computation time.”

To overcome this problem, the physicist’s team turned to machine learning, the technique that allows algorithms to learn to recognize images or to beat humans at chess. They fed an algorithm with a training set of data linking a certain configuration of the first, long-range part to an adequate model for the second, short-range part. It can then learn to guess very rapidly what model should be used at each step of the calculation, which makes the simulation fast enough to be practical.

“Simulating a large molecule is always a balancing act,” says Alexandre Tkatchenko. “If you include too many details, the calculations take weeks. If you oversimplify the model, you get results which are not reliable. It’s a question of finding the right balance. This is what I like in this work.”

About the European Research Council (ERC) 

The European Research Council, set up by the EU in 2007, is the premiere European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. Every year, it selects and funds the very best, creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based in Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting, Consolidator, Advanced and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between grantees’ pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation. https://erc.europa.eu/