FNR 20 years: An evening with science [fiction] in the House of Frankenstein

When Eric Finn Schaanning was featured in Spotlight on Young Researchers in 2017, he had just defended his AFR PhD on fire sales and systemic risk in financial networks at Imperial College London. In 2017, Eric attended the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting and in 2018, won an FNR Award for his PhD thesis. 5 years after his PhD, we catch up with Eric, who has been working on cyber risks, financial and regulatory stress tests as well operational risk management – a career spanning Norway, Frankfurt and Zürich – and reflect on the value his PhD has added.

Current engineering systems have an issue: It is fragmented – process, Piping and structural design are carried out by separate teams and involves an error-prone exchange of data. A research collaboration involving public research and industry is tackling this issue by creating a unique central data hub of a plant to which all teams have access, with promising effects on efficiency.

For each edition of the annual two-week Alpbach Summer School, the FNR runs a Call for young science/engineering researchers/students with a connection to Luxembourg to attend. We spoke to participant Crisel Suarez about her experience of the 2022 edition, including how the mission her team developed was awarded “best competitive mission”, and learning what it is like to be a scientist, technician, and engineer in an ESA space mission.

A type of insect known as whitefly spreads plant viruses and has devastating effects on the vegetables that we depend on and thanks to climate change their negative impact on agriculture is set to increase in the future. Current methods to protect crops depend on delicate relationships between whiteflies and their natural enemies, our crops, and microbial communities, a delicate balance threatened by climate change. Researchers are working with a ‘climate in the lab’ to get a better understanding of what could happen, with the ultimate goal to generate solutions to protect food security.

A temporary exhibition at the Escher Pop-Up-Store takes a different creative approach to storytelling: „HistorEsch: Escher Geschichten a 25 Objeten erzielt” features 25 local stories, told through objects of local residents rather than images. The exhibition is part of the project of FNR ATTRACT Fellow Dr Thomas Cauvin, who works in the field of public history.

For each Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, the FNR runs a Call for promising young researchers with a connection to Luxembourg to attend. For the 2022 Lindau Meeting, dedicated to chemistry, Adil Kabylda, PhD researcher in the group of Prof Alex Tkatchenko at the University of Luxembourg had this rare opportunity. We speak to Adil about the experience of meeting 30 Nobel laureates and inspiring young scientists.