Digital Transformation
Digitalisation, ICT, data science and artificial intelligence (AI) are playing an ever greater role in everyday life and are transforming how universities fulfil their missions of research, education and societal, economic and cultural impact. The University of Luxembourg will contribute to Luxembourg’s ambition to become one of the most advanced digital societies and to position itself as a data-driven and sustainable economy.
The University’s research will not only help shape the digital world; it will also address questions of data security and privacy, the digital divide in society, ethics and data security, and societal and technical trust. Developing trustworthy ICT systems that strengthen software engineering, reliability and resilience and enhance cybersecurity will be key in bolstering the University’s research excellence.
Initiatives
- Digital tools also act as a catalyst for research in interdisciplinary digital humanities. Among different activities, the University will launch an initiative on “big data of the past”, which will allow to travel through Luxembourg’s/Europe’s past history using digital resources.
- The University also wishes to reinforce Luxembourg’s standing as an international frontrunner in Space technology, telecommunication and software engineering.
- The University of Luxembourg aims to be a driver in an informed democratic and ethic debate in Luxembourg about a digitalisation that is robust and trustworthy. A newly created Centre for Ethics of Digitalisation will be a particular means to address this topic. It does not only tackle the ethical, social, governmental, and legal challenges posed by digital innovation and the rise of AI, but it also anticipates future developments that require strategic planning, decision-making, critical thinking and monitoring of all ethically relevant aspects.
- The University will reinforce its activities and expertise further in High Performance Computing (HPC) and data science and enter the quantum era. It has the aim to stimulate their wider use across all its disciplines in both Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics and Social Sciences and Humanities.
- The University will set up a central Facility for HPC and for data storage, management and analysis. The facility has the aim to foster frontier-research, higher-education and partnerships in the fields of Computational and Data Sciences, including HPC, Data Analytics, Big Data Applications, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. A recently acquired cutting-edge CPU-based cluster will be the heart of the University’s central Facility.
- Within its positioning as a Research University, the University intertwines innovative research and cutting-edge infrastructures with its mission of Higher Education. Besides its programmes in Computer Science, the University has recently started a Master in Data Science, which will take speed in the Four-Year Plan. Additionally, the University intends to create a new specialisation track and eventually a full-fledged master in HPC/HPDA/AI.