Welcome Back event to students in Pittsburgh

The CMU Portugal Program is organizing a Welcome Back event on September 19th addressed to all students spending this next semester in Pittsburgh. This is a grab and go event where students may stop by to grab coffee, donuts and fruit in the morning between 9:00-11:00 am.

This networking event intends to foster a supportive community of Ph.D. candidates while providing participants the opportunity to connect and share experiences with their peers who are also on campus. 

The Program currently has 23 active students attending the Fall semester at Carnegie Mellon, and anticipates 22 visiting students and faculty later in the semester. 

13th Lisbon Machine Learning School, with CMU Portugal support

The 2023 edition of the Lisbon Machine Learning Summer School (LxMLS 2023) will take place between July 14th and July 20th at the Congress Center of Instituto Superior Técnico. For the third year, the CMU Portugal Program proudly associates with this yearly reference event with over one decade of existence. 

The LxMLS 2023 covers a range of machine learning topics, from theory to practice, that are important in solving natural language processing (NLP) problems arising in different application areas. It is organized jointly by Instituto Superior Técnico (Técnico), Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) , Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Investigação e Desenvolvimento (INESC-ID), the Lisbon ELLIS Unit for Learning and Intelligent Systems (LUMLIS), and Unbabel, Zendesk, and IBM Research, with the support of the CMU Portugal Program.

The deadline for applications is April 28th, 2023, and the application form is available online.

Among the invited speakers and Instructors are CMU Portugal Faculty members from IT/Técnico (Universidade de Lisboa) André Martins and Mário Figueiredo, who are also the main organizers. André is also a CMU Portugal Alum currently working as VP of AI Research at Unbabel, a CMU Portugal Industrial Affiliate company.

From Carnegie Mellon University, the event will count on CMU Portugal faculty member Bhiksha Raj, from the Language Technologies Institute. 

As an organizer of this year’s edition is Zita Marinho, Research Scientist at DeepMind and a Dual Degree Ph.D. alumna in Computer Science – Robotics at Técnico and CMU Robotics Institute.

As part of the steering Committee are Isabel Trancoso, CMU Portugal Faculty & Researcher, and Fernando Pereira from Google and a CMU Portugal External Review Committee member. 

More about the School Schedule and Instructors is available on the LxMLS 2023 website.

Other useful information:

Important Dates
—————
* Application Deadline: April 28, 2023
* Notification of Admission: May 12, 2023
* Early registration: May 12 – June 30, 2023
* Summer School: July 14 – 20, 2023

Topics and Intended Audience
—————
The school will cover a range of Machine Learning (ML) topics, from theory to practice, that are important in solving Natural Language Processing (NLP) problems that arise in the analysis and use of Web data.

The target audience is:
* Researchers and graduate students in the fields of NLP and Computational
Linguistics;
* Computer scientists who have interests in statistics and machine learning;
* Industry practitioners who desire a more in-depth understanding of these
subjects.

Features of LxMLS
|—————
* No deep previous knowledge of ML or NLP is required, but the attendants
are assumed to have some basic background on mathematics and programming;
* Days are divided into morning lectures and afternoon lab sessions and
practical talks (see schedule);
* The Labs guide will be provided one month in advance. Last year’s guide is
available on the website.
* The first day is scheduled to review basic concepts and introduce the
necessary tools for implementation exercises
* Both basic (e.g linear classifiers) and advanced topics (e.g. deep
learning and transformers) will be covered
* Welcome reception, Banquet, daily lunch as well as morning and afternoon
coffee breaks are included in the application fee
* Lecturers are leading researchers in machine learning and natural language
processing

List of Confirmed Speakers
—————

  • ADÈLE H. RIBEIRO Columbia University | USA 
  • ANDRÉ MARTINS University of Lisbon & Unbabel | Portugal 
  • BHIKSHA RAJ Carnegie Mellon University | USA
  • DESMOND ELLIOTT University Of Copenhagen | Denmark 
  • KYUNGHYUN CHO New York University | USA 
  • MÁRIO FIGUEIREDO University of Lisbon & Instituto de Telecomunicações | Portugal 
  • NOAH SMITH University of Washington & Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence | USA 
  • SARA HOOKER Cohere for AI |Canada 
  • SLAV PETROV Google Inc. | USA 
  • WILKER AZIZ University Of Amsterdam | Netherlands 
  • YEJIN CHOI University of Washington | USA

Any other questions should be directed to: lxmls-2023@lx.it.pt.

Info Session: Horizon Europe – Funding Opportunities for R&D and Innovation

On September 23rd at 10am (Lisbon) the Portuguese Agency for Innovation (ANI) in collaboration with the CMU Portugal Program, will promote a session on the R&D and Innovation funding opportunities in Horizon Europe for the CMU Portugal community.

Horizon Europe (HE) has as one of its main objectives to increase the innovation of European companies and facilitate the transformation of knowledge produced in Europe into competitive advantages, translated into social and economic impact. In the case of Portugal, there is a challenge in this most recent European framework programme, to increase national participation with a particular focus on the companies, also aiming  to double the number of participations by national companies.

To achieve this goal, involving and interacting with national stakeholders in promoting initiatives to increase participation in Horizon Europe is essential. In this context, developing a strategy for closing gaps and capacitating the actors is necessary, raising the community’s awareness of Horizon Europe.

Agenda

10h00: Horizon Europe – Funding opportunities for collaborative R&D projects – Marta Pinto (ANI)
10h40: Discussion, Q&A
11h00: Funding opportunities in innovation and networks João Ribau (ANI)
11H40: Discussion, Q&A
12H00: Closing

The session will be conducted in English and via zoom. Registration is free but mandatory by filling out this online form

Zoom Webinar credentials will be sent to your email the day before the Session. For additional information please email us at: info@cmuportugal.org.

ESSIR 2022: 13th European Summer School in Information Retrieval

This year’s edition of ESSIR, a 5-day teaching event on Information Retrieval (IR) and related research topics, will take place between 18-23 July 2022. The event is organized by NOVA LINCS (FCT UNL), INESC ID and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid with the support of the CMU Portugal Program and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.

The event will also incorporate the new edition of the Symposium on Future Directions in Information Access (FDIA), which will provide a forum for early researchers to present their research in a friendly environment, while among senior researchers.

The summer school is addressed to students, Master’s students, Ph.D. Researchers, Industry and Academia practitioners. No deep previous knowledge of IR or ML is required, but the attendants are assumed to have some basic computer science and mathematics background.

The Summer School will be held at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences (FCSH) of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

The early registration deadline is June the 15th, 2022, and the application form is available online at: http://essir2022.org/

About ESSIR and its Mission

The European Summer School in Information Retrieval (ESSIR) is held on a regular basis, providing high quality teaching of Information Retrieval (IR) and advanced IR topics to an audience of researchers and research students. The mission of the school is to enable students to learn about modern research challenges and methods in information retrieval and related disciplines; to stimulate scientific research and collaboration in these fields; and to grow a community of researchers, students, and industry professionals working on information retrieval with collaborations all around the world.

Important dates:

List of Instructors and Schedule

12th Lisbon Machine Learning School, with CMU Portugal support

The 2022 Lisbon Machine Learning Summer School (LxMLS 2022) will take place between July 24th and July 29th at the Congress Center of Instituto Superior Técnico. For the second year, CMU Portugal proudly associates with this yearly reference event.

The school covers a range of machine learning topics, from theory to practice, that are important in solving natural language processing (NLP) problems arising in different application areas. It is organized jointly by Instituto Superior Técnico (Técnico), Instituto de TelecomunicaçõesInstituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa (INESC-ID), the Lisbon ELLIS Unit for Learning and Intelligent Systems (LUMLIS), and Unbabel, with the support of the CMU Portugal Program.

This year’s edition returns as an in-person 6-day event after two years online due to Covid restrictions.

The deadline for applications is May 15th, 2022, and the application form is available online.

More about the School Schedule and Instructors available on the LxMLS 2022 website.

Other useful information:

Important Dates
—————

* Application Deadline: May 15, 2022
* Decision: June 1, 2022
* Summer School: July 24 – 29, 2022

Topics and Intended Audience
—————

The school will cover a range of Machine Learning (ML) topics, from theory to practice, that are important in solving Natural Language Processing (NLP) problems that arise in the analysis and use of Web data.

The target audience is:
* Researchers and graduate students in the fields of NLP and Computational Linguistics;
* Computer scientists who have interests in statistics and machine learning;
* Industry practitioners who desire a more in depth understanding of these subjects.

Features of LxMLS
|—————

* No deep previous knowledge of ML or NLP is required, but the attendants are assumed to have some basic background on mathematics and programming;
* Days are divided into morning lectures and afternoon lab sessions and practical talks;
* The guide for the labs will be provided one month in advance. You can check here the guide used in previous editions.
* A day zero is scheduled to review basic concepts and introduce the necessary tools for implementation exercises
* Lecturers are leading researchers in machine learning and natural language processing

Any other questions should be directed to: lxmls-2022@lx.it.pt.

Manuel Heitor keynote address at the CMU Commencement Ceremony

On May 13th, Manuel Heitor will receive a Doctor of Science and Technology honorary degree and deliver the keynote address at Carnegie Mellon’s Commencement ceremony for master’s and doctoral degree graduates. The former Portuguese Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education, is one of the 2022 Carnegie Mellon Honorary Degree Recipients, one of the highest distinctions presented to an individual by CMU, awarded to individuals who are a source of inspiration to Tartans and their families gathered at graduation between May 13-15.

You are welcome to watch the Commencement ceremony in live streaming from 3:00 – 4:30 pm (Pittsburgh time) /  8:00 – 9:30 pm (Portugal time).

The link will soon be available at the Commencement ceremony page.

On the same day, the CMU Portugal Program will host a Workshop that precedes the Commencement Ceremony for invited participants. At this event, CMU Portugal researchers and Ph.D. students will address their ongoing research work in collaboration between Portugal and CMU.

More about this distinction in our News article.
More about the Commencement Schedule here.

José Fonseca de Moura Doctor Honoris Causa Ceremony

The CMU Portugal Director at CMU will be awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by Universidade de Lisboa

Professor José Manuel Fonseca de Moura who leads the CMU Portugal Program since its beginning in 2006, will be awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by Universidade de Lisboa, in recognition of his academic, scientific and professional outstanding contributions, worldwide and with a strong impact in Portugal and IST, in signal processing and data science.

In addition to his role as CMU Portugal Director, Professor José Manuel Fonseca de Moura is the Philip L. and Marsha Dowd University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He was full professor at Técnico in the 1980s and president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. IEEE has about 422,000 members in more than 160 countries.

The Doctor Honoris Causa ceremony will take place at Instituto Superior Técnico, on 13th September 2021, at 2:30 p.m and will be held in Portuguese.

Live streaming at: https://ist.pt/nYpVN

CMU Portugal will be part of two FLAD Sessions in Porto and Minho to promote training initiatives in the USA

The Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD) will host two sessions – February 18th in Porto and 19th at Universidade do Minho – for all those interested in undertaking a period of academic training at a University or Research Center in the United States.

For these sessions, FLAD invited representatives from different Programs that promote initiatives addressed to Portuguese who want to go to the USA, including the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program that will be represented in Porto and Minho by the Program’s Executive director, Sílvia Castro, and in Porto also by the Program’s Education officer, João Fumega. All questions related to funding available, application process or the stay in the United States, will be clarified by those entities and through testimonies shared by previous participants.

In Porto the session will take place at i3S on February 18th between 15h00-17h00, at Auditorium Mariano Gago.
Registrations at: https://forms.gle/tjSG1wmhhu84cnt78 by  14/02.

At  Universidade do Minho the session will take place on February 19th between  14h30-16h30, at Auditorium B1, Building 2.
Registrations at: https://forms.gle/2diuYBHaqeYBkizp9, by 14/02.

Photo Exhibition “Olha e Vê. Sente e Vive” and “Outros Retratos e Auto-retratos” now at FEUP

After Lisbon, “Look and See. Sense and Live” and Other Portraits and Self-portraits” Exhibit will now take place at Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP) until December 13th with an Opening Ceremony on November 14 at FEUP Library.

This photo and video exhibition was developed under the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program project SCREEN DR, led by Professor Aurélio Campilho from INESC TEC’s  C-BER Center  in collaboration with the photographer Renato Roque. The exhibit was already showcased in Lisbon at FCT and at the Ciência 2019 event.

The main objective of the project was to develop a computational platform for screening diabetic retinopathy.

The exhibit contains synthesized images, portraits of the retinas of INESC TEC researchers and self-portraits of the photographer Renato Roque.
For more information please read the booklet of the exhibit.

Entrance is free.