Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program IV phase (2025-2030) leadership will be secured through the current national co-directors Inês Lynce (Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon and INESC ID) and João Magalhães (Faculty of Science and Technology of NOVA University of Lisbon).
The announcement by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) confirmed the appointment of the national co-directors for the three U.S.-Portugal international partnerships — CMU Portugal, MIT Portugal, and UT Austin Portugal — who will work alongside their counterpart Directors at the respective U.S. institutions through 2030.
After consulting with several national entities and an evaluation by an external entity, the Portuguese Government, in recognition of the more advanced stage of development of the Portuguese scientific and technological system compared to previous phases, extended for a IV phase (2025–2030) the CMU Portugal and the other FCT’s international partnerships. This extension represents an opportunity for greater ambition, scope, and alignment with the current and future challenges of the Portuguese scientific and technological system, thereby creating conditions for them to have a broader and more significant impact on the country’s economic and social development.
The announcement of the next phase of the U.S. partnerships, planned for 2025–2030, also brings changes in governance, including the implementation of a new model in early 2026 and the establishment of a new mission structure. The mission structure is to be chaired by José Manuel Mendonça, President Emeritus of INESC TEC and Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. This will involve various governmental areas, aimed at promoting these partnerships and maximizing their impact for Portugal.
More about CMU Portugal Co-Directors:
Inês Lynce was appointed co-director of the CMU Portugal Program in 2021. She is a Full Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico and a researcher at INESC-ID, where she currently serves as President of the Board of Directors. Inês is a well-established researcher in the broad field of artificial intelligence, particularly in constraint solving and optimization. Her main contributions include developing search algorithms and applying them to real-world problems.
“With over four years of experience leading the Program, I believe I now have the knowledge and perspective needed to take it even further, embracing new challenges, activities, and new areas of expertise. I am thrilled to see what more the Program can achieve, supported by two excellent colleagues — João Magalhães in Portugal and José F. Moura at CMU.”, Inês Lynce
João Magalhães was appointed as National Co-director of the CMU Portugal Program in October 2024. He is a Full Professor at the Department of Computer Science of NOVA School of Science and Technology (FCT NOVA) and coordinator of the Multimodal Systems Group at the NOVA LINCS research center.
João Magalhães holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science (2008) from Imperial College London, UK. His research interests span a wide range of challenges in vision and language AI algorithms and applications, including foundational vision–language models, multimedia search, multimodal conversational systems, and trusted large language models.
“I’m thrilled to contribute to the CMU Portugal Program and build upon the exceptional legacy established by the previous Directors. Today, the CMU Portugal Program stands as a flagship initiative and a model of excellence in education, science, and innovation. It’s an honor to join Inês Lynce and José Fonseca de Moura in this remarkable program and to bring fresh ideas to the table.”, João Magalhães
José Fonseca de Moura continues as the Director of the CMU Portugal Program at Carnegie Mellon University.
According to the FCT announcement, the three partnerships “promote new thematic knowledge networks and mobilize international players from partner universities in research, training and entrepreneurship projects of common interest, boosting innovative ideas and research projects with the potential to tackle complex challenges with a high global impact.”
In the MIT Portugal program, João Pedro Barreto (Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra) and Alexandre Ferreira da Silva (University of Minho) will take over as national directors. The UT Austin Portugal partnership will be led by Rute André (University of Aveiro) and Rui Oliveira (University of Minho)
Read more: Full FCT announcement