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CMU Portugal Researchers Present Their Work at LARSyS 2013

CMU Portugal Researchers Present Their Work at LARSyS 2013

LARSYS 2013 Strengthening a research network and launching new challenges were the main goals of the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Associate Laboratory LARSyS, which had the participation of several researchers involved in the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program (CMU Portugal) and affiliated with some of the Associate Laboratory’s six R&D. The event was held at the Pavilhão do Conhecimento, in Lisbon, on July 4-5, 2013.

The meeting aimed at fostering the scientific culture of all those involved in the specific research areas of LARSyS, as well as university students and other researchers interested in discussing challenges and new opportunities for robotics, systems and related applications in science and engineering. LARSyS brings together six R&D units, namely the Instituto de Sistemas e Robótica (ISR), the Centro de Investigação em Inovação, Tecnologia e Políticas (IN+), the Centro de Análise Matemática, Geometria e Sistemas Dinâmicos (CAMGSD), the Centro de Recursos Minerais, Mineralogia e Cristalografia (CREMINER), the IMAR Center of the Universidade dos Açores (IMAR Açores), and the Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute (M-ITI). This Associate Laboratory is based on four Portuguese universities: the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, through the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST/UTL), the Universidade de Lisboa, through the Faculdade de Ciências (FCUL), the Universidade dos Açores (UAc), and the Universidade da Madeira (UMa).

The annual meeting included presentations, discussions and a poster session, led by researchers involved in the research projects carried out at the different R&D units. The program addressed topics such as robotics, human-computer interaction, sustainability and health systems, associated with knowledge strategies emerging both in Portugal and abroad. In the plenary sessions, young researchers discussed new research topics, while technical research sessions were dedicated to brief presentations and the discussion of sample papers and research produced over the last few years. Finally, in the technical sessions the participants presented and discussed emerging challenges.

M-ITI, a not-for-profit innovation institution created in the scope of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program, was represented by more than 10 members, who participated in several sessions, addressing different areas of expertise of the Institute, from education and health technologies, to sustainability and assistive technologies.

Several dual degree doctoral students and alumni of the CMU Portugal Program participated actively in different sessions of the event. Ricardo Cabral and Susana Brandão, both students in the fourth year of the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) program, presented their works, entitled “Indoor Reconstruction, Classifiers and Humans in the Loop,” and “3D Sensing Technologies for the Analysis of Consumer Behaviors,” respectively. Dragana Bajovic and Dusan Jakovetic, who recently defended their doctoral theses in ECE, presented a joint paper “Optimization in Complex Random Systems.” Carla Costa, alumna of the Technological Change and Entrepreneurship (TCE) program, talked about “Agglomeration vs. Heritage: The Molds Cluster in Portugal”. Jayakorn Vongkulbhisal and Jerónimo Rodrigues, dual degree doctoral students in ECE, presented their posters, “Displaying Huge Scale Sets of Images in Finite Space” and “Bin-picking of textureless shiny objects using random ferns on multi-light images”, respectively, at the poster session.

The first part of the last session of the event brought together several researchers affiliated with LARSyS, and the directors of two international partnerships, to discuss the World Connections of the Associate Laboratory. João Claro, the national director of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program, participated in this session and spoke about the focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in the second phase of the Program, as well as about the growing importance of some emerging topics in the partnership, such as the support to the creation, development and internationalization of startups, the opportunities for student internships in top international companies, the development of alumni relations, the support to exploratory projects at initial research or innovation stages, and the creation of new sustainable institutions and graduate education programs.

The meeting was organized by LARSyS in close collaboration with the Agência Nacional para a Cultura Científica e Tecnológica, Ciência Viva.

July 2013