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Nowadays, the development of software systems and their integration into global business services are extremely challenging undertakings. Today's challenges include unprecedented levels of complexity, a growing number of stakeholders, and the need to master an increasingly wide range of skills, techniques, tools and methods..

New developments in information and communication technologies (ICT) have enabled public organizations to innovate in their internal processes and in the services they offer. In this context, these developments have led to the emergence of e-government and smart city concepts that will modify, and ultimately improve, the way public organizations operate.

Information technologies are deeply involved in shaping the contemporary human condition and its social organization. To a certain extent, these technologies are "micro-politics" that endorse, in their concepts and conceptions, moral and political choices affecting our relations with ourselves, with others and with the world. They are both a social construction and a social constraint.

Faced with technological developments such as Big Data, artificial intelligence, algorithms, the Internet of Things, robots, platforms, cybersecurity, etc., digital education has become a major issue for our society. Educational initiatives are now emerging in a variety of directions, affecting all age groups, in formal and informal educational settings.

Welcome to NaDI-CeRCLe, the Research Center For Marketing and Service Management. Established in 2005 as part of the Faculty of Economics, Social Sciences and Management (EMCP), the Nadi-CeRCLe brings together a dynamic team of faculty members, researchers, doctoral students, and practitioners. Since 2018, CeRCLe has proudly been a founding partner of the Namur Digital Institute (NaDI), driving forward cutting-edge research and collaboration in the digital age.

Discover NaDI-CeRCLe's internal and associate members.

Our society is undergoing a digital revolution, impacting its organization, but also its practices, and even its values. Most sectors of our society have to integrate this revolution, including eHealth, eGov, eServices, collaborative economy. Solving these challenges requires a transdisciplinary approach including technology, scientific foundations, but also societal, ethical, juridical and economic viewpoints.NADI aims at federating all the UNamur researchers working on the following challenges in 7 research fields:

Building on a tradition of computer science research at the University of Namur, NaDI federates six research centers focusing on different aspects of the digital society.

Contact Co-President Bruno Dumas bruno.dumas@unamur.be Co-President Alexandre de Streel alexandre.destreel@unamur.be Organization Discover the members

NADI offers extensive expertise in artificial intelligence: bio-inspired robotics, robust, interactive, interpretable and safe machine learning, automatic program verification, declarative programming, business intelligence, knowledge representation and automatic software testing. This has already led to numerous collaborations with medical experts, industry and civil society. Along with other areas of expertise at NADI, AI experts are also exploring the educational, ethical, societal and legal implications of AI.

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. Register here

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. I want to register