The Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) has been attracting public and private actors to make use of its research results and collaborate on finding solutions since 2009. To mark the publication of its 2021 annual report, technology transfer office chief Dr Carlo Duprel talks about the latest spinoff in the pipeline and the challenges of nurturing an entrepreneurial mindset.
What is the connection between the SnT and tech startup community in Luxembourg?
Most of our PhDs work directly with industry, giving insight into what industry needs and the challenges they face. Not only do they gain a scientific background but they get an insight into how a company works and how you adapt skills to a company setting. In this context, researchers also identify other business opportunities that technology can solve.
Many want to stay in Luxembourg and some want to build a startup based on that technology. This is why we developed an acceleration programme. We walk them through several stages which can work to a commercial minimum viable product that can be licensed to a new company, that we call a spinoff.
SnT has created five spinoffs: MotionS, Black Swan, Lux AI, Data Things and Databourg Systems. To what do you attribute this success?
We’re close to signing the sixth spinoff: DigitalUS and, recently, the university signed two further licence agreements with Magrid and Ume Solutions [editor’s note: two startups founded out of the University of Luxembourg]. The relatively high number of startups created is due to the fact we recruit people who have a knack for commercial ventures. This is probably the most important outcome of our acceleration programme: it’s not only a success that they build a company that survives and creates jobs, but it’s that they learn this additional entrepreneurship skillset.
What are the challenges does SnT faces in nurturing more spinoffs?
A researcher mindset isn’t necessarily an entrepreneurial mindset. What we’d like to achieve in this decade is to become known as a research centre where a researcher can develop an entrepreneurial mindset: to increase the power of people who want to do it and go for their own profession.
You mentioned that the SnT is seeking to be more open. What concrete steps is it taking in this direction?
SnT works with industry but in terms of spinoffs we’re still very closed. We would like to become open and have externals say ‘I’ve a business case, can we jointly develop this new technology in a new venture?’
We could build a platform where future CEOs who have a business case come to us and we add the tech and tech team. The weakness is often the business case. The technology comes first, and then comes the business case. We should do it the other way around.
We’re working with large actors in the ecosystem: Technoport, House of Startups and Lhoft. We want researchers to have an initial interest in entrepreneurship to become part of the ecosystems run by those entities. We’re also working on concrete steps to work more closely to teach entrepreneurship and open the ecosystem.
What other spinoffs can we expect to see in future and in which fields?
In terms of technology, there are a lot of opportunities: there is still a lot to do in fintech. In terms of blockchain we’re through the throes of despair and technological solutions are coming up, we hope to play a role there too. Databourg is a space spinoff created out of SnT. We hope to bring more in that area. I think we have a good idea of the business challenges today. The latest hot topic is the metaverse. It’s at a very early stage now but the opportunities are obvious when you look more closely.
Do you have a target when it comes to developing startups out of the SnT?
I would say five in a decade. My personal goal is to have one per year but I’m not sure if we can achieve that yet. There’s a lot of uncertainty.
One of the added values for industry to partner with the SnT on projects is access to qualified staff. Can you tell us more about that?
We recruit a PhD student jointly who will work on the project, so the company has an excellent insight into where this person could be a future employee. About 40% of PhD students that we recruit locally stay in Luxembourg so, it’s a very strong influx of talent to Luxembourg. This is interesting for companies because they lack talent. If you want to add innovation and digitalisation, talent is your biggest issue.
To what extent has it been challenging to recruit PhD students?
Recruitment is a nightmare. We recruit through academic recruitment websites, we have our university website and we have networks with other universities where we share open positions. And there are academic websites, for instance Nature has one, where we post our job positions. It takes time also because many of our students are non-European. The university knows how to handle the process but it takes time.
I imagine it doesn’t help that Luxembourg has high living costs?
The salary of a PhD student isn’t adapted to the living costs here. Students have a hard time living here, also because there’s not enough student housing provided by the university. They need to go to the commercial market and it’s very hard with researcher salaries.
What is the solution?
In the ecosystem we all need to work on this and find better solutions to improve Luxembourg’s attractiveness. We will lose if we don’t get the best students. We are competing globally and need to give at least a decent living standard and we’re not at that stage yet.
What challenges does SnT face in 2022?
The conflict in Ukraine increases the importance of cyber security. One of our focuses in the next years will be to strengthen and increase our competences in cyber security and understand how we as a research centre can support public and private actors in Luxembourg in cyber security and cyber defence.
How do you see the Finnovation Hub evolving?
The Finnnovation Hub is the result of a two-year exercise where we wanted to provide more added value to the financial services in Luxembourg. We have already 20 partnerships with financial services actors in Luxembourg and we would like to continue that. We’d like to become a centre of excellence in research in fintech, which is an award with FNR. This is still in progress. We’re lucky that the finance minister decided to support the Finnovation hub. The idea is also to bring financial services challenges closer to our researchers. It’s a two-way thing: us providing tech to actors in Luxembourg, but also to bring in understanding of how financial services work through the Finnovation Hub. It’s an exciting topic as it’s actually a new way of doing research and tech transfer.
