The CMU Portugal program hosted a lunch on the Carnegie Mellon campus in Pittsburgh on February 11th, 2025, bringing together students currently studying in Pittsburgh.
At CMU, the program’s coordination team regularly creates networking opportunities for students from different Ph.D. programs – who may not typically interact in classes – to connect, build relationships, and expand their professional networks beyond the classroom.
Attending students included Dual Degree Ph.D., Affiliated Ph.Ds. students from many CMU departments including Computer Science (CS), Software and Societal Systems (S3D), Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Human Computer Interaction (HCII), Language Technologies Institute (LTI), and Engineering and Public Policy (EPP).
This gathering gave everyone an opportunity to catch-up while enjoying a meal together, sharing their experiences at CMU in Pittsburgh so far.
CMU Portugal faculty member Claire Le Goues is one of three recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). This award is the highest accolade bestowed by the U.S. government on early career scientists and engineers.
Le Goues is a Professor and Associate Department Head for Faculty in the Societal Systems Department (S3D) at CMU. She is also a co-advisor to two CMU Portugal Dual Degree students, Daniel Ramos and Cláudia Mamede, and has hosted several CMU Portugal Visiting Faculty and Researchers in Pittsburgh, notably in 2019 and 2022.
This year she was part of the CMU Portugal 2024 Summit in Pittsburgh, hosting the Portuguese Delegation led by Minister Fernando Alexandre.
Le Goues’s interests span software engineering and programming languages, and especially in how to construct, maintain, evolve, improve/debug, and assure high-quality software systems. Her group of students and collaborators is called squaresLab. She teaches software engineering and program analysis at the undergraduate, masters, and PhD levels and co-direct the REUSE@CMU summer program.
To learn more about this prestigious award and its recipients, please see the recent article by CMU.
Ying Xu, CMU Portugal Affiliated Ph.D. student in Human-Computer Interaction at Instituto Superior Técnico and Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI-LARSyS) is the author of the winning poster of the PhD DEI 2024 – Best Poster online voting, titled “Exploring Playful Human-AI Interaction for fostering public understanding of species knowledge”.
Ying Xu is pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, focusing her research on Human-Computer Interaction and Human-AI Interaction, and is supervised by Nuno Jardim Nunes (ITI-LARSyS) and Jessica Hammer (Carnegie Mellon University).
The research being conducted by Tamás Karácsony in the field of artificial intelligence applied to epilepsy diagnosis was recently featured in an article by Público.
As a researcher at INESC TEC and a CMU Portugal Affiliated Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) Tamás has been developing innovative AI tools to support the detection and classification of epileptic seizures.
The method applied by INESC TEC researchers uses an infrared radar (to detect movement at night) and a high-resolution camera to capture 3D videos, ensuring better quality results. This non-invasive system allows for automatic diagnosis of movements. Though it seems to gather good results, more tests and more data are still needed to validate the work and transform it into a real aid to medical practice, with the goal of making diagnoses faster and more accurate, in healthcare systems.
He is supervised by João Paulo Cunha, CMU Portugal Scientific Director, professor at FEUP and researcher at INESC TEC, and co-supervised by Fernando De la Torre, professor and researcher at CMU School of Computer Science.
Read the article from Público here (in Portuguese) .
A research paper resulting from the CMU Portugal Exploratory Research Project “DAnon – Supervised Deanonymization of Dark Web Traffic for Cybercrime Investigation” has been awarded the 2024 Best Portuguese Internet Research Award by the Portuguese Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC).
The winning paper, “Flow Correlation Attacks on Tor Onion Service Sessions with Sliding Subset Sum,” was authored by Daniela Lopes, a CMU Portugal Affiliated Ph.D. student at INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Técnico working under the DAnon project. Her advisors and DAnon principal investigators, Nuno Santos (Técnico | INESC-ID) in Portugal and Nicolas Christin (CyLab, Carnegie Mellon University), co-authored the paper.
Upon receiving this prestigious recognition, Daniela highlighted: “Winning the ‘Best Portuguese Internet Research Award from the Internet Society 2024′ is an honor that profoundly validates our work in Tor network security. This recognition not only highlights the importance of our research but also reinforces our commitment to protecting users’ online privacy and freedom. The invaluable role of the CMU Portugal program in fostering multidisciplinary collaboration across universities, has been instrumental to our success. This award motivates us to continue our investigation with even greater dedication, knowing that our research has a real impact on protecting citizens’ digital rights worldwide.”
In the awarded publication, the team announced the discovery of a vulnerability in the Tor network that could potentially be exploited by third parties to subvert the purpose for which the network has been designed. This vulnerability was disclosed in advance to the Tor network development team, contributing to strengthening its security and resilience.
The research work, developed in close collaboration between Técnico I INESC ID and Carnegie Mellon under the CMU Portugal Program, shows, according to Daniela Santos “the importance of international, multi-disciplinary collaborations. The CMU Portugal program brought together researchers from Portuguese universities and Carnegie Mellon, harnessing our collective expertise to uncover a vulnerability in Tor that could undermine its goal of providing private and anonymous Internet access. Our work contributed to increasing Tor’s robustness, directly aligning with core objectives of the Internet Society to promote online privacy and combating digital censorship.”
The Tor network aims to provide users with a secure way to access the Internet privately and anonymously by routing encrypted traffic through multiple servers. This process is designed to prevent tracing the traffic’s origin, allowing users to avoid surveillance and censorship imposed by certain governments or authorities.
The paper was published in the proceedings of the 2024 edition of the renowned “Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) and is publicly accessible here.
The Award event included a panel discussion with Maria Manuel Leitão Marques, Member of the European Parliament (2019-2024) and former minister of the Presidency; Robin Wilton, Director of “Internet Trust – Internet Society”, and Miguel Pupo Correia, Full Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico and researcher at INESC ID.
Credits: Instituto Superior TécnicoCredits: Instituto Superior Técnico
More about the award-winning research
Tor is a widely recognized low-latency anonymity network that enables users to bypass challenges like surveillance and censorship. A critical aspect of Tor’s effectiveness is its ability to resist flow correlation attacks, which is vital for ensuring anonymity. However, the feasibility of such attacks against Tor onion services has remained an unresolved challenge.
In their award-winning paper, the researchers introduce an effective flow correlation attack capable of deanonymizing onion service sessions within the Tor network. Their approach leverages a novel distributed technique called Sliding Subset Sum (SUMo), which can be deployed in a federated manner by a coalition of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) worldwide. By collecting Tor traffic at multiple vantage points, these ISPs employ a pipelined architecture that integrates machine learning classifiers with a unique similarity function inspired by the classic subset sum decision problem. This enables SUMo to deanonymize onion service sessions both effectively and efficiently.
Furthermore, the researchers explore potential countermeasures that the Tor community can adopt to mitigate the impact of these attacks, contributing valuable insights toward enhancing the network’s resilience against such threats.
More about the DAnon I CMU Portugal research team:
Daniela Lopes is a CMU Portugal doctoral student at INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Técnico. She received her BSc and MSc degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from Técnico, specializing in Cyber Security and Distributed Systems. Her main motivation is protecting users from censorship, privacy violations, and crime on the web.
Nicolas Christin, Department Head of the Software and Societal Systems (S3D) at CMU, is a long-time collaborator of CMU Portugal. Christin has advised 2 CMU Portugal Dual Degree Ph.D. Students, 1 Affiliated Ph.D. student (Daniela Lopes), and has served as project PI for CMU Portugal Exploratory Research Projects (ERPs) DAnon – Supervised Deanonymization of Dark Web Traffic for Cybercrime Investigation, PassCert– Exploring the Impact of Formal Verification on the Adoption of Password Security Software, and DoubleChain – Supporting ubiquitous and fully decentralized supply chain operations through blockchain technology. Christin was also a collaborator of the Large Scale Collaborative Research Project BuildingHope.
Nuno Santos is an Associate Professor from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DEI) at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon, and a senior researcher at INESC-ID Lisbon in the field of computer and networked systems security, where he leads the SysSec team, focusing on systems security and privacy He is the Portuguese PI of CMU Portugal Exploratory Research project DAnon.
A new Call will open under the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program to support Exploratory Research Projects (ERPs) in strategic emerging areas of ICT, funded through Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), from December 2nd, 2024 (4 pm GMT) until January 22nd, 2025 (5 pm GMT).
The total funding for Portuguese research institutions is up to €400.000, supporting a maximum of 8 projects. Funding limits are set at €70,000 for consortia involving multiple Portuguese research institutions and €50,000 for those with a single institution. Projects will be up to 12 months, starting in 2025.
Proposals must include at least one Portuguese research institution and a partnering faculty team from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Researchers from CMU will be funded independently through the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program at a level similar to the Portuguese team.
ERPs aim to support collaborative teams of researchers from Portuguese institutions, CMU, and industry partners to launch research activities with high-impact potential in strategic areas aligned with the goals of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program. This Call seeks projects in ICT, focusing on leveraging the opportunities provided by the data economy as a driver for growth and change.
This is the third Call for ERP projects under the third phase of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program. More information about the previous ERP projects here.
André Duarte, a newly admitted student at CMU Portugal Dual Degree Ph.D. Program in Language Technologies (class of 2024/2025) has been awarded the SPARK Award for the best PhD student article. The Ceremony took place during the Center for Responsible AI Forum 2024, in Porto, on November 19th.
The SPARK Awards are the first Responsible AI Student Awards, launched to distinguish projects in areas such as machine learning, computer vision, and other fields advancing responsible artificial intelligence. André Duarte’s article “DE-COP: Detecting Copyrighted Content in Language Models Training Data”,was selected among 44 academic submitted projects. This research focuses on developing DE-COP, a method to detect whether copyrighted content was used in training a language model by probing it with multiple-choice questions containing verbatim and paraphrased text, achieving significant performance improvements over existing methods, even on black-box models.
According to André, this prize represents “a sweet conclusion for the DE-COP project. It’s always great to have our work recognized by others!”
About enrolling in the Ph.D. program, André states “I hope that five years from now, I will be just as motivated as I am today to continue working in the AI field.”
The CMU Portugal Ph.D. candidate is hosted in Portugal at Instituto Superior Técnico and INESC ID, supervised by Arlindo Oliveira and at Carnegie Mellon by Lei Li.
Portuguese Minister of Education, Science and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre made his first official visit to Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, alongside the Secretary of State for Science, Ana Paiva, to attend the 2024 edition of the CMU Portugal Summit.
The two-day event brought together the Portuguese and CMU communities for a series of discussions and an overview of the CMU Portugal Program, aiming to support the Minister’s reflection and evaluation of the partnership’s future.
The Program has been building a strong community of supporters, including CMU Faculty, Provost and Chief Academic Officer James H. Garrett, and the Dean of the College of Engineering Bill Sanders, who warmly welcomed the Portuguese delegation to Pittsburgh.
In addition, more than 30 CMU faculty members and researchers from 12 different CMU departments, 22 CMU Portugal Dual Degree and Affiliated Ph.D. students and 18 CMU Portugal visiting Ph.D. & MSc students and researchers actively participated in the activities.
The Summit was an excellent platform to shape a shared vision for the partnership’s future. It brought together partners from both sides of the Atlantic, fostering networking opportunities, building new connections, and laying the foundation for future collaborations.
But let’s take a closer look at the work conducted during the two days of the 2024 CMU Portugal Summit.
The visit began with a welcome dinner on Sunday, November 10th, to welcome Minister Fernando Alexandre and Secretary of State Ana Paiva hosted by CMU leadership represented by James H. Garrett and Bill Sanders.
The first day started with a tour of the CoFRIDA Lab, hosted by Jean Oh, Associate Research Professor at the Robotics Institute. During the visit, the delegation had the opportunity to interact with Robotics Institute’s students, who shared the cutting-edge research they are developing at the lab, including FRIDA, a robotic arm equipped with a paintbrush powered by artificial intelligence in addition to other amazing prototyped being developed at the Lab.
FRIDA, named after Frida Kahlo, stands for Framework and Robotics Initiative for Developing Arts. The project is led by Schaldenbrand with RI faculty members Jean Oh and Jim McCann, and is designed to collaborate with humans to create works of art.
The CMU team asked FRIDA to paint a portrait of the Minister of Education, Science and Innovation, and the result was an impressive mixture of art and technology.
The morning of the Summit was followed by a meeting between Minister Fernando Alexandre, the Secretary of State Ana Paiva, CMU Portugal Directors, and Tom Mitchell, the Founders University Professor of the Machine Learning Department at CMU.
Next on the agenda was a Session on Engineering and Public Policy (EPP), attended by the Portuguese Delegation, starting with an introduction by Peter Adams, Thomas Lord, Professor of Engineering and Head of the Engineering and Public Policy Department (EPP).
The session included presentations by Lia Patricio, CMU Portugal’s Scientific Director, providing an overview of EPP’s impact; Afonso Amaral, a Dual Degree Ph.D. alumnus in Engineering and Public Policy, discussing his research on the European international competitiveness landscape; and his CMU supervisor, Erica Fuchs, Kavčić-Moura Professor in Engineering and Public Policy, presenting on “Future Research Directions.” The session also counted the participation of Nicholas Christin, Professor; Department Head, Software and Societal Systems; Pedro Ferreira, Professor, Heinz and EPP, Director for Initiative Teaching+Education Analytics; Valerie Karplus, Professor, EPP; Associate Director of the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy; Granger Morgan, Hamerschlag University Professor of Engineering; and Baruch Fischhoff, Howard Heinz University Professor in EPP and CMIST.
To close the EPP session, CMU Portugal Directors and government representatives joined the speakers for an engaging discussion on Engineering and Public Policy.
Lunchtime allowed the CMU Portugal Dual Degree & Affiliated Ph.D. students currently in Pittsburgh to meet. Candidates got the chance to share their experience under the program with the Minister and the Secretary of State. The session was chaired by Inês Lynce, CMU Portugal National Co-director, and was attended by 22 students (complete list below). The networking lunch was a great chance to learn more about everyone’s research and for students to share their reflections on their experience at Carnegie Mellon University with Government representatives.
To start the afternoon, a meeting took place between Minister Fernando Alexandre, the Secretary of State Ana Paiva, CMU Portugal Directors, and Manuela Veloso, Head of J.P. Morgan Chase AI Research & Herbert A. Simon University Professor Emerita at CMU to discuss how AI will shape the future of research and education.
The event moved on to faculty presentations featuring Carnegie Mellon University Ph.D. advisors and researchers. The session was chaired by João Paulo Costeira, CMU Portugal faculty member, and included Justine Sherry, A. Nico Habermann Associate Professor at the Computer Science Department and supervisor of Ph.D. students Miguel Ferreira and Francisco Pereira; Zac Manchester, Assistant Professor at the Robotics Institute and supervisor of Pedro Cachim. He was the Principal Investigator at CMU of the 2021 CMU Portugal Exploratory project Prometheus, which developed the 5cm cubic satellite “PROMETHEUS-1” to be launched to Space in January 2025. Claire Le Goues, Professor at the Software and Societal Systems Department and supervisor of CMU Portugal students Daniel Ramos and Claudia Mamede was the last to share her experience with the Program.
After the faculty presentations, the Minister and Secretary of State had one-on-one meetings with Zico Kolter, Professor & Department Head of the Machine Learning Department, followed by a presentation by Graham Neubig, Associate Professor, Language Technologies Institute and CMU Portugal national Co-director João Magalhães.
The Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy at CMU is a leading institution that merges technology, analytics, and public policy to develop innovative solutions to complex societal challenges. The delegation had the opportunity to learn more about the work being developed by the College and by the CMU Block Center for Technology and Society in a session led by Heinz College Dean Ramayya Krishnan alongside Pedro Ferreira, Professor at Heinz College and the Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) Department; Christophe Combemale, Assistant Research Professor, Engineering and Public Policy (virtual) and Majd Sakr, Teaching Professor at Computer Science Department.
At the conclusion of day 1, the delegation attended a dinner hosted by Carnegie Mellon University Provost James H. Garrett with other Carnegie Mellon University faculty from across departments, including Manuela Veloso, Head of J.P. Morgan Chase AI Research & Herbert A. Simon University Professor Emerita at CMU; Pedro Ferreira, Professor, Heinz and EPP, Director for Initiative Teaching + Education Analytics; Ruben Martins, Assistant Research Professor, Computer Science; Granger Morgan, Hamerschlag University Professor of Engineering; Sridhar Tayur, Research Chair, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering; Limin Jia, Research Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Irene Fonseca, Kavčić-Moura University Professor, Mathematical Sciences.
Day 2
The second day kicked off with a visit to Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, where Brad Myers, the Charles M. Geschke Director, and Professor, delivered a presentation on the HCII work to develop human-centered software, services, and systems that improve people’s lives through technology. The visit included a guided experience to the Interactive Structures Lab by Assistant Professor Alexandra Ion and Associate Professor Chris Harrison, showcasing the lab’s interactive computational design tools research. The tour provided an excellent opportunity for the delegation, the Minister, and the Secretary of State to engage with remarkable prototypes and experience firsthand the groundbreaking research being conducted at the lab.
Carmel Majidi has been the supervisor for many CMU Portugal students, including Marta Calisto Freitas, a Dual Degree Ph.D. student who is currently working at his Lab, and Gabriel Santos, a 2024 Visiting Student, both from Universidade de Coimbra, who welcomed the visitors and shared their work. Both students from the Universidade de Coimbra were at the Lab and shared insights into their ongoing work. Under the scope of CMU Portugal, Majidi has been working closely with Mahmoud Tavakoli, Director of the Soft and Printed Microelectronics Lab at ISR Coimbra from Universidade de Coimbra, both as PIs of CMU Portugal projects WoW and Exoskins.
The following lab tour was led by Maysam Chamanzar, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, offering a glimpse into cutting-edge research focused on understanding the neural basis of brain function and harnessing its potential. Chamanzar’s lab develops innovative tools and techniques to advance the explanation of brain function and dysfunction.
The second networking lunch of the Summit centered around CMU Portugal Mobility Initiatives, highlighting the experiences of visiting students and faculty & researchers. Participants had the opportunity to share their journeys and insights with the Minister and delegation, fostering discussions about the benefits and impact of their experiences at Carnegie Mellon University in their research work.
Presentations included Alexandra Mendes, Assistant Professor at FEUP, a Visiting Researcher at Carnegie Mellon in 2023 hosted at the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute. Her research at CMU set the ground for winning, among other recognitions, the FLAD Atlantic Security Award (more here). Also presenting were Nuno Rodrigues (Visiting Faculty, HCII, Instituto Politécnico do Cávado e do Ave) and Martim Afonso (Visiting Student, CS, IST).
Innovation is a key area of the Program, and since its launch in 2006, 26 startup companies have been supported by CMU Portugal activities.
In a Session dedicated to Innovation under the program, CMU Portugal Scientific Director João Paulo Cunha introduced different successful cases of initiatives connected to the Program.
Meredith Grelli, Director of Project Olympus, a part of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, was also a speaker. Founded in 2007 at the School of Computer Science, Project Olympus provides support and resources to faculty, students, alumni, and staff aspiring to transform their research and ideas into startups. So far, it’s helped launch more than 1,400 startups. Project Olympus is one of the many programs and activities of the university’s Swartz Center. Meredith also discussed their role in the support of the teams selected under the CMU Portugal Patient Innovation Bootcamp.
The Patient Innovation (PI) platform was co-founded by Pedro Oliveira, Dean of Nova School of Business and Economics, and Helena Canhão (Nova Medical School), who was also present at the events. Launched in 2014 as a continuation of the CMU Portugal project TEIPL, the platform was presented by Dean Oliveira. In April 2024, the CMU Portugal Program, supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), signed an agreement with both Institutions to launch the CMU Portugal Patient Innovation Accelerator. This joint initiative is a new milestone in the healthcare innovation landscape in Portugal, aiming to boost advanced healthcare solutions and foster entrepreneurship in the sector.
Afonso Tinoco, CMU Portugal Dual Degree Ph.D. student in Computer Science, shared his experience under the Program, which led him to start his company Flashbots, with initial support from America’s Seed Fund, a program within the National Science Foundation (NSF) and housed within the Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships.
Paulo Marques, co-founder of the Portuguese unicorn company Feedzai and founding partner of TUMO Coimbra, shared insights from his entrepreneurial journey. His pathway is closely tied to the CMU Portugal program. He was the first faculty member from Universidade de Coimbra to be appointed as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon and the first Director of the master’s in software engineering on the Portuguese side.
During his speech, he also thanked the Program for its role in the foundation of Feedzai, now a billion-dollar company. He specifically acknowledged the support of José M. F. Moura, who believed in and advocated for the initiative when it was merely an ambitious vision. Today, Paulo remains one of the CMU Portugal Program’s strongest supporters, serving as its Scientific Director and inspiring others through his example.
Paulo Dimas, VP of Product Innovation at Unbabel and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Responsible AI, also shared an overview of the role of the CMU Portugal Program in the foundation of Unbabel. The company was launched in 2013 by Vasco Pedro, a CMU’s Language Technology Institute (LTI) graduate and a CMU Portugal project post-doctoral fellow. André Martins, CMU Portugal alumnus, is the VP of Artificial Intelligence Research. Recently, the company led CMU Portugal’s large-scale collaborative project MAIA, in which Paulo Dimas was the project’s principal investigator. Dimas is also the CEO of the Center for Responsible AI, a consortium project that received 78 million euros in funding from the Programa de Recuperação e Resiliência (PRR), and shared the latest developments on their latest venture Halo, which combines generative AI with a non-invasive neural interface transforming patterns of bioelectrical signals into language.
To conclude the Summit Sessions, Nuno Nunes and Paulo Marques, introduced the CMU Portugal Academy, whose first edition was launched in September 2024. Nuno Nunes, former National Co-Director of the partnership (2018 – 2024), is one of the founders of this advanced training center in digital technologies based in Lisbon, which was developed through a collaborative effort between the Instituto Superior Técnico, Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, NOVA School of Science and Technology, and Carnegie Mellon University, with the support from the Santander Portugal Foundation.
Paulo Marques, a faculty member for the “Product Management” course, provided an overview of this inaugural edition that features three advanced training programs: AI, Data Science, and Machine Learning; Product Management; and User Experience and Service Design. Marques also shared his vision for the academy’s future, emphasizing its role in fostering innovation and excellence in digital technologies.
To conclude the CMU Portugal Summit, CMU Provost James Garrett and Dean Bill Sanders joined the Minister, the Secretary of State, and CMU Portugal Directors for a closing meeting.
As the event ended, one of the primary goals was successfully achieved: showcasing the program’s accomplishments in education, research, and innovation over the years. Looking into the future, the event also served as a platform for participants to connect, share ideas, and explore new opportunities and synergies, setting the stage for the next phase of the Program. As we look ahead, the Program is thrilled about the upcoming phase and confident that the achievements of past years will not only be preserved but taken to new heights.
The future is bright, and we are ready to start the next chapter: CMU Portugal 2025–2030!
In addition to CMU Portugal Ph.D. student Diogo Silva, were part of the team Rafael Ferreira (Ph.D.) and Afonso Simplicio (MSc) who also presented at the conference. João Magalhães, coordinator of the Multimodal Systems Group at NOVA LINCS and CMU Portugal National co-director supported the students at the event.
You can read Diogo Silva’s paper “Show and Guide: Instructional-Plan Grounded Vision and Language Model”, on designing multimodal LLMs to follow instructional-plans,here.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. By using our website you agree to our Privacy Policy.OkRead more