If asked to mention one technology that is on everybody’s lips, many of us would probably say artificial intelligence. Though far from a new phenomenon – the work in this field started in the 1950s – it has been developing at breathtaking speed over the past few years and became accessible to everyone with the launch of Chat GPT. According to Jens Kreisel, Rector of the University of Luxembourg, a main trigger of this rapid development was the convergence of three disciplines: high-performance computing (HPC), data science and AI.
“AI is made possible through the massive computing power and large data sets offered by HPC, the knowledge of data processing and analytics developed in data science,” Professor Kreisel remarks. “Twenty years ago, people in these fields would be in separate communities and have at best few collaborations. AI really took off when they started working together. AI, data science and HPC form together a digital continuum, which has become an essential tool for society and industry.”
AI, data science and HPC form together a digital continuum, which has become an essential tool for society and industry.
Public and private cooperation was another key factor. “AI has traditionally been an academic research field, but today, private industry is leading the way forward,” he says, pointing out that 2024 Nobel Prize laureate Geoffrey Hinton divided his time between the University of Toronto and Google Brain, while Chemistry Nobel Prize laureate Demis Hassabis is the CEO of Google DeepMind. This shift in leadership from public to private sectors underscores a fundamental transformation in AI innovation, raising important questions about the accessibility, governance and regulation of this powerful technology.
Facilitating public-private partnerships in AI is a priority in Luxembourg. The country hosts a business-oriented supercomputer, allocating 65% of its capacity to industry, with plans to enhance this infrastructure with an AI-oriented HPC and, soon, a quantum computer. The university itself is open to partnerships with companies in the field of digitalisation, and its Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) is renowned for its innovative partnership programme that provides businesses with science-based solutions to data-related business challenges, while also yielding scientific research results. Recently, the University and Google announced the opening of a Centre of Excellence and the creation of a new University chair for research and education.
Supporting interdisciplinarity
The ambition to cross traditional boundaries – whether between academia and industry or between different research fields – permeates all activities of the University of Luxembourg. Ranked as one of the world’s leading young universities, it describes itself as “an international research university with a distinctly multilingual and interdisciplinary character, a young university offers enormous creative opportunities and scope for new ideas”. It is obvious that Professor Kreisel has this transversal approach at heart.
“Undeniably, challenges such as the digital transformation, diminishing natural resources, climate change, health, economic growth or inequalities, are so multifaceted and intricate that they require interdisciplinary approaches. The same holds for almost every industrial challenge,” he points out. However, running interdisciplinary research projects is not a simple task. “By nature, they are often more audacious and carry higher risks than traditional projects of one discipline. They are difficult to organise, challenging to motivate and particularly hard to finance. They are just so fundamentally different from what we are used to doing.”
80% of interdisciplinary research projects have data, AI or high-performance computing at their heart, underscoring that digitalisation and AI are driving interdisciplinarity.
To overcome these boundaries between disciplines and sectors, the university established its Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) in 2020. The key condition for applying for funding is that research projects combine diverse disciplines, for instance social sciences or law, with natural sciences or computer science. Professor Kreisel mentions projects combining law and artificial intelligence, economy and theoretical physics, or data science and history.
Two rather unexpected characteristics of the IAS-funded projects have emerged. “Remarkably, 80% of interdisciplinary research projects have data, AI or high-performance computing at their heart, underscoring that digitalisation and AI are driving interdisciplinarity. We have also seen that the percentage of women participating is much higher than in normal projects. So interdisciplinary projects are actually contributing to gender equality.”
Diversity and blended expertise for AI innovation
Professor Kreisel sees artificial intelligence as a key enabling technology whose real transformative power lies in the innovation opportunities across technologies. To capitalise on these new openings, people with interdisciplinary competences are needed. “Our focus in education is to train talents with blended skills, who are able to recognise both the opportunities and risks of the technology.”
The student body of the multilingual University of Luxembourg is a hotbed for developing such talent. “60% of our 7,600 students are from abroad and bring together a wealth of languages, cultures and experiences,” he underlines. “This diversity of approaches is crucial for AI and for our ability to prepare, take and implement the right decisions.”
60% of our students are from abroad and bring together a wealth of languages, cultures and experiences. This diversity of approaches is crucial for AI.
However, preparing students to work in a field where the current state of the art was unimaginable just a few years ago, is not an easy task. The University of Luxembourg will hence reinforce its education on and with AI. “The backbones of our education will be not only technology knowledge, but also critical thinking, source criticism, contextualisation and understanding ethical dilemmas. With this, we give students the skills needed to adapt to the future and work on complex societal challenges.”
The rector firmly believes that the university’s students shape the future. Beyond academic quality, its student experience stands out by its human scale, a rich mix of cultures and excellent infrastructures. Attracting talent is high on any agenda. But for a country as dependent on foreigners as Luxembourg, the stakes are higher than for others. Graduates are more likely to seek work in the area where the university is located: remarkably, 70% of graduates stay in the country fuelling the talent pipeline.
Photo credit: University of Luxembourg