News: Event News

Priberam Machine Learning Lunch Seminar: “Empowering large buildings with learning skills. How to use past measures to increase their usage efficiency and reduce consumptions”
Speaker: Nuno Brás (Instituto de Telecomunicações)
Venue: IST Alameda, Sala PA2 (Edifício de Pós-Graduação)
Date: Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
Time: 13:00
Lunch will be provided

Abstract:
Energy efficiency is presently a buzzword that has created new challenges and opportunities over several markets and industries. Buildings consumptions are known to be responsible for over 30% of the overall energy consumption in the world. Reducing facilities consumptions has been recently considered as a main priority no just because of the referred weight but also due to its optimization potential. In fact, unexpected collaborations like IBM and Cisco have recently been done just to deal with this subject and Google has its own task force. In this talk it is firstly presented the way how consumptions are generically managed in facilities. Some techniques like data warehouse analysis, data-mining or machine learning are then considered to be used as tools to classify and quantify consumptions and ultimately define feedback strategies to buildings behavior.

Bio: Nuno Brás graduated in Physics Engineering in 2000 and worked in IT consulting companies during 4 years. He is finishing his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering in Instituto Superior Técnico, working with new solutions for tomographical imaging, namely developing instrumentation and measurement systems for Magnetic Induction Tomography. Nuno is a Co-founder of LMIT, a company focused on developing IT solutions for buildings and facilities management from Lisbon, Portugal.

Can machines learn human behavior? Portuguese Ph.D. Student Launches Priberam Machine Learning Lunch Seminars

The dual degree Ph.D. student in Language Technologies (LTI) André Martins started a new seminar series in Machine Learning that did not yet exist at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), in Lisbon. These events are sponsored by the Portuguese company Priberam, the world’s leading supplier of natural language processing technologies for the Portuguese language and the market leader in law knowledge management systems in Portugal.

The first seminar titled “Text-Driven Forecasting: Meaning as a Real Number” took place at Instituto Superior Técnico, in March 9 th , 2010., and the speaker was Noah A. Smith, an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His talk included joint work with Ramnath Balasubramanyan, William Cohen, Dipanjan Das, Kevin Gimpel, Mahesh Joshi, Shimon Kogan, Dimitry Levin, Brendan O’Connor, Bryan Routledge, Jacob Sagi, and Tae Yano.

Noah and his team “conjecture that forecasting tasks, when considered in concert, will be a driving force in domain-specific, empirical, and extrinsically useful natural language analysis. Further, this research direction will push NLP to consider the language of a more diverse subset of the population, and may support inquiry in the social sciences about foreknowledge and communication in societies.”

The goal of these events is to create a new platform for discussion involving different research groups (inside and outside IST) with a common interest in this field. The Priberam Machine Learning Lunch Seminars will be about statistical learning theory, signal processing, pattern recognition, computer vision, natural language processing, computational biology, neural networks, control systems, reinforcement learning, and anything related (even if vaguely) with machine learning.

March 2010

Carnegie Mellon | Portugal Program at Futurália

The Carnegie Mellon | Portugal Program will be represented at the Education, Training and Employment Exhibition – Futurália 2010, between March 10-13 at FIL, in Lisbon, Portugal. Futurália is the leading education and training event that takes place in Portugal.

1st Workshop on the Economics of ICTs
PDF (program)

On March 11 th , 2010, will be held the 1st Workshop on the Economics of ICTs at the Faculdade de Economia at Universidade do Porto, in Porto, Portugal. This event is organized by the Carnegie Mellon | Portugal Program – Instituto Superior Técnico, with the Center for Economics and Finance at Universidade do Porto (cef.up), and the Center for Advanced Studies in Management and Economics (CEFAGE).

The goal of this event is to discuss the recent changes in the telecommunications sector: competition between networks and between operators, the after-markets, the entry of new firms and sector regulation. The keynote speech will be done by José Manuel Amado da Silva, president of ANACOM. This workshop is intended for academics, Ph.D. and MSc Students, policy markets, and members of industry.

To register please contact Ana Bonança (abonanca@fep.up.pt) .

More information available at www.fep.up.pt/conferencias/ict/

Outreach June 14th, 2010
Second Annual Carnegie Mellon | Portugal Program Conference
Gulbenkian, Lisbon
March 9, 2010
Seminar Series on ICTs Policy Research: Estimating the impact of telecommunications policies on mobile penetration and usage
Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon more

Priberam Machine Learning Lunch Seminar: “Text-Driven Forecasting: Meaning as a Real Number”
Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon more
February 23 th , 2010
Board Meeting
February 22 th -24 th, 2010
New Innovation Networks more
February 22th, 2010
Diploma Ceremony 2010 more
February 9, 2010
SEMINAR SERIES on ICTs POLICY RESEARCH: Professor João Vareda
Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal more
January 14 th , 2010
Lective Year 2010/11 Launching Session at PT more
Forum Picoas, Lisboa
December 15 th , 2009
SEMINAR SERIES on ICTs POLICY RESEARCH: Professor Pavel N. Krivitsky
Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal more
December 14-15th, 2009
Carnegie Mellon | Portugal Program: Security and Dependability
Place: Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa more
December 14 th , 2009
MHCI Capstone Project Presentation
Madeira, Portugal more
December 11 th , 2009
Holiday Party and Portuguese Dinner
Pittsburgh more
Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) – International Day
November 25, 2009 more
“FEUP Mobility Network: International Fair for Engineering Education”
November 23-25, 2009
ICTI Student Research Presentation and Lunch Gopala Anumanchipalli and Ana Isabel Venâncio
November 24, 2009
Place: Carnegie Mellon University more ECE Back to Basics Colloquium
November 11, 2009
Title: Real-Time Scheduling on Multicores, by Björn Andersson, CISTER. more
Workshop: “Experiencing Technology Transfer: collaborating with Carnegie Mellon” November 8-10, 2009
Place: Coimbra, Portugal more External Review Committee September 14-18, 2009
Place: Aveiro and Lisbon more First Annual Forum on Cyber Security
September 18, 2009
Place: Lisbon more
Deans’ Retreat

September 15, 2009
Place: University of Aveiro more
Student Orientation Day
September 13, 2009
Place: University of Aveiro more
COLAB MATHEMATICS SUMMER SCHOOL and WORKSHOP 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009

All-Day Event
A two-week program on KINETICS and STATISTICAL METHODS for COMPLEX PARTICLE SYSTEMS will be held in July at the Interdisciplinary Complex of the University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal. Week One … Read more.
Summer Academy for CarnegieMellon|Portugal students and industrial partners
June 23-25, 2009

All-Day Event
University of Porto

Dear Members of the CarnegieMellon|Portugal Community: A Summer Academy for CarnegieMellon|Portugal students and industrial partners will take place on JUNE 23-25, 2009 at the University of … more
Annual Conference and Research Workshop Monday, June 22, 2009
All-Day Event
Porto, Portugal

JUNE 22, 2009 Carnegie Mellon | Portugal Conference Dear Members of the CarnegieMellon|Portugal Community: This year’s main event for our partnership is the CarnegieMellon|Portugal Conference to be … more
Carnegie Mellon University|Portugal Program partners with the University of Texas at Austin for the 2009 Colab Mathematics Summer School and Workshop Wednesday, April 15, 2009
The summer school and workshop is a yearly event that brings together Ph.D. students and junior faculty with well known experts in the several areas of mathematics. This year, the two-week program will be held in Lisbon, Portugal at the Interdisciplinary Complex of the University of Lisbon . The week of July 13 to 17 will feature a summer school for graduate students and postdocs, with lectures by E.Carlen, P. Degond, I. Gamba, M. Katsoulakis and R. Pego. The following week of July 20 to 24 will hold a workshop featuring lectures on recent progress in this field. … more.
Portugal deve ser operador competitivo na área tecnológica Friday, March 27, 2009
Francisco Veloso, professor em Carnegie Mellon, avalia empreendedorismo português … Read more (pdf).
Disadvantaged areas and science education forward in the new communications networks
Workshop for Community Broadband Networks… Read more.
PhD Technological Change and Entrepreneurship – Workshop Friday, January 9, 2009
This workshop will focus on frontiers in entrepreneurship research. Read more.

Priberam Machine Learning Lunch Seminar: “Text-Driven Forecasting: Meaning as a Real Number”
Speaker: Noah A. Smith (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nasmith/) PDF
Venue: IST Alameda, Sala PA2 (Edifício de Pós-Graduação)
Date: Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
Time: 13:00
Lunch will be provided

Abstract:
We take inspiration from recent research on sentiment analysis that interprets text based on the subjective attitude of the author. We consider related tasks where a piece of text is interpreted to predict some extrinsic, real-valued outcome of interest that can be observed in non-text data. Examples include:
* The interpretation of an annual financial report from a company to its shareholders is the risk incurred by investing in the company in the coming year.
* The interpretation of a critic’s review of a film is the film’s box office success.
* The interpretation of a political blog post is the response it garners from readers.
* The interpretation of a day’s microblog feeds is the public’s opinion about a particular issue.

In all of these cases, one aspect of the text’s meaning is observable from objective real-world data, although perhaps not immediately at the time the text is published (respectively: return volatility, gross revenue, user comments, and traditional polls). We propose a generic approach to text-driven forecasting that is expected to benefit from linguistic analysis while remaining neutral to different theories of language. A highly attractive property of this line of research is that evaluation is objective, inexpensive, and theory-neutral. This approach introduces some methodological challenges, as well.

We conjecture that forecasting tasks, when considered in concert, will be a driving force in domain-specific, empirical, and extrinsically useful natural language analysis. Further, this research direction will push NLP to consider the language of a more diverse subset of the population, and may support inquiry in the social sciences about foreknowledge and communication in societies.

This talk includes joint work with Ramnath Balasubramanyan, William Cohen, Dipanjan Das, Kevin Gimpel, Mahesh Joshi, Shimon Kogan, Dimitry Levin, Brendan O’Connor, Bryan Routledge, Jacob Sagi, and Tae Yano.

Bio: Noah Smith is an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science, as a Hertz Foundation Fellow, from Johns Hopkins University in 2006 and his B.S. in Computer Science and B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Maryland in 2001. His research interests include statistical natural language processing, especially unsupervised methods, machine learning for structured data, and applications of natural language processing. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Computational Linguistics and received a best paper award at the ACL 2009 conference. His ten-person group, Noah’s ARK, is supported by the NSF, DARPA, Qatar NRF, Portugal FCT, and gifts from Google, HP Labs, and IBM Research.

SEMINAR SERIES on ICTs POLICY RESEARCH: Estimating the impact of telecommunications policies on mobile penetration and usage
Dr. Jonathan Sandbach, Head of Regulatory Economics, Group External Affairs, Vodafone

Tuesday, March 9 th 2010 17:00pm
Room 5.09, 5 th floor, North Tower, Instituto Superior Técnico

Abstract:
This paper estimates the impact of telecommunications policies on mobile penetration and usage across developed and emerging markets. The analysis takes into account non-policy drivers and the interaction different policies have on each other. Our analysis shows that explicit policy decisions such as the level of mobile termination rate (MTRs) and taxation rate on profits have large and significant effects on penetration. Mobile usage, on the other hand, is poorly explained by the observed policy variables. As such, policies designed to increase usage would likely be ineffective. These findings are important as we see pressure worldwide for an acceleration of reduction in the level of MTRs and an increasing trend of higher taxation on mobile operators. Both of these policies are likely to lead to a lower level of mobile penetration than would otherwise be the case.

________
For those who won’t be able to be in the conference room at IST, you can attend the seminar online through WebEx (link and instructions below).

Please follow the instructions in that email some minutes before 4:30am (GMT) and join the online meeting room.

Topic: Dr. Jonathan Sandbach
Date: Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Time: 5:00 pm, GMT Time (London, GMT)
Meeting Number: 847 316 093
Meeting Password: epp2010PhD

——————————————————-
To join the online meeting (Now from iPhones too!)
——————————————————-
1. Go to https://ist-epp.webex.com/ist-epp-en/j.php?ED=133773177&UID=0&PW=NNzc0ZTYzZGFm&RT=MiMyMQ%3D%3D
2. Enter your name and email address.
3. Enter the meeting password: epp2010PhD
4. Click “Join Now”.

To view in other time zones or languages, please click the link:
https://ist-epp.webex.com/ist-epp-en/j.php?ED=133773177&UID=0&PW=NNzc0ZTYzZGFm&ORT=MiMyMQ%3D%3D

——————————————————-
To join the audio conference only
——————————————————-
To receive a call back, provide your phone number when you join the meeting, or call the number below and enter the access code.
Call-in toll-free number (UK): 0800 028 1181
Call-in toll number (UK): (0)20 700 51000
Global call-in numbers: https://ist-epp.webex.com/ist-epp-en/globalcallin.php?serviceType=MC&ED=133773177&tollFree=1
Toll-free dialing restrictions: http://www.webex.com/pdf/tollfree_restrictions.pdf

Access code:847 316 093

You can contact me at:
ana.mateus@ist.utl.pt
351-218418197

Innovation Forum on Services and Technologies for Interactive Media (NET-STIM)
Pavilhão do Conhecimento, Lisbon, February 24, 2010
PDF ( in English , in Portuguese )

Objectives of the Forum:

The goal of the Thematic Network “Innovation Forum on Services and Technologies for Interactive Media (NET-STIM)” is to gather the expertise of Portuguese research centers, private companies and government agencies in order to place Portugal at the forefront of innovation in key interactive technologies and services for digital media.

The new information and communication technologies changed completely the way we interact with the physical, human and social environment. The majority of the technological developments in this are in the last 50 years are related with the way humans interact with technology, from the mouse and the graphical user interface to mobile and ubiquitous computing devices, multi-touch screens and context-aware applications. Therefore the technology changed completely the way we interact and produce different types of media, express ourselves culturally and artistically and relate to each other in the society or behave as citizens.

Although the technologies achievements are key, the major innovations are always related to the human side. Global phenomena like media distribution services (iPod/iTunes or eBooks/Kindle), social networks (Facebook and Twitter), and new co-creation services (like YouTube and Blogging) emerge from a deep understanding (sometimes unexpected) of the way humans use technology in their daily professional and personal activities.

These services require an interdisciplinary approach in which areas like design, communication, psychology, anthropology and sociology contribute in an effective and innovative way to create new products and services that could bring Portugal to the forefront of the global economy.

For this purpose, NET-STIM forum intents to gather contributions form the different knowledge areas to foster collaboration towards a innovation cluster of interactive services and technologies for digital media using the international partnerships with Carnegie Mellon University and UT Austin to bootstrap the process. Within the context of these international partnerships Portugal already provides several world-class graduate education and research initiatives with industry and several research groups from both sides of the Atlantic. The NET-STIM forum intends to increase the critical mass of students, researchers and companies in Portugal, therefore contributing to a larger social and economic impact. Events like this will happen yearly on the hosting institutions to present results of the research and technology transfer, together with dissemination material for the general public and key decision makers.
PRELIMINARY PROGRAM
09:00-09:30 Check-in, Morning Coffee and Networking

09:45-10:45 Opening Session
Welcome:
Nuno Nunes, Scientific Director, Carnegie Mellon | Portugal Program

Opening Remarks:
João Barros and José M. F. Moura, Directors, Carnegie Mellon | Portugal Program
António Câmara Director UT Austin Portugal

Closing Remarks:
João Sentieiro, President, FCT

10:45-11:15 Roundtable Discussion I – Technologies for Interactive Media
Speakers:
Nuno Nunes (moderator), Scientific Director, Carnegie Mellon | Portugal Program
António Câmara, CEO, YDreams
Pedro Branco, Prof. U. Minho, Engage Lab
Claudia Goya, CEO da Microsoft Portugal
Joaquim A. Jorge, Prof. IST U. T. Lisboa, INESC-ID
Miguel Peixoto de Oliveira, CEO, Edigma
Verónica Orvalho, Prof. FCT U. Porto, IT Lab. Ass.
Diogo Terroso, CEO, NearInteraction

10:45-11:15 Coffee Break with Poster and Demo Session

Collaborative Research Projects of the Carnegie Mellon | Portugal program:
SINAIS – Sustainable Interaction with social Networks, context Awareness and Innovative Services, PI: Nuno Nunes, Madeira-ITI
WESP – Web Security and Privacy, PI: Vassilis Kostakos, Madeira-ITI
PT-STAR – Speech Translation Advanced Research to and from Portuguese PI: Luísa Coheur, INESC-ID
REAP.PT – Computer Aided Language Learning (CALL) Reading Practice (REAP.PT), PI: Nuno Mamede, INESC-ID

11:15-12:15 Roundtable Discussion II – Services for Interactive Media
Speakers:
Nuno Correia (moderator), Co-Director of Digital Media, UT Austin Program
Carlos Amaral, CEO, Priberam
Isabel Trancoso, Prof. IST U. T. Lisboa, INESC-ID
António Silva, CEO, Nonius
Heitor Alvelos, Prof. FBA, Universidade do Porto
Pedro Quintas, CEO, Collab/Novabase
Valentina Nisi, Prof. UMa, Madeira-ITI
José Carlos Gonçalves, CEO, Logica Ibérica

12:15-12:45 Keynote – Mk Haley – Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center
Mk Haley is Associate Executive Producer at Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center (http://www.etc.cmu.edu) with experience across design, digital media and experience design; research with Walt Disney Imagineering; the Disney-ABC Television group for more than 15 years, and as faculty at several university programs for the past 20, Mk has always been thrilled to merge technology and design, and education and industry in new and engaging ways. including as a contributing author to several books on the creative process published by Walt Disney Imagineering. With ongoing roles at the Disney Research labs here at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, and SIGGRAPH, the association for Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, primarily in Emerging Technologies demonstrations and displays,

12:45-13:00 Closing Remarks
Towards NET-STIM: Nuno Nunes, Nuno Correia and Heitor Alvelos
Manuel Heitor, Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Higher Education

To register for the event please fill out the form.
New Innovation Networks in Key Focused Areas of ICT
Innovation Forum on Security and Critical Infrastructure Protection (NET-SCIP)
Coimbra, on the morning of February 22 more

Innovation Forum on Future Internet Services and Technologies (NET- FIT)
Lisbon, on the morning of February 23 more

Innovation Forum on Security and Critical Infrastructure Protection (NET-SCIP)
Auditório da Universidade de Coimbra (map), Coimbra, February 22, 2010
PDF (in English ; in Portuguese)

Objectives of the Forum

The Innovation Network on Security and Critical Infrastructure Protection (NET-SCIP) shall gather the scientific community, the private sector and the main government agencies with the goal of developing comparative advantages for Portugal in new security technologies and services for the protection of critical infrastructures.

The convergence of telecommunication networks, information systems and control technologies has become a reality. The internet is more and more the platform of choice for the many information flows that support critical infrastructures such as energy and fuel networks, supply chains for materials, water and food, transportation networks and healthcare systems, as well as many small, medium and large enterprises. At the same time sophisticated technologies based on sensor networks allow for the aggregation of physical data in real time with respect to spaces, equipment and people. Given the growing inter-dependence of all these systems, the impact of so call cyber-attacks is no longer secluded to information systems and is now a real threat both to the infrastructures and basic services on which we all depend in our everyday life.

Centered on scientific and technological advancement, NET-SCIP shall promote an inter-disciplinary approach by which experts from engineering, basic sciences, economy, design and psychology come together to create new knowledge and develop security solutions for all kinds of users and companies.

As part of this initiative, we shall present a roadmap for the creation of CyLab Portugal, a consortium among universities and research units aimed at security innovation.

The activities of NET-SCIP are based on the ongoing research projects and graduate education courses supported since 2006 by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia under the Carnegie Mellon | Portugal Program. More than 100 researchers and about 150 graduate students are currently involved in the activities sponsored by this public-private partnership. It is our goal to continue attracting talented students and researchers from all over the world, thus gathering the necessary critical mass and ensuring high-impact contributions towards a more secure world with reliable critical infrastructures.
PRELIMINARY PROGRAM
09:00-09:30 Check-in, Morning Coffee and Networking

09:30-09:40 Opening Session

João Gabriel Silva, Dean, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra

José M. F. Moura, Director of ICTI@Carnegie Mellon

09:40-10:00 Guest Presentation

Pradeep Khosla, Carnegie Mellon University

10:00-10:10 A Roadmap for CyLab Portugal

João Barros, National Director, Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program

10:10-11:00 Roundtable Discussion I – Information and Communication Security

Speakers:

Manuel Garcia (moderator), Portugal Telecom

Paulo Mateus, IT, IST/UTL

Tiago Carvalho, GMV SkySoft

Frank Pfenning, Carnegie Mellon University

André Zúquete, IEETA, Universidade de Aveiro

11:00-11:40 Coffee Break with Poster and Demo Session

Collaborative Research Projects of the Carnegie Mellon | Portugal program and Portuguese participation in the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission

11:40-12:40 Roundtable Discussion II – Critical Infrastructure Protection

Speakers:

Eduardo Tovar (moderator), CISTER, ISEP

Nuno Ferreira Neves, LASIGE, FCUL

António Sousa, EDISOFT

Maria Manuel Farinha, ISQ

João Paulo Costeira, ISR, IST/UTL

Edmundo Monteiro, CISUC, FCTUC

Jorge Rodrigues, Critical Software

12:40-13:00 Closing Remarks

João Barros, National Director, Carnegie Mellon | Portugal Program

Pradeep Khosla, Carnegie Mellon University

To register for the event please fill out the form.

New Innovation Networks in Key Focused Areas of ICT
Innovation Forum on Future Internet Services and Technologies (NET- FIT)
Lisbon, on the morning of February 23 more

Innovation Forum on Services and Technologies for Interactive Media (NET-STIM)
Lisbon, on the morning of February 24 more