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Howest To boldly go where no one has gone before Anticipating the future is what Howest has in mind. This is also reflected in the research that is dominated by new trends and technologies with an impact on business and society. The result is practice-based research that is supported by creativity, out-of-the-box thinking and interdisciplinarity.
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its way into industry, but this is also increasing the risk of cybercrime. In addition to potential economic damage, the impact on people and the environment is equally important. In our opinion, an important weapon lies in ‘security by design’ in which security becomes an integral part of the design. Finally, we are working on algorithms that allow data to be analysed while they remain at their collection point. This is a big step forward in the field of privacy because information no longer needs to be exchanged and can be stored in a fragmented way”.
ith its specific approach and philosophy, Howest puts itself clearly on the map. “We call ourselves atypical, we come with an edge,” says Geoffrey Hamon, head of research, services and valorisation. “We are open to people who are colouring outside the lines and who value entrepreneurship”.
Digital transformation as a leitmotiv “Within Howest, research coordinators actively search for innovative topics. We focus on the added value of new trends or technologies and their potential to solve practical challenges in organisations and our society at large,” says Geoffrey Hamon. “We also do this on a demand-driven basis, examining certain themes exclusively for one organisation as well as for consortiums. Digitalisation runs like a thread through our educational programmes and research. After all, advancing technology continuously opens doors to new application possibilities. We also see this in the four research topics that were in the spotlight in 2020: cyber security, bioinformatics, ‘scan for stories’ and technology in education.”
Getting started with (bio)medical data An area in which Howest is very strong is bioinformatics. “As the term shows, we bridge the gap between science and IT,” says research coordinator and teacher Paco Hulpiau. “In short, we try to automate the analysis of (bio)medical data as much as possible. It is a very interesting field of research that will, of course, receive a lot of attention in these Covid-19 times. It is also a good example of how Howest strives for real added value with its research. After all, our knowledge centre puts itself at the service of organisations that lack the knowledge and expertise to analyse such data. We also analyse publicly available data in order to arrive at new insights. Furthermore, we develop workflows to fully automate the individual analysis processes (such as quality control, comparison with a reference, data visualisation and reporting). Last but not least, there is our research into nanopore technology with which all DNA in any sample can be tested extremely quickly. In Howest’s nanopore lab, we focus on ‘targeted sequencing’: a targeted analysis of a particular piece of DNA code. We are not there yet, but the results are extremely promising. This
Cyber security is in the spotlight more than ever. “In a world where everything revolves around data, security has become incredibly important,” says Kurt Callewaert. “Unfortunately, organisations, users and even IT people do not always know how to protect themselves against cyber attacks. Business secrets, identity data, control over crucial machines and R&D results are being thrown to jail, so to speak. The Security & Privacy research group formulates adequate answers to this problem. Just think of ways to better install and parameterise IT systems in order to avoid ‘gaps’ in security. We develop tools that use artificial intelligence to secure networks without human intervention. Hackings are immediately detected and countered: this is crucial to avoid major economic damage. Within the framework of Industry 4.0, our research into OT networks has also increased. Digitalisation is rapidly finding
Cybersecurity test setup
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© Howest
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In the fight against cybercrime
BIKC_Real-time nanopore sequencing of microbial DNA using the MinION sequencer at the Howest nanopore lab
