Each year, the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) honours researchers with several prizes. This year, two emerging academics, Mila Hall and Jordan Samhi, received the “Outstanding PhD Thesis” prize.
“The FNR Awards hold a significant place in the history of Luxembourg’s research community,” said Didier Goosens, head of communications at the FNR, “they have become a cornerstone of our commitment to fostering excellence and innovation.”
Improving cybersecurity
Samhi, who specialises in software engineering and security, connected with Luxembourg early in his research career. While completing his master’s degree in his hometown, Metz, he attended a cybersecurity conference in Luxembourg. There, he met some of his current colleagues from the SNT (Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust), where he is now working as a research scientist. At the time, he was convinced by another researcher to complete his MA internship in a Luxembourg lab and later decided to pursue his PhD in Luxembourg as well.
His PhD project, which he completed between 2019 and 2023, expanded on a topic he had explored during his internship, “a security analysis tool to detect what is known as a logic bomb,” he says. A logic bomb “is a piece of code that is triggered under very specific circumstances. An application on your smartphone can have malware code that will just trigger at three in the morning when you don’t see it for instance,” he explains.
“I devised a new technique to detect these technological bombs in mobile applications,” Samhi says. He used a combination of methods, “such as static dynamic analysis and even AI,” to uncover malware. His research had a significant real-life impact on cybersecurity. “Using these tools, I uncovered eight applications with malware on the Play Store so I contacted Google, who confirmed everything and removed the applications. I was very happy about that.”
Receiving the FNR prize further cemented this rewarding experience. “Personally, the prize means that everything I did, those late night sessions and work during weekends, sacrificed time with family and friends, is meaningful in the end. It means something for society too because it has a real impact.” He adds that “professionally, it’s also a reward as it means my work is recognised by peers and experts, which means a lot. But the prize is not the end for me, it’s just the beginning.”
Goosens confirms the importance of the award; “we believe that the FNR Awards are significant for emerging researchers. By highlighting the accomplishments of young researchers, the awards inspire the next generation of scientists and encourage a culture of excellence and ambition within the research community.”
Encouraging therapists to participate in research
The second prize winner, Hall, is a Luxembourgish-American who worked on her PhD thesis in Germany. She completed her bachelor’s and master’s in New York, before coming back to Europe where she now works in psychotherapy research. The main question that guides her work consists of asking “how can we make therapy more pleasant, more efficient, and more helpful for everybody involved?”
“My main focus in the project before Covid,” which led her to adapt her research, “was to provide therapists with additional information about their patients in the hopes that it would help patients get better faster,” she explains.
Data collected through patients’ input on their smartphones was summarised in a network model, “which presents the information in a visual way that I found to be really impactful,” Hall explains. She wanted to explore how such models could be provided at the start of therapies and whether this had a positive impact.
“The original plan was to analyse this through complex statistics, to follow how patients change throughout therapy,” she says. And then, everybody switched to online therapy. “So we pivoted a little, and instead of that focus, I decided to look more at what the therapists’ reaction was to this kind of feedback and whether they think it’s helpful” Hall explains.
The first reaction they received from therapists was that the data was insightful and that it often matched the image of the patient they already had. However, some disorders did not lend themselves well to this sort of data analysis.
“Overall there were lots of good reasons to both use it or not. It is highly individual, some therapists found it useful for certain cases but not for others.” Hall also adds that therapists were already under high levels of stress as the pandemic started “so they did not want to add extra work, which was understandable.”
Her main takeaway as the research evolved was that “when designing these kinds of studies, it’s important to include therapists.” Her follow-up interest, which she is currently working on at the University of Trier, thus transformed into an exploration of “how to motivate therapists to participate in research. Particularly, how do we get people who have no reason to participate in research interested.”
After her studies in the US, Hall had a desire to “bring the knowledge I was gaining back to Luxembourg in some way.” While she conducted her research in Germany, she believes the topic is still highly relevant in Luxembourg and is thus thrilled this prize is highlighting her work “especially during a time of discussion around psychotherapy and insurance as these are questions that are now being cleared legally. It is an important moment to be open to research, for therapists to be more open, to foster a culture of evidence-based practice and an openness to data-informed research within this context.”
Choosing life in Academia
Both winners say staying in research is a highly competitive field, but both are grateful for the path they have taken. They consider their success in finding positions in academia a mix of being in the right place at the right time and a lot of hard work.
“It’s not called an ivory tower for nothing,” Hall explains. “There are still a lot of barriers, especially for people who come from families with no academic background. Taking that step of doing a PhD is not easy, and there is still a lot of work to be done in lifting everyone up.”
Samhi also takes a moment to praise the research environment in Luxembourg. “There is a lot of support, it’s more comfortable to do research here compared to France, for example. There are many funding sources, such as the FNR, and the professors with whom you work truly foster research.”