The CMU Portugal Program hosted on March 26th an Info Session to guide potential candidates to apply to the Open Call for Mobility Programs “Visiting Students” and “Visiting Faculty & Researchers”. To date, the CMU Portugal Program has supported 59 Visiting Students and 89 Faculty and Researchers visits to Carnegie Mellon University.
The Info Session was addressed to all researchers and students who want to participate in these initiatives to spend a visiting research period at CMU, and guiding them through the requirements to submit a successful application.
Applications are open until April 8th.
The Info Session, held via Zoom, was moderated by the Program’s Executive Director in Portugal, Sílvia Castro, and started with a Welcome Note by CMU Portugal National Co-Director Inês Lynce. According to Lynce, the Mobility initiatives provide “a life-changing experience”, encouraging participating students and researchers to apply and benefit from this great opportunity to be immersed in one of the top ICT universities in the world.
João Fumega, CMU Portugal’s Education Officer, presented an overview of the CMU Portugal Mobility initiatives, focusing on the application process and main requirements. Megan Berty, CMU Portugal Associate Director at CMU, spoke next on the CMU requirements and the support available by the Coordination office in Pittsburgh.
Next, André Duarte, Master alum at Técnico, who was part of the Visiting Students initiative in 2023, shared his experience with the online participants. He was considering pursuing a Ph.D. and didn’t look back after being part of this initiative, being hosted by the Language Technologies Institute, by Professor Lei Li. Duarte’s research topic is exploring retrieval-based question answering for knowledge extraction from legal text / scientific articles and sustainable deployment of large language models.
Alexandra Mendes is currently Assistant Researcher at School of Engineering (University of Porto). In 2023, as Visiting Faculty and Researcher, Alexandra was hosted by the Department of Software and Societal Systems by Professor Nicolas Christin. Mendes’ research area is Usable Security, Blockchain usability in security software.
Both spoke highly of the experience at CMU, each one talking about the straightforward and simple application processes, advising potential applicants to take care of logistics as soon as possible, especially applying for a visa and housing.
Finally, to end the session, there was a 15-minute Q&A, which allowed the participants to ask questions of the panelists.
The CMU Portugal Program also has an Open Call for Affiliated Ph.D. Programs until May 2nd, 2024. This Call will support up to 12 Ph.D. Candidates to study in Portugal, hosted by a Portuguese University, with up to one year conducting a visiting research period at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
For further questions about all our initiatives, please visit our website, FAQ Page, or contact us at apply@cmuportugal.org.
