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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Public thesis defense - Komlan Elikplim AGBA
Essay topic
Essays on the macroeconomic effects of cross-country and time heterogeneity in a monetary union
Composition of the Jury
PromotersProfessor Jean-Yves Gnabo, University of NamurProfessor Hamza Bennani (University of Nantes), Co-promoterOther Jury membersProfessor Sophie Béreau, Université de NamurProfessor Pauline Gandré, Université Paris NanterreProfessor Yuliya Rychalovska, Université de NamurPresident of the JuryProfessor Oscar Bernal, Université de Namur
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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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Media and politics: a prestigious international collaboration
For the past ten years, Professor Guilhem Cassan has been working on the question of the link between the media and political life in collaboration with Professor Julia Cagé, who has just been awarded the highly prestigious Yrjö Jahnsson Prize, which recognizes the best European economist under the age of 45. The UNamur Department of Economics (EMCP Faculty) and the DeFiPP Institute (CRED Centre) have a network and recognized international expertise in development economics and environmental economics.
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FNRS 2024 calls: Thinking about work after legal retirement age
Nathalie Burnay, professor in the EMCP Faculty and member of the TRANSITIONS Institute, has just been awarded PDR funding from the F.R.S-FNRS for her BRIDGE-EXT project. In collaboration with the Haute Ecole de Travail Social de Lausanne, she will focus on the situations and reasons that contribute to the continuation of professional activity after the legal retirement age.
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Vivre la Ville | What technologies for the city of 2030?
The program
Interventions by experts and researchers in the field of data science, , AI, digital twins, digital law and participatory processes.Registrations on the Vivre la Ville... website.
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Laurent Mathieu, journalist and TV news anchor
"I'm a news junkie"A familiar face at RTBF, Laurent Mathieu has been presenting the RTBF news for almost eight years, first on weekends and more recently on the 7:30pm news. After a master's degree in management science at the University of Namur, he decided to switch to journalism. Interview.
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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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Taking into account the family situation of members of parliament: a major challenge for the future
Reconciling family life and a political career in the European Parliament poses major challenges, particularly for MEPs with young children. This is demonstrated by Elena Frech, researcher at the University of Namur, in her recent research on work-life balance in European institutions.
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Studies in economics
Inflation, artificial intelligence, mobile phone tariffs, environmental taxes, poverty, inequality, budgetary adjustment, emerging economies...These topics are part of the daily news coverage in the media. You have an idea of what they mean, but you would like to know more. You want to understand this fundamental aspect of how our businesses and society work, and even more so, you want to take action, advise, and even make decisions to help build a more prosperous society.
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Better prediction of climate extremes
Statistics usually focus on anticipating events that fall within the norm. But what about rare events? They are dealt with by a branch of mathematics called extreme value theory, in which Anna Kiriliouk, lecturer in statistics at UNamur, is a specialist. Applied to the climate, this theory enables us to better predict extreme climatic events, at a time when these are multiplying due to climate change.
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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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