In May 2021, Thomas Schaubroeck received the SETAC Europe Award 2021 presented each year by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) to recognise and honour the outstanding contributions of individuals or groups to environmental sciences and society. Thomas's efforts in the development and application of life cycle assessment have thus been recognised. Life cycle assessment consists of developing scientific indicators and tools that enable a holistic assessment to be made of the performance of products, technologies and policies in the field of sustainability, in order to meet the needs of industry and policy makers. A quantitative assessment of sustainability requires highly cross-cutting and interdisciplinary research, including stakeholder participation techniques. In parallel to Thomas's efforts to advance science and the public dissemination of his work through publications, journals and scientific conferences, he has been involved in the practical application of life cycle assessment in industry-related activities, such as waste water treatment, floor covering systems and food. Finally, Thomas has a passion for teaching and has been an active lecturer on life cycle assessment for two years, in addition to guiding master's and PhD students in completing dissertations and theses on this subject.

Contact:  Thomas Schaubroeck

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From clothing to cars and furniture, product design often involves the use of chemicals or nanomaterials with various compositions. Before being launched on the international market, they must be subject to well-defined tests and regulations that guarantee their safety from both a health and an environmental perspective. Appointed in 2021 by the Luxembourg Ministry of the Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development, four LIST researchers work on these issues as part of three groups of the Chemicals and Biotechnology Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Therefore, alongside international specialists, Arno Biwer, Arno Gutleb, Tommaso Serchi and Ruth Moeller put their considerable expertise to good use to promote the recognition and pooling of testing, standards, best practices and environmental regulations on an international scale. This international distinction recognises the regulatory, scientific and technical skills of LIST researchers in managing hazards and exposure, as well as the risks inherent to chemicals, or any other so-called product of concern. For many years the Institute has been supporting the national and European authorities, Luxembourg companies, and RDI activities to define, implement and evaluate environmental regulations, as well as to bring entities into compliance.

Contact:  Arno Biwer, Arno Gutleb, Tommaso Serchi and Ruth Moeller

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Triterpenes are molecules that occur naturally in apples. They are highly interesting in terms of their cosmetic and pharmaceutical applications. Their commercialisation has been seriously hampered by low plant yield and because their chemical synthesis is impossible. To meet this challenge, LIST researchers have developed a synthetic biology-based platform to improve triterpene production, as well as to produce new triterpenes with new or superior bioactivities. As a result, the team has succeeded in modifying the metabolic pathway inside apple cells and developing a series of apple cell lines with a modified triterpene composition. The production of genetically modified cell lines can be scaled up in bioreactors under confined cultivation conditions. This is followed by processes to extract and purify the desired molecules. This platform, an integral part of the Sustainable Biotech Innovation Centre, has great potential to produce custom-made triterpenes to meet industrial needs. In addition, the same strategy can be applied to other plant species to customise the production of various molecules of interest.

Contact:  Samuel Jourdan

In 2021, LIST and 10 partners (research organisations and SMEs from the European biotech field) launched PHOENIX, an innovation project funded by the European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, aimed at providing services for the development, classification, testing, safety assessment, scaling-up, production and commercialisation of nano-pharmaceuticals on the market, by making them available to SMEs, start-ups, research laboratories and interested users. The 48-month project, coordinated by LIST researcher Tommaso Serchi, has a total budget of 14.45 million euros, with an EU contribution of 11.1 million euros. It aims, in particular, to establish good manufacturing practices (GMP) for large-scale nano-pharmaceutical production. This is a key step in ensuring the transfer of nano-pharmaceutical products from the laboratory to the patient (from the laboratory to the industrial scale). In fact, due to the lack of resources devoted to implementing these GMPs on site, the scaling up and production of these innovative nano-pharmaceutical products remains a challenge for the main players on the European nano-medicine market: start-ups and SMEs.

Contact:  Tommaso Serchi and Pamina Weber

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In precision agriculture, pesticides and other products are used precisely when and where they are needed. For several years, LIST has been working on a series of projects called 'Sentinelle' with the Luxembourg Ministry of Agriculture, Viticulture and Rural Development. This collaboration was extended in 2021, and permitted the launch, in May, of the ShIFT (SeptorIa ForecasT) model: a new software tool enabling certain fungal diseases affecting winter wheat to be predicted. In Northwest and Central Europe, septoria is the most destructive winter wheat disease. It results in spots appearing on wheat leaves. In order to combat this disease in time, farmers need forecasting models to know when to spray fungicide. The ShIFT model, developed by LIST, enables farmers to better monitor this disease and to protect their crops more effectively.

Contact:  Marco Beyer and Marine Pallez

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LIST is working on numerous applied projects funded by the Luxembourg Water Management Authority and the European LIFE Programme, which have led, in 2021, to a portfolio of high-level publications dealing with the use of polar passive samplers to study urgent water management problems. LIST's experts have measured the effectiveness of biological waste water treatment plants at eliminating xenobiotics, put forward a plan for assessing the impact of micropollutants on surface waters, singled out urban sources of biocide emissions, and drawn up coherent assessments of pesticide emissions in agricultural watersheds. This long-term research also led to the patenting of a passive sampler housing, as well as a referenced biological trial, opening up new opportunities for participation in European projects.

Contact:  Laurent Pfister and Tom Gallé

In 2021, we set up a laboratory capable of performing real-time simulations at the same speed as actual executions: a microsecond in the simulation field is executed in a microsecond in real life. This is particularly useful for evaluating the interaction of a real physical system with a virtual system simulated on a real-time computer. We call this integration of hardware into the simulation process hardware-in-the-loop (HIL). Our laboratory can be used to evaluate the interaction of any generic physical system (mechanisms, reactors, sensors, etc.) with any generic virtual environment (operating scenarios, virtual test banks, disturbances, etc.). Due to its ability to evaluate the performance of real systems under generic and controllable operating conditions, with full monitoring of all signals, this type of laboratory is widely used for developing and testing systems in the aerospace, automotive, bioengineering and energy sectors, because it allows costs, time periods and risks to be reduced through the early detection of development errors in R&D projects.

Contact:  Pedro Rodriguez

Distributed energy resources systems (DER) are small-scale electricity generation technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines that provide an alternative or addition to traditional electric power. While industry and households are increasingly turning to DER to complement their energy supply, national or regional networks are not always designed to cope with renewable and decentralised energy production. Nowadays, energy companies must manage, monitor and maintain hundreds of thousands of small assets, and must strive to implement smart and predictive technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and digital twins to turn this mass of data into intelligible information.
As part of the TESTIFY project, LIST is putting forward a new approach to the secure management of the entire electricity grid, making optimal use of the flexibility of distributed energy resources, and primarily renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar. The project addresses three fundamental issues in an integrated manner: (i) how to quantify the DER flexibility available, (ii) how to integrate this flexibility into network operator security management, and (iii) how to formulate and resolve these issues in a mathematically coherent and effective manner. The project will make it possible to integrate more renewable energy into the electric power system in a cost-effective manner, while maintaining system safety.

Contact:  Florin Capitanescu