Finding the right research partner in Luxembourg

The Luxembourg Trade & Invest team helps innovative international companies find the right public research partner in Luxembourg – from defining your needs to setting up a funded R&D collaboration. Here's how it works.

“I recently spoke to a company that has developed a process to make an innovative material. Their problem was that they produced it in a lab-size reactor of about a litre in size. To be able to go to market they needed a reactor on an industrial scale – and those are extremely expensive,” recalls David Foy, Head of International Business Relationships – Digital Economy at Luxinnovation.

To see if he could help, he reached out to a contact at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) to check if they had any suitable equipment. “His reaction was, ‘funny that you should ask that, as we have a huge reactor available in our lab’. The result is that LIST and the company are right now in the process of defining their research partnership.”

What you think you need — and what you actually need

High-level research centres exist all over Europe, but finding the right match for a partnership is not always easy. “The first step is to figure out what you actually need. That’s harder than it sounds,” says David.

Some time ago, he met a firm working in agritech. “The natural option would have been to connect them with an agritech research team. But after some discussion, I realised that they were actually a fintech company targeting the agritech sector. That helped me point them in the right direction.”

The first step is to figure out what you actually need. That’s harder than it sounds.
David Foy, Luxinnovation

Over the past years, he has met hundreds of innovative companies from different countries looking to expand their business in Europe. “This teaches us to quickly understand what they are doing. We don’t necessarily understand all the aspects of their technologies – they are often very complex. But after some discussion, we usually have a picture of their objectives and use case.”

The match: it's about people, not just institutions

Once your needs are clearly defined, the next challenge is finding the expertise, resources and assets that you need. To give just one example, the University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) has activities spanning from space robotics to sociotechnical cybersecurity. Identifying the right person can be quite complicated.

“Luxembourg’s public research landscape is much richer than you might think,” David confirms. “But we know it well and can rely on personal relationships to find the right partner. We work together with the centres’ partnership managers who can give deeper access to the researchers.”

But the involvement doesn’t stop there. “We stay in the loop as the collaboration is defined to facilitate the process. We also often help identify relevant R&D funding measures.”

Fast by design: setting up your research partnership

Setting up a research partnership in Luxembourg is faster than most international companies expect — for a few reasons. Intellectual property (IP) is usually the first concern. Will you be sharing something sensitive with a research organisation? Yes. Is that a problem? Not with the right agreement in place.

Luxembourg's research institutes use model partnership frameworks that have been designed specifically to protect companies — the company retains commercial rights to the results, and the institute gets to publish its findings. Both sides win. "Sharing your IP with a research organisation can seem scary," David says. "But with this model, your business is well protected.”

Sharing your IP with a research organisation can seem scary. But with this model, your business is well protected.
David Foy, Luxinnovation

If you expect the process of setting up a joint research project in Luxembourg to be long and tedious, you might be surprised. “Research institutes in Luxembourg are set up in such a way that when the match is right, they can just plug and play,” David explains. “Decision makers are nearby and resources are agile. Sometimes we need to slow things down because the company is not ready yet.”

And if the right match cannot be found? “Then we say it. Nobody has an interest in pretending that Luxembourg can deliver on things that in reality, it can’t.” That kind of honesty is, in itself, part of what makes the process trustworthy.

When the right research partner changes everything

One main reason why international companies decide to come to Luxembourg is because they found an R&D partner here. One example is global insurer FM. The company wasn’t planning to come to Luxembourg, but when they met LIST, they discovered a strong complementarity in research interests. As a result, FM is now building a cutting-edge science and technology centre in Luxembourg that will open in 2027. That's the kind of outcome that's hard to plan for, and easy to miss if you don't know where to look.

“Sometimes, when companies realise what our institutes can offer in terms of high-quality research, you see the look of disbelief on people’s faces,” says David. “It’s quite a proud moment.”