Louvain4: UCLouvain interdisciplinary research initiative

To help society meet current and future social and environmental challenges, UCLouvain has launched an interdisciplinary research initiative: Louvain4.

Louvain4 is a series of multidisciplinary platforms that unite researchers of distinct backgrounds around a common challenge of strategic importance to society. In pursuit of concrete answers to the great questions of our time, university researchers transcend boundaries between disciplines in order to stimulate thought, debate and collaboration. Louvain4 is a unique opportunity for the university to pursue simultaneously within a single framework its goals of research, teaching and training, and serving society.

Currently, the areas identified as strategic and which are thus the focus of Louvain4 platforms are:

• Nutrition 
• Ageing
• Cities, conurbations and living together
• Education, teaching and training
• Evolution
• Energy
• Water
• Migrations
• Rare diseases
• Space
• Work

Strengths of Louvain4 initiative

• An innovative approach. The flexibility and openness of the Louvain4 initiative stimulate exchange and collaboration between researchers, which promotes the development of new ideas and fresh ambitions.
• Reliability. Louvain4 provides researchers all the tools to maximise research project quality, achieve critical mass, maintain coherence and generate reliable results.
• Shared resources. Pooling human and financial resources fuels ambitious research projects.
• Greater visibility. Assembling teams of researchers of many disciplines under a single banner ensures greater visibility for research results and helps the public gain a better understanding of their role.

Louvain4 objectives

• Encourage the emergence of new research projects through a multidisciplinary approach.
• Contribute to public and scientific debate on major societal issues.
• Benefit society in a concrete and sustainable manner.