Faculty Exchange Program Increases the Professional Relations with CMU’s Researchers
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Rui Maranhão is an assistant professor at Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP) who joined the Faculty Exchange program to spend the fall semester at the Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science. Maranhão found out about the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program, and specifically about the Faculty Exchange program, when he started working at FEUP in September 2009. |
“Knowing the reputation of Carnegie Mellon University in my teaching/research domain (most of computer technology was pioneered at CMU), I found that this was a great opportunity for me to work and seek partnerships in one of the most renowned universities in the world,” Maranhão says. Maranhão’s main goal in joining the program “was to develop a professional, strong relationship with well-known academics that would lead [him] to joint participation in future research projects, joint scientific publications, and co-advise Ph.D. students.” Maranhão also says that he was “attracted by the fact that the Faculty Exchange Program would give me the opportunity to be involved in a teaching team.”
Maranhão has been at Carnegie Mellon University since August 2010. He says that his experience “thus far has been excellent, and overly rewarding,” adding that “besides having the opportunity to meet (e.g., to discuss possible directions for joint research projects) world class researchers.” His stay at CMU is giving him “the opportunity to attend inspiring seminars/ lectures not only by researchers from CMU and other institutions but also by people from industry.”
Currently, Maranhão is a part of the teaching team for the undergraduate course “Foundations of Software Engineering,” which is a core course for students completing a minor in Software Engineering . The teaching team also consists of Jonathan Aldrich and William Scherlis, who are faculty members at CMU. Maranhão also attends courses for the Masters of Software Engineering to get insights on how to improve the courses he teaches at FEUP.
Maranhão is involved in Carnegie Mellon’s ABLE Project’s Rainbow research group, led by Professor David Garlan. This research project aims to build intelligent, self-healing systems that are robust to software faults (also know as “bugs”).
“We seek long-term collaboration under this project,” says Maranhão, “including the proposal of dual Ph.D. thesis projects, as well as a submission of a research proposal (either to NSF or FCT).” When he returns to FEUP in December 2011, Rui Maranhão hopes to bring “the good teaching practices” which he experienced while at CMU. Furthermore, this experience helped him to strengthen the professional relations with CMU’s researchers and professors. “Hopefully this will be the beginning of co-supervision of research projects and involvement in future research .” Maranhão says.
December, 2010
