Prof. Dr Olivier Guillon

Mr Guillon, you took up the post of Director-General of the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) in September 2025, following a scientific and academic career spent mainly in Germany. Could you outline the key stages of your career and tell us what convinced you to move to Luxembourg and take the helm at LIST?

My career has been shaped by a variety of research topics, a commitment to excellence, and a good fit between my aspirations and the various roles I have held. Trained as an engineer and scientist, I have worked for many years in academic and international settings, notably in Germany, on advanced materials and technologies. This has enabled me to understand the developments and needs of sectors such as electronics, renewable energy, mobility and so on. I have thus had the opportunity to lead large multidisciplinary teams and develop collaborations with industry.

What has always interested me, beyond gaining a better understanding of phenomena – which is the primary aim of science – is the way in which a discovery or a technology can be transformed into a tangible impact. Scientific excellence truly comes into its own when it enables the development of new tools and solutions, the improvement of processes, or the addressing of economic and societal challenges.

This is precisely what attracted me to Luxembourg and to LIST. In just a few decades, the country has built a particularly dynamic research and innovation ecosystem. Its size is an advantage: it fosters close ties between public research, businesses, institutions and financial stakeholders, and enables collaborations to be established quickly.

LIST’s model also won me over. Multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity are key elements in the success of this public research centre in the natural and engineering sciences. Indeed, many challenges are complex by nature and require a holistic approach, combining different methodologies, constraints and perspectives. Furthermore, methods developed in one field often need to be adapted for application in another.

Finally, I am joining LIST at a time when Europe needs to strengthen its competitiveness and technological sovereignty. I wish to contribute to this momentum by consolidating LIST’s scientific excellence and its visibility at national and international level, but above all by further increasing its economic, technological and societal impact.

With its 2026–2029 multi-year plan, dubbed ‘Ambition 2030’, LIST has adopted a new roadmap in a context characterised both by the ecological and digital transitions and by increased global technological competition. What are the main priorities, and in which areas do you wish to focus LIST’s resources and expertise as a priority in the coming years?

‘Ambition 2030’ is based on a simple principle of resource efficiency: we cannot be involved in everything. We must concentrate our expertise and investments where LIST can achieve critical mass and create real value for Luxembourg and Europe.

LIST is therefore structuring its strategy around three key areas of impact: the natural environment, the built environment and the industrial environment. The aim is to focus our research and innovation efforts on major societal challenges such as climate change, sustainable cities, smart mobility, clean energy and sustainable manufacturing. This approach aims to strengthen LIST’s ability to rapidly transform scientific findings into concrete solutions that are useful to businesses, public authorities and society.

Three cross-cutting priorities complement this approach: space, artificial intelligence, and security and defence. These correspond to strategic challenges for Europe, but also present development opportunities for Luxembourg businesses.

Finally, we want to strengthen our economic impact. This means working more closely with businesses, accelerating the commercialisation of research results, supporting technological entrepreneurship and actively participating in major European programmes.

Our ambition is therefore to produce internationally recognised research of excellence, whilst ensuring that it translates into technologies, new businesses and increased competitiveness. All of this is aimed at contributing to the diversification of the economy, sustainable development and Luxembourg’s resilience.

Issues of technological sovereignty and resilience are now taking on increasing importance in the European debate. FEDIL advocates, in particular, for a targeted European preference in strategic sectors where critical dependencies could weaken our economy. In this context, LIST has identified three cross-cutting priorities: space, artificial intelligence, and security and defence. What role does LIST intend to play in these areas, and what opportunities might they present for the Luxembourg economy and businesses?

For an economy as open as Luxembourg’s, sovereignty does not mean producing everything ourselves. It means being able to master certain critical technologies, being a key player in certain parts of the value chain, diversifying our dependencies and having the necessary expertise to make strategic decisions.

It is with this in mind that we have identified space, artificial intelligence, and security and defence as three cross-cutting priorities.

In the space sector, Luxembourg already enjoys a recognised international standing, notably thanks to our European Space Resources Innovation Centre (ESRIC). LIST can also contribute to this momentum in areas such as the use of space data, Earth observation, telecommunications, AI and advanced materials. The applications extend far beyond the space sector: the environment, logistics, infrastructure and industry can also benefit.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, our ambition is to develop AI that is trustworthy, robust, explainable and geared towards practical applications. LIST is a founding member of the Luxembourg AI Factory. In total, nearly 140 researchers and engineers work in the field of AI at LIST. For businesses, the challenge is not simply to adopt AI, but to identify applications capable of creating real value: process optimisation, predictive maintenance, data management, cybersecurity and energy efficiency.

Finally, LIST can contribute to security and defence challenges through its expertise in cybersecurity, the protection of critical infrastructure, ultra-lightweight, high-strength and functional materials, advanced sensors, autonomous systems and secure data management. Many of the technologies developed in these fields also have dual-use applications.

For Luxembourg-based companies, these priorities represent opportunities to access new technologies, develop skills and participate in strategic European programmes. Our role is to support and foster the innovation and competitiveness of Luxembourg’s business community.

LIST acts as a bridge between research and industry, with the aim of transforming scientific excellence into concrete solutions for the economy. However, the transition from research to marketable innovation remains one of Europe’s major challenges. How can we accelerate this process? And how can we involve Luxembourg companies, particularly SMEs, more closely in collaborative research and innovation projects?

To accelerate the process, it is particularly important to bring researchers and businesses together at a much earlier stage.

A technology is more likely to succeed when it addresses a clearly identified industrial need from the outset. Dialogue with businesses must therefore not begin once the technology is finalised, but right from the earliest stages of development.

For an SME, however, investing in an emerging technology represents a risk. The costs can be significant, the return on investment uncertain, and the necessary expertise difficult to source internally. This is precisely where LIST can act as a facilitator, by providing technology platforms, test environments, demonstrators and scientific expertise.

We must also simplify access to collaboration and funding. An SME does not always have the resources needed to set up a complex national or European project. More agile formats, targeted pilot projects and enhanced support can help to reduce this barrier to innovation.

Luxembourg has a significant advantage: the close-knit nature of its ecosystem. It is possible to quickly bring businesses, researchers, start-ups, investors and public sector stakeholders together around the table. We must capitalise on this agility and be pragmatic.

LIST has just set up a centralised ‘Partnership and Venture Office’ to strengthen the commercialisation of research, technology transfer and the management of intellectual property. What, specifically, do you expect from this new structure?

The creation of the Partnership and Venture Office stems from a very pragmatic conviction: research of the highest standard only achieves its full impact if we are able to transform its results into innovations, industrial partnerships or new economic activities.

The primary objective is to ensure continuity between research and commercialisation. When a result shows potential, we must be able to identify it quickly, protect the intellectual property where relevant, and then choose the best route to commercialisation: licensing, co-development, a strategic partnership or the creation of a spin-off. Intellectual property is a strategic asset. We must therefore protect and commercialise it.

The Partnership and Venture Office must also make collaboration with businesses simpler. Industry partners expect clear, responsive points of contact who are capable of understanding both the scientific challenges and market constraints. Our mission and organisational structure enable us to offer various models for engaging with our partners. A centralised structure should help to streamline these interactions and contractual processes. This is borne out by the more than 500 projects currently underway at LIST.

Europe boasts world-class scientific research, but still too often struggles to translate this excellence into industrial and technological leadership. Given the massive investments being made, particularly in the United States and Asia, what needs to change to accelerate the transition from research to industrialisation? In your view, does Luxembourg have any particular strengths that would enable it to play a role in this race for innovation?

Europe has an extremely solid scientific foundation. Our main challenge today is to move more quickly from scientific excellence to an industrial scale.

Luxembourg strongly supports upstream research, but the intermediate stages remain more difficult to fund:
demonstration, prototyping, validation and scaling up. Yet it is at this stage that much of a technology’s future competitiveness is determined.

We must therefore provide better support for this transition from research to the market, with greater continuity in funding and more effective mobilisation of public and private capital. We must also be prepared to accept a higher degree of technological and industrial risk when working on strategic technologies.

Speed is another key factor. A deep-tech start-up or technology-based SME must be able to gain rapid access to funding, testing facilities, expertise and initial markets. Simplifying European and national schemes is therefore essential.

We must not seek to replicate the models of the major industrial powers. Our advantage may lie in our agility: identifying strategic areas, rapidly building up expertise in them – particularly by attracting talent – and effectively linking research, industry and funding. This is where LIST can act as a catalyst and help businesses gain access to the technologies that will determine their competitiveness in the future.

This is the aim of our Innovation Accelerators: to transform promising research results into solutions that meet market needs, with future users involved from the outset. The six selected accelerators cover circular construction, biodigital solutions for health and wellbeing, advanced coatings, smart water management, urban digital twins and sustainable composites for mobility. They are expected to lead to demonstrators, industrial partnerships, licences or new business ventures.

LIST is currently carrying out several hundred research projects across a wide range of fields. If you had to choose three that particularly excite you or that you believe could have a significant impact on Luxembourg’s industry in the coming years, which would you choose and why?

It is difficult to pick just three out of more than 500, but I would highlight three areas that particularly well illustrate our ambition.

The first concerns trustworthy artificial intelligence applied to industry. We are working with industrial partners on solutions for predictive maintenance, energy optimisation and cybersecurity for critical infrastructure. The objective is very concrete: to reduce production downtime, improve energy efficiency and strengthen industrial resilience through robust and explainable AI tools.

The second area is that of advanced materials and low-carbon processes. LIST is developing, alongside Luxembourgish and European industrial partners, solutions centred on functional materials for energy and sustainable manufacturing, recycling and the circular economy. This work will have a direct impact on key sectors such as construction, transport and energy.

Finally, I would mention space technologies and the use of Earth observation data. In collaboration with Luxembourg’s space ecosystem, we are developing applications that use AI and satellite data for environmental monitoring, infrastructure management and the prediction of climate-related risks. This is an area where Luxembourg can truly make a distinctive contribution at European level.

These examples illustrate a firm conviction: the most promising innovations often emerge at the intersection of disciplines. By bringing together AI, data, materials, the environment, engineering and space technology, we can create new solutions and opportunities for Luxembourg businesses.