Belgian Louis Morias wins European award for thesis on GenAI in maintenance

Louis Morias won the European Master Thesis Award with his thesis “Exploring the Potential of Generative AI in Maintenance and Asset Management”. The award was presented during the EuroMaintenance conference in Luleå, Sweden, by the Salvetti Foundation and EFNMS, the European Federation of National Maintenance Societies.

Morias graduated in 2025 from the interuniversity Master in Smart Operations and Maintenance in Industry, organised by KU Leuven and Ghent University. His thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Pradeep Kundu and MSc. Peter Decaigny.

The thesis addresses a challenge that many industrial companies are facing: how can technical knowledge be preserved when experienced employees leave, installations become more complex and new technicians need faster access to reliable information?

Generative AI can help organisations make better use of existing technical knowledge. This includes manuals, maintenance reports, inspection records, work orders and procedures that are often spread across different systems and documents.

A digital assistant could, for example, help technicians find relevant information more quickly, summarise it and turn it into practical support for an intervention. In this way, AI can support knowledge sharing, troubleshooting and the preparation of maintenance activities.

In his research, Morias emphasises that generative AI must be applied carefully in industrial environments. In maintenance, wrong decisions can have major consequences for safety, production and reliability.

That is why the thesis positions AI not as a replacement for human expertise, but as a digital co-pilot for maintenance professionals. Reliable data, traceable answers, cybersecurity, confidentiality and human validation remain essential.

“I feel very honoured. For me, this award also shows that the topic of my thesis truly matters. Generative AI is not a small or temporary theme, but part of a broader evolution that industrial organisations need to engage with today.”
— Louis Morias

Since September 2025, Louis Morias has been working as an IT Consultant Data Analytics at Axians Belgium. In this role, he focuses on projects related to data analytics, generative AI and predictive maintenance. This allows him to further apply the insights from his thesis in an industrial context.

For BEMAS, this recognition underlines the growing importance of digital transformation in maintenance, reliability and asset management.

“This recognition shows that young Belgian professionals are actively thinking about one of the major challenges in industry: how do we preserve technical expertise and make it usable for the next generation of maintenance teams?”
— Wim Vancauwenberghe, Director of BEMAS

The award illustrates how quickly AI is evolving from an experimental technology into a practical tool for industrial companies that want to make their knowledge and maintenance processes more future-proof.

The European Master Thesis Award is part of the EuroMaintenance Awards, organised by the Salvetti Foundation in cooperation with EFNMS. The award recognises master’s research that contributes to the development of maintenance, reliability and industrial asset management in Europe.