An international team including researchers from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) has won the award for best research proposal at the EUTOPIA PhD Summer School at NOVA University Lisbon. The winning project focuses on organised eco-crime in the Brazilian Amazon. It combines artificial intelligence with legal, financial and social expertise to better detect illegal deforestation, gold mining and financial flows. The jury selected the proposal from among six projects. VUB PhD researcher in law Femke Joosten was part of the winning team: "Eco-crime does not stop at illegal extraction itself: the proceeds are channelled into international financial circuits, including in Europe."
The 2026 EUTOPIA PhD Summer School brought together doctoral researchers from different disciplines and countries. Their task was to develop, in one week, a research proposal using artificial intelligence to address a societal challenge. On the final day, six teams presented their proposals to an international jury.
The winning team consisted of an economist, chemist, social researcher, curator and financial and legal researcher. Professor Karen François supervised the participants as a VUB mentor. This combination of expertise provided the basis for a project focusing on organised eco-crime in the Brazilian Amazon. The team focused on the links between illegal deforestation, gold mining and financial crime. Criminal networks make large sums of money from activities that cause serious harm to people and the environment. The proceeds are then often channelled into international financial circuits. To shed more light on these links, the researchers developed the concept of an AI-powered tool called Curupira, named after a mythical protector of the Amazon rainforest in Brazilian folklore. The tool would combine data from different sources, including financial transactions, satellite imagery, geographical information and chemical indicators. This would allow links between illegal activities and financial flows to be identified more quickly.
Femke Joosten
Collaboration between local artists and researchers
A second pillar of the proposal was the involvement of local and Indigenous communities. Their knowledge of the region could help detect new illegal activities more quickly and provide greater insight into how criminal networks operate. Through collaborations with local artists, the researchers also wanted to incorporate this knowledge directly into the project. According to Joosten, the project primarily demonstrates the strength of interdisciplinary research. "An effective approach to organised eco-crime requires a combination of legal expertise, financial insight, technological innovation and local knowledge."
Although the project is still at the initial research-concept stage, the team sees it as an example of how researchers from different disciplines can work together to develop new solutions to complex societal problems. The winning team received a group prize of €750.
For Joosten, the greatest benefit of the Summer School was not only the recognition the proposal received, but above all the opportunity to collaborate with researchers from other fields. "The Summer School taught me that complex criminal phenomena cannot be approached solely within a legal framework."
EUTOPIA
EUTOPIA is an alliance of ten European universities working together on education, research and societal impact. Through joint degree programmes, research initiatives and mobility programmes, the alliance aims to create a more integrated European higher education area. Its partner universities are Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), Babeș-Bolyai University (Romania), CY Cergy Paris Université (France), Ca' Foscari University of Venice (Italy), Technische Universität Dresden (Germany), University of Gothenburg (Sweden), University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), NOVA University Lisbon (Portugal), Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain) and the University of Warwick (United Kingdom).
The alliance also works with six international partner universities: Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), Arizona State University (United States), Kyungpook National University (South Korea), Monash University (Australia), Université Internationale de Rabat (Morocco) and Stellenbosch University (South Africa). Together, they bring students, researchers and staff from around the world together to exchange knowledge and strengthen cross-border collaboration.