Marc Fassone: Within the framework of the national research and innovation strategy, what are the priority research areas at the moment?
In a related area, we are developing the flagship 4LM project, which aims to position Luxembourg as a forward-thinking leader in compliance technologies and harnessing the power of AI to manage an increasingly felt regulatory burden at EU, but also national, level. This project will ease the administrative burden, for example when it comes to tax declarations for citizens, GDPR procedures for businesses or drafting legislation. It is one of three national strategies in the fields of artificial intelligence, data and quantum technologies. These three new strategies provided for in the government programme fit in perfectly with the national research and innovation strategy.
In the education sector, the university is pursuing various qualitative and quantitative research projects on various aspects of teaching, learning, inclusion and equality, educational policies, and scientific and technological studies. For its part, the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (Liser) is working--using big data in particular--to define the skills needed for the labour market of the future.
In the same sector, we can also mention the Luxembourg Media and Digital Design Centre (LMDDC) created in 2020 as an economic interest group (GIE) between the ministry of research and higher education, the education ministry the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (List), whose mission is nationwide support for digital learning, and the creation of service and innovation platforms.
With regard to sustainable and responsible development, the interdisciplinary Luxembourg Centre for Socio-Environmental Systems (LCSES) is being set up at the university.
And finally, in the field of medicine, we inaugurated the LCTR-Fuerschungsklinik in 2022. Managed jointly by the CHL and the LIH, in close collaboration with the Robert-Schuman Hospitals (HRS) and the Centre hospitalier Emile-Mayrisch (CHEM), the LCTR-Fuerschungsklinik offers all those involved in healthcare and research in Luxembourg a platform for promoting technological innovation and transferring it into clinical practice. It also aims to develop new personalised medical solutions to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of major chronic diseases--such as cancer, infectious diseases and immune and neurodegenerative disorders, among others.
That’s a lot of projects. Do you have enough researchers to be able to take them all forward?
We currently have around 3,000 researchers in Luxembourg, which is already a respectable number. But there is always room for improvement. Luxembourg has a research ecosystem that is resolutely international, and attracting talent from abroad is a strategic priority. In fact, we attract a lot of them. It’s also worth noting that, according to the University of Luxembourg, 70% of students graduating from the university’s masters and PhD programmes go on to work in Luxembourg; that’s not bad by international standards. We are both an attractive country and one that manages to keep young talent in Luxembourg.
Our research institutions enjoy an excellent international reputation in many fields.
Just what is it that attracts researchers to Luxembourg?
There are several aspects to mention. First, there is the quality of the research carried out in our research centres and at the university. In many fields, our institutions enjoy an excellent international reputation.
And, of course, there is the financial aspect: the National Research Fund (FNR) offers the Pearl and Attract programmes. The Pearl programme aims to bring top-level researchers to Luxembourg in areas of research deemed strategic, whilst the Attract programme is aimed at promising young researchers wishing to set up their own team within our research ecosystem. The FNR can contribute up to €1.5m for junior researchers and €2m for senior researchers. For 2025, the FNR hopes to be able to fund one to two projects.
In 2024, these two schemes were evaluated externally, and the results confirmed their importance for the targeted strengthening of our scientific ecosystem. The government therefore intends to continue them, with specific adjustments to make them even more effective.
Luxembourg also participates in major European initiatives, such as Euraxess, which aims to facilitate the mobility of researchers within Europe and includes a component for attracting international researchers, and relies on the Research Luxembourg platform, which brings together all public research institutions to promote research in the grand duchy at international level.
The ministry of research and higher education is also actively involved in the interministerial committee for attracting talent, where the field of research is fully integrated, particularly as part of the ongoing development of a national portal dedicated to this topic.
And last but not least: an important role in attracting talent, but also in training and developing their skills and adapting them to the needs of the labour market, falls to higher education--so, from the perspective of attracting, but also retaining and developing talent.
In particular, continuing education at higher education level is important. On the one hand, it’s key to further develop the skills of talent already present in Luxembourg; on the other hand, it also serves as a factor of attraction for professionals, for whom the presence of such provision is an asset.
Having integrated the University of Luxembourg Competence Centre into the University of Luxembourg on 1 January this year, we are trying to improve the framework for university continuing education and further expand this offer.
In addition, it is important that the university also offers initial training in areas where talent is in demand on the labour market; examples include services, engineering and healthcare professions; others include, for example, the new master’s programme in education or specialist master’s in areas such as high-performance computing, cybersecurity or data science.
The University of Luxembourg--not least because tuition fees for European and non-European students are the same--attracts many international students, particularly at the master’s and PhD level. Fifty-seven percent of all students at the university are non-Luxembourgers and around 20% come from outside the EU.
The topical issue in the research sector is the potential American brain drain in the face of US president Donald Trump’s interference. Have any Americans contacted you or do you plan to canvass this pool?
Our policy is not to proactively canvass researchers at foreign universities. Of course, we highlight our strengths such as our multilingualism and the quality of our research programmes, but we are not going to try to poach people. As far as American researchers are concerned, the university has reported to us an increase in contacts, but this increase would not be huge.
The FNR has a great deal of experience in scientific evaluation, experience which, in the future, can be put to good use for national research as a whole.
What is the image of Luxembourg research abroad?
The image of Luxembourg’s public research abroad is, in terms of its quality, very good. One indicator that testifies to the quality of our projects is the European funding obtained. Under the European Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe programmes, our research centres have received almost €180m over the past 10 years for a total of 315 selected projects.
Money remains the sinews of war. How are you working on the economic exploitation of the results of this research? The government agreement talks about a transfer agency for startups and spinoffs. Where are you on this project?
The exploitation of the results of public research is a fundamental pillar of an ambitious innovation policy. The government has therefore set up a Tech Transfer Strategy Group (TTSG), bringing together representatives from the ministry of research and higher education, the ministry of the economy, Luxinnovation, the Technoport incubator and public research institutions. The task of this working group is to propose an action plan to improve technology transfer and encourage the creation of spinoffs from public research. In addition to supporting technology transfer, the Tech Transfer Strategy Group is also tasked with identifying current obstacles to technology transfer, including inconsistencies in intellectual property rules, and proposing solutions to overcome them. This will make it possible to establish a transparent framework that is more attractive and understandable for researchers and industrialists alike.
The aim is not simply to increase the number of patents, but to transform research results into tangible economic value, via viable, scalable business projects that create jobs in Luxembourg.
One of your major projects is artificial intelligence. What impact could artificial intelligence have on research?
AI is an emerging technology whose full implications and possible applications we are only just beginning to see. It is going to play a definite role, as it will in many other areas such as mobility, finance and medicine. I believe that the use of AI will make it easier to analyse data that is outside the field of research and provide a better response to the needs we have. As I mentioned earlier, the government has just finalised its three national strategies for AI, data and quantum technologies. These three strategies are so closely linked that they cannot be completely separated. Four ministries worked together across the board: the ministry of state and the departments responsible for media and connectivity worked on artificial intelligence; the ministry for digitalisation worked on the data strategy; and the ministries for research and the economy worked on quantum technologies. The results of this work were presented to the cabinet on 2 May. Detailed announcements will follow shortly.
What I can tell you today is that these strategies give us a framework for coordinating work and better targeting investment in these emerging technologies. These strategies enable us to define more precisely the areas in which we want to create centres of excellence.
What areas have you targeted so far?
There is one area that stands out as the essential prerequisite for the others: data. Admittedly, in Luxembourg, we generate little data, but we want it to be of high quality. This is the spirit of bill 8395 on the use of data in a trusted environment and the implementation of the “Once only” principle, tabled in June 2024. The fact that this bill defines a centralised governance architecture responsible for authorising the use and re-use of data will enable us to be more agile and attractive than other countries. Similarly, the decision not to centralise data is an advantage. It will remain with those who collect it, while being made available in a secure environment to facilitate access.
What other major projects is the ministry of research and higher education working on?
Before the end of this semester, we will be tabling two bills. The first aims to reform the organisation of the National Research Fund. The FNR is currently governed by a law dating from 1999, a law that needs to be adapted to the research ecosystem as it exists today. Unlike when it was set up, the FNR is no longer exclusively a funding agency, but plays an important role in the exploitation and internationalisation of research results in Luxembourg. The FNR has a great deal of experience in scientific evaluation, which can be put to good use in the future for the benefit of national research as a whole, even if the FNR is not directly involved in the funding of a given project.
The FNR therefore has a direct impact on the country’s economic and scientific development. As a result, the new law currently being prepared on the FNR will pay even greater attention to the valorisation and transfer of technologies.
The second project we are working on does not concern research, but state financial aid for higher education. The current system will be reformed to take greater account of students' progress, without changing the basic structure of support--namely, the four pillars of the basic grant, the mobility grant, the social grant and the family grant. With this in mind, we have introduced a bonus for graduating. The mobility part of the grant will be increased, as will the interest subsidy.
A minister and a strategy
As the head of the ministry of research and higher education, Stéphanie Obertin (DP) is responsible for rolling out and monitoring the national research and innovation strategy presented in early 2020.
This strategy aims to put in place a general framework to define priorities for finding solutions to the challenges that Luxembourg is or will be facing in the coming years, and therefore to better target research.
The four areas chosen are:
The transformation of industry and services: anything to do with fintech, data, robotics, materials, autonomous systems, space and telecommunications;
Personalised health: a field that covers precision medicine and prevention;
Sustainable and responsible development
Education for the 21st century: the development of new programmes to provide training in new emerging technologies and multilingualism.
These priorities are not set in stone. They evolve over time in line with global socio-economic dynamics and Luxembourg. It’s a constantly evolving process.
This article was written in French for the Research & Innovation supplement to the June 2025 issue of Paperjam magazine, published on 21 May. The content is produced exclusively for the magazine. It is published on the site to contribute to the full Paperjam archive. Click this link to subscribe to the magazine.
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