Working at IRT SystemX, I was able to combine research with more applicative tasks in the fields of systems engineering and systems architecture. I was part of an industrial partner’s team as a systems architect. This experience offered me thorough understanding of the challenges linked to systems engineering, enabling me to then identify high-impact research topics. The institute offered me great support in enabling me to lead an exploratory research project in the field of reference architecture instantiation. I learned a lot from this experience which offered me a huge leap forward towards my career at the University of Luxembourg, which I joined in 2021 as a professor and Head of the Systems Engineering team.