MOSI, from word to sign: a bilingual reading aid from French to Langue des signes de Belgique francophone (LSFB)
Instantly obtain a translation in sign language (LSFB) of a word written in French: that's what MOSI (Du mot au signe) makes possible. This new tool is the fruit of a collaboration between the University of Namur, the asbl École et Surdité and the asbl LSFB, supported by the King Baudouin Foundation.
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180 seconds to talk about research
The 11th edition of the Ma Thèse en 180 secondes competition was held this Friday, March 28, 2025 at the Faculty of Science. Three biologists will represent UNamur at the Belgian final, to be held in Mons on May 21.
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UNamur students in direct contact with an astronaut on the ISS.
As part of the English course given in the first year of science-medicine, students are introduced to the popularization of scientific concepts in the form of videos. This is the "It's not Rocket Science" project, proposed by Natassia Schutz and Aude Hansel, professors at UNamur's School of Modern Languages (ELV). This year's competition prize-giving event featured a highlight: a live audio connection with Donald Pettit, American astronaut, currently aboard the International Space Station.
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Public thesis defense - Manel Barkallah
Synopsis
The spreading of internet-based technologies since the mid-90s has led to a paradigm shift from monolithic centralized information systems to distributed information systems based upon the composition of software components, interacting with each other and of heterogeneous natures. The popularity of these systems is nowadays such that our everyday life is touched by them.Classically concurrent and distributed systems are coded by using the message passing paradigm-according to which components exchange information by sending and receiving messages. In the aim of clearly separating computational and interactional aspects of computations, Gelernter and Carriero have proposed an alternative framework in which components interact through the availability of information placed on a shared space. Their framework has been concretized in a language called Linda. A series of languages, referred to nowadays as coordination languages, have been developed afterwards. In addition to providing a more declarative framework, such languages nicely fit applications like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, in which users share information by adding it or consulting it in a common place. Such systems are in fact particular cases of so-called socio-technical systems in which humans interact with machines and their environments through complex dependencies. As coordination languages nicely meet social networks, the question naturally arises whether they can also nicely code socio-technical systems. However, answering this question first requires to see how well programs written in coordination languages can reflect what they are assumed to model.This thesis aims at addressing these two questions. To that end, we shall use the Bach coordination language developed at the University of Namur as a representative of Linda-like languages. We shall extend it in a language named Multi-Bach to be able to code and reason on socio-technical systems. We will also introduce a workbench Anemone to support the modelling of such systems. Finally, we will evidence the interest of our approach through the coding of several social-technical systems.
The Jury
Prof. Wim Vanhoof - University of Namur, BelgiumProf. Jean-Marie Jacquet - University of Namur, BelgiumProf. Katrien Beuls - University of Namur, BelgiumProf. Pierre-Yves Schobbens - University of Namur, BelgiumProf. Laura Bocchi - University of Kent, United KingdomProf. Stefano Mariani - UNIMORE University, Italy
Participation upon registration.
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Medical Journal Club in primary care
Target audienceGeneral practitioners (in practice or in training)PharmacistsMedical and pharmacy studentsObjectivesShare and discuss scientific articles relevant to frontline practice in a friendly and caring atmosphereStrengthen skills in critical reading and evidence-based medicineCreate a lasting link between the field and the academic worldFederate an active and committed medico-pharmaceutical community.pharmaceutical communityWhy participate?Because science moves fast, and we all benefit from taking the time to read, understand, and question the literature together. Because quality care starts with shared reflection. And because it's the ideal opportunity to strengthen bridges between disciplines.Location and frequency of meetingsUNamur - Quai22 - 2 times a yearFirst meeting: 5/06/2025 (free with registration)INAMI accreditation required.
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Doctoral thesis defense - Sereysethy Touch
SynopsisA honeypot is a security tool deliberately designed to be vulnerable, thereby enticing attackers to probe, exploit, and compromise it. Since their introduction in the early 1990s, honeypots have remained among the most widely used tools for capturing cyberattacks, complementing traditional defenses such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems. They serve both as early warning systems and as sources of valuable attack data, enabling security professionals to study the techniques and behaviors of threat actors.While conventional honeypots have achieved significant success, they remain deterministic in their responses to attacks. This is where adaptive or intelligent honeypots come into play. An adaptive honeypot leverages Machine Learning techniques, such as Reinforcement Learning, to interact with attackers. These systems learn to take actions that can disrupt the normal execution flow of an attack, potentially forcing attackers to alter their techniques. As a result, attackers must find alternative routes or tools to achieve their objectives, ultimately leading to the collection of more attack data.Despite their advantages, traditional honeypots face two main challenges. First, emulation-based honeypots (also known as low- and medium-interaction honeypots) are increasingly susceptible to detection, which undermines their effectiveness in collecting meaningful attack data. Second, real-system-based honeypots (also known as high-interaction honeypots) pose security risks to the hosting organization if not properly isolated and protected. Since adaptive honeypots rely on the same underlying systems, they also inherit these challenges.This thesis investigates whether it is possible to design a honeypot system that mitigates these challenges while still fulfilling its primary objective of collecting attack data. To this end, it proposes a new abstract model for adaptive self-guarded honeypots, designed to balance attack data collection, detection evasion, and security preservation, ensuring that it does not pose a risk to the rest of the network.Jury membersProf. Wim VANHOOF, President, University of NamurProf. Jean-Noël COLIN, Promoter, University of NamurProf. Florentin ROCHET, Internal Member, University of NamurProf. Benoît FRENAY, Internal Member, University of NamurProf. Ramin SADRE, External Member, Catholic University of LeuvenDr. Jérôme FRANCOIS, External Member, University of LuxembourgYou are cordially invited to a drink, which will follow the public defense. For good organization, please give your answer by Tuesday, May 20, 2025.
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Defense of doctoral thesis - Jérôme Fink
Synopsis deep learning methods have become increasingly popular for building intelligent systems. Currently, many deep learning architectures constitute the state of the art in their respective domains, such as image recognition, text generation, speech recognition, etc. The availability of mature libraries and frameworks to develop such systems is also a key factor in this success.This work explores the use of these architectures to build intelligent systems for sign languages. The creation of large sign language data corpora has made it possible to train deep learning architectures from scratch. The contributions presented in this work cover all aspects of the development of an intelligent system based on deep learning. A first contribution is the creation of a database for the Langue des Signes de Belgique Francophone (LSFB). This is derived from an existing corpus and has been adapted to the needs of deep learning methods. The possibility of using crowdsourcing methods to collect more data is also explored.The second contribution is the development or adaptation of architectures for automatic sign language recognition. The use of contrastive methods to learn better representations is explored, and the transferability of these representations to other sign languages is assessed.Finally, the last contribution is the integration of models into software for the general public. This led to a reflection on the challenges of integrating an intelligent module into the software development life cycle.Jury membersProf. Wim VANHOOF, President, University of NamurProf. Benoît FRENAY, Promoter, University of NamurProf. Anthony CLEVE, Co-promoter, University of NamurProf. Laurence MEURANT, Internal Member, University of NamurProf. Lorenzo BARALDI, External Member, University of ModenaProf. Annelies BRAFFORT, External Member, University of Paris-SaclayProf. Joni DAMBRE, External Member, University of GhentYou are cordially invited to a drink, which will follow the public defense. For a good organization, please give your answer by Friday June 6.
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An exploratory mission to forge ties with Senegal
A delegation from the Université de Namur took part in an exploratory mission to the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) in Dakar, Senegal. The aim: to discover the research carried out in the field, meet UCAD researchers and initiate future collaborations between the two institutions.
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Pilot experiment at UNamur: 25 students share their knowledge of sustainable development and transition
They are future veterinarians, doctors, lawyers, historians, geographers, or even computer scientists, and they share this common point: the concern to train themselves, voluntarily, in the challenges of sustainable development and transition. Since October 2024, 25 mainly 3rd-year students from various UNamur faculties have been taking part in a pilot experiment: the Journées de l'Education au Développement Durable et à la Transition (JEDDT). This Monday, March 17, they presented in a creative form, the fruit of their reflection after 6 months of training.
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2nd Scientific Day of the Master in Nursing
The profound transformation of the healthcare context that we have been witnessing for many years requires the training of healthcare professionals to be adapted. Since September 2021, Hénallux has been offering a Master's degree in Nursing, in codiplomation with HEPN, HELHA, UCLouvain and UNamur. This is a joint Hautes Écoles-Universities Master's degree of 120 credits, programmed to combine study and work.Accreditation in ethics and economics required.Participation: 85 eurosPreferential rate for students from a consortium (including UNamur): 25 eurosMore info and registration: https://www.henallux.be/journee-scientifique-du-master-en-sciences-infirmieres
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Public thesis defense - Movsun KUY
This thesis presents a novel approach to address the challenges of deploying and managing Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) in resource-constrained and multi-domain environments. The proposed solution leverages a Raspberry Pi clusterbased approach for NFV deployment in resource-constrained environments, combined with a deployable Sidecar VNF (S-VNF) coordinator for multi-domain NFV orchestration.The thesis demonstrates the feasibility of integrating NFV into edge computing environments by successfully deploying and managing Network Services (NSs) on a Raspberry Pi cluster. The S-VNF coordinator facilitates efficient cross-cloud NFV deployment and management while ensuring security and interoperability.While the obtained deployment and scaling delays in the testbed setup were significant due to the bare-metal deployment process used, the proposed solution remains valuable in environments where service maintenance time is a critical factor.By automating deployment and scaling, organizations can minimize the impact of service maintenance time, improve customer satisfaction, and enhance system resilience. Moreover, the solution enables NFV to be deployed effectively in edge environments, providing benefits such as reduced latency and improved network performance.Overall, this thesis contributes to the advancement of NFV by providing innovative solutions for deployment and management in challenging environments. The proposed framework has the potential to enable the widespread adoption of NFV and drive the development of new network services.Directed by Prof. Laurent SCHUMACHER and Prof. Sokchenda SRENG.In front of a jury composed of:Prof. Wim VANHOOF, President, University of NamurProf. Laurent SCHUMACHER, Co-Promoter, University of NamurProf. Sokchenda SRENG, Co-Promoter, ITC Graduate School (Cambodia)Prof. Florentin ROCHET, Internal Member, University of NamurProf. Johann MARQUEZ-BARJA, External Member, University of AntwerpProf. Bruno QUOITIN, External Member, University of MonsProf. Raveth HIN, External Member, ITC Graduate School (Cambodia)You are cordially invited to a drink, which will follow the public defense.For good organization, please give your answer by Thursday March 20 by means of this link.Contact: Daelman Isabelle - isabelle.daelman@unamur.be
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UNamur at the sixth edition of SETT
On January 23 and 24, 2025, UNamur experts were present at the SETT (School Education Transformation Technology) trade show for its sixth edition. A must-attend event for digital education in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, dedicated to principals, teachers and technical-pedagogical advisors.
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