The CMU Portugal Program welcomes six new Dual Degree Ph.D. candidates for the 2023/2024 academic year. The new Ph.D. students will be funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) and will start their journey in September 2023, embarking on a full-time program split between 2 years at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and 3 years at a Portuguese university.
The selection process for these candidates was overseen by a committee composed of faculty members from Portuguese Universities and Carnegie Mellon University, resulting in an overall acceptance rate of 7%.
This year’s scholarship awardees will cover diverse areas of study, with four specializing in Electrical and Computer Engineering, one in Software Engineering, and one in Engineering and Public Policy.
In Portugal, the host institutions for these scholars will be distributed as follows: three will be based at Faculdade de Engenharia – Universidade do Porto (FEUP), two at Instituto Superior Técnico – Universidade de Lisboa and one at Universidade de Coimbra. Two of the admitted scholars – Marta Freitas and José Gomes – have previously participated in the 2022 edition of CMU Portugal Visiting Students Program.
The group includes four students from Portugal and two from the United States of America. Furthermore, the CMU Portugal Program is proud to report significant progress in promoting gender equality within its admissions, with 66% of female students admitted for the 2023/2024 academic year, marking a notable 30% increase since 2021.
The CMU Portugal Program has enrolled a total of 180 students, and it currently maintains an active community of 60 students (composed of Dual Degree and Affiliated programs) and 90 alums.
Here are all the new students by Ph.D. Program:
Ph.D. Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering
José Gomes (Carnegie Mellon University/ Instituto Superior Técnico – Universidade de Lisboa)
Marta Freitas (Carnegie Mellon University/ Universidade de Coimbra)
Pedro Cachim (Carnegie Mellon University/ Instituto Superior Técnico – Universidade de Lisboa)
Xiyu Deng (Carnegie Mellon University/ Faculdade de Engenharia – Universidade do Porto)
Ph.D. Program in Software Engineering
Cláudia Mamede (Carnegie Mellon University/ Faculdade de Engenharia – Universidade do Porto)
Ph.D. Program in Engineering and Public Policy
Brissa Acevedo (Carnegie Mellon University/ Faculdade de Engenharia – Universidade do Porto)
Researchers at the Faculty of Science and Technology of Universidade de Coimbra (FCTUC) and Carnegie Mellon University, including CMU Portugal Dual Degree Ph.D. student Manuel Reis Carneiro, developed a water-based conductive ink tailored for producing flexible electronic circuits.
The technique, developed with CMU Portugal’s support, sidesteps the necessity of employing conventional organic solvents, renowned for their detrimental environmental impact due to pollution and toxicity. The results have been published in the scientific journal Advanced Science.
By being water-based, this ink is more sustainable and ecological and significantly reduces the environmental impact of existing solutions. On-skin bio stickers to monitor patients’ health or recyclable smart packages with integrated sensors for monitoring the safe storage of perishable foods are among the possible uses.
Manuel Reis Carneiro, a CMU Portugal doctoral student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, is part of the team led by Mahmoud Tavakoli, which already has extensive experience developing stretchable electronic circuits efficiently, quickly, and cheaply. They are now taking a new step by creating an ink that is sustainable and eco-friendly.
Manuel Reis Carneiro with Portuguese Minister Elvira Fortunato at CMU
Manuel Reis Carneiro explains: «Using a water-based ink for printing and producing flexible electronic circuits brings numerous advantages. On the one hand, it radically reduces the ecological footprint of production because it does not use polluting materials. On the other, it makes recycling and subsequent reuse of circuits much easier, which previously consisted of a complex procedure. Here, it is enough to place the circuit in alcohol. The components and metallic particles separate and are ready to be reused».
Unlike its predecessors, this innovative ink does not require refrigeration, facilitating storage and markedly reducing ecological footprints and maintenance costs. These advancements hold transformative potential in the medical and food industries. In healthcare, biomonitoring sensors and stickers can capture patient data like muscle activity, breathing, body temperature, heartbeat, brain activity, and emotions. The advent of this ink, enabling easy and affordable recycling, is especially impactful in combating electronic waste (e-waste) generated by single-use medical devices.
This innovation finds its place in the food industry’s next era of smart packaging. Applying this ink on plastic-based sensors affixed to packages of perishable goods enables real-time temperature monitoring, guaranteeing preservation and quality assurance. This approach empowers consumers by identifying storage issues and informing decisions.
Manuel Reis adds: «These “smart stickers” currently incorporate a temperature sensor that alerts users to contamination risks. The solution’s low production cost foreshadows future inclusion in perishable goods packaging to assure quality. While the focus is presently on temperature and exposure to unfavorable conditions, in the future, we hope to be able to monitor other factors such as pressure, humidity, position, or location».
These advancements exemplify the development of sustainable solutions, marrying technology and environmental consciousness. As the world leans into electronics, merging functionality and environmental stewardship emerges as a beacon of progress.
Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) has announced the six new Exploratory projects selected under the 2022 CMU Portugal Call for Exploratory Research Projects. The awarded projects will focus on ICT related areas ranging from digital health technologies to internet intervention to detect, treat, and monitor anxiety and depression in breast cancer survivors, bioelectronic implants, neural probes, distributed networks, and automatic evaluation of graphics based on machine learning.
The projects are planned for a period of 12 months, granting the scientific community the opportunity to identify and explore new ideas in a bottom-up way. Overall, CMU Portugal is supporting the Portuguese teams with 354 493€.
The CMU Portugal Program supports the launch of Exploratory Research Projects (ERPs) on a regular basis, with the main objective of promoting Portugal’s international competitiveness and innovation capacity in Science and Technology (S&T) in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Since 2017, the Program has launched four Calls for Exploratory Projects for a total of 27 funded projects and counting. The first Call for Exploratory Projects in 2017 funded 8 projects in a collaboration between 11 Portuguese institutions and 4 CMU departments; the 2019 Call selected 7 new projects involving 12 Portuguese research units and 4 different departments at Carnegie Mellon University and the 2021 Call funded 6 projects with 10 Portuguese partners and 5 CMU Departments.
Now in 2023, six (6) new projects were recommended for funding by the FCT under the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program, including:
AutoEvaVis: Automatic Evaluation of Visualizations – a Machine Learning Approach
Principal Investigator in Portugal: Evgheni Polisciuc Principal Investigator at CMU: Dominik Moritz
Partner Institutions: Universidade de Coimbra, Human-Computer Interaction Institute (CMU)
Keywords: Evaluation of Visualizations; Machine Learning; Automatic Visualization; Information Visualization
iNNOV Sensing: a pilot cognitive-behavioral internet intervention to detect, treat, and monitor anxiety and depression in breast cancer survivors based on multimodal active and passive sensing data Principal Investigator in Portugal: Cristina Mendes Santos Principal Investigator at CMU: Mayank Goel
Partner Institutions: Associação Fraunhofer Portugal Research, Centro Hospitalar Universitário de S. João, Instituto Português de Oncologia do Porto Francisco Gentil, Software and Societal Systems Department and Human-Computer Interaction Institute (CMU).
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Digital Phenotyping;Internet Interventions; Breast Cancer Survivors
Integrated photonic neuronal probes towards neuromorphic computing
Principal Investigator in Portugal: Maria Rute André Principal Investigator at CMU: Maysam Chamanzar
Partner Institutions: Universidade de Aveiro, Instituto de Telecomunicações and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (CMU)
Keywords: Neural probes; Photonics; Hydrogel; Neuromorphic computing
mm-Size Stimulator Implants Principal Investigator in Portugal: Jorge Fernandes Principal Investigator at CMU: Marc Dandin
Partner Institutions: INESC ID, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (CMU)
Keywords: mm-size implant; Deep implant; Bioelectronic implant; Electroceuthicals
Synthesizing Adaptive Large-scale Accelerated and Distributed Network Functions
Principal Investigator in Portugal: Luís Pedrosa Principal Investigator at CMU: Srinivasan Seshan Partner Institutions: INESC ID, Computer Science Department (CMU) Keywords: Programmable Networks; Network Synthesis; Network Optimization
Value systems in digital health technologies Investigation
Principal Investigator in Portugal: Ricardo Melo Principal Investigator at CMU: Sarah E. Fox Partner Institutions: Associação Fraunhofer Portugal Research, Universidade do Porto – Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, Software and Societal Systems Department (CMU) Keywords: Values; Health; Participatory Design; Human-Centered Design
The deadline for both Calls – Visiting Faculty & Researchers and Visiting Students – was extended until June 5 at 11.59pm, 2023.
Calls for CMU Portugal Mobility initiatives Visiting Faculty & Researchersand Visiting Students are open between April 26th, 2023, and June 2nd, 2023. Both calls, launched under the scope of the CMU Portugal Program with the support of Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), aim for research periods at Carnegie Mellon University in 2023.
Visiting Faculty & Researchers
The CMU Portugal Visiting Faculty & Researchers initiative will allow up to 10 grantees to spend from 2 weeks to 2 months working in research, education, and innovation in ICT with peers at Carnegie Mellon University to experience its culture and best practices. Candidates must be Portuguese citizens or foreign citizens with permanent residence in Portugal who hold a doctoral degree by the time of the application and are affiliated with a Portuguese Higher Education Institution or Research lab. The Visiting Faculty and Researchers Program builds on the success of the Faculty Exchange Program, launched in 2007. So far, 81 faculty from Portuguese research centers have benefited from this initiative.
The CMU Portugal Visiting Students initiative will allow up to 12 master’s students or masters who have been awarded a degree in the last five years in Portugal and in ICT-related areas to spend 1 to 3 months working in research in ICT at CMU. While at CMU, candidates will be mentored by leading faculty and researchers and have the opportunity to be immersed in Carnegie Mellon’s culture. Visiting Students must be Portuguese or foreign citizens with permanent residence in Portugal. The Visiting Students Program builds on the success of the Undergraduate Internship Program initiated in 2014. So far, 48 students from Portuguese Universities have benefited from this initiative
The CMU Portugal Program congratulates Francisco Veloso and Pedro Oliveira, long-time partners of the CMU Portugal Program, for their recent appointments at leading Schools in Portugal.
Francisco Veloso has been appointed as the next Dean of INSEAD. He will join INSEAD from Imperial College Business School, where he has served as Dean since 2017. Previously, he was the Dean at Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics (CLSBE) where he was the first NOS Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship holder. Francisco Veloso is also a full professor at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University since 2008. He will officially take up the position at INSEAD on 1 September 2023.
Pedro Oliveira took the leadership of NOVA SBE as Dean in November 2022. He is also a Gulbenkian Chair Professor for the Impact Economy & Invited Full Professor at Nova School of Business and Economics; Professor MSO at Copenhagen Business School with special responsibilities; Associate Professor (with Habilitation) at the Católica-Lisbon School of Business and Economics, and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research at Católica-Lisbon.
Francisco Veloso and Pedro Oliveira have been critical actors in CMU Portugal initiatives.
Francisco Veloso and Pedro Oliveira
They founded the CMU Portugal Dual Degree Ph.D. Technology Change and Entrepreneurship Program (TCE) together with Rui Baptista (Full Professor at Técnico) between Carnegie Mellon’s SET Change Program, the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, the Heinz School, and the Tepper School in collaboration with the Portuguese partners at Instituto Superior Técnico and at Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
Pedro Oliveira is also the Founder and President of Patient Innovation. This international platform was born within the CMU Portugal project TEIPL led by Pedro Oliveira and Helena Canhão, currently Dean of NOVA Medical School. Patient Innovation is a multilingual, non-profit platform and social network to connect patients and caregivers and enable them to share their innovative and user-generated health solutions.
Pedro Oliveira has supervised three CMU Portugal PH.D. students: Leid Zejnilovic, Paul Boor, and Huiyan Zhang. Francisco Veloso who is also a former CMU Portugal scientific director has supervised 5 CMU Portugal Ph.D.s: Carlos Kemeny, Paul Boor, Leid Zejnilovic, Cristóbal Forestier, and Long Lam.
Both have led and participated in two CMU Portugal projects, “The Role of ‘User Innovators’ in the Development of Telecom Products and Services” and “Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation Policy Lab”, TEIPL.
Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology, and Higher Education, Elvira Fortunato, recently made her first official visit to Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh alongside the Portuguese Ambassador in the United States, Francisco Duarte Lopes, and Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) President Madalena Alves. The three-day CMU Portugal Summit brought together the Portuguese and CMU communities for a series of discussions and an overview of the CMU Portugal Program.
The CMU Portugal partnership is based on a close interaction between all its stakeholders, from Academic & Research institutions to Industry. The working visit counted on high-level participation of Carnegie Mellon University Leadership, including the President of the University, Farnam Jahanian; CMU Provost and Chief Academic Officer, James H. Garrett, Jr.; the Dean of the College of Engineering, Bill Sanders, and the Dean of the School of Computer Science, Martial Hebert.
The event allowed partners from both sides of the Atlantic to network, develop new connections, and establish the ground for future collaborations bringing together a mixture of Portuguese and CMU representatives.
The impressive turnout for this visit confirms the commitment of all involved in fostering a dynamic innovation ecosystem between Portugal and CMU, which has been the fruitful outcome of the ongoing efforts under the CMU Portugal Program since its inception in 2006.
But let’s take a closer look at the work conducted during the three days of the 2023 CMU Portugal Summit .
Day 1
Bill Sanders, Dean of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon Universityand the Portuguese Ambassador to the United States Francisco Duarte Lopes opened the event to a room full of Portuguese and CMU researchers, entrepreneurs and CMU Portugal Ph.D. students.
José M.F. Moura
Dean Bill Sanders
Ambassador Francisco Duarte Lopes
The first morning was dedicated to the students.
Afonso Amaral kicked off the CMU Portugal Student Presentations Session, presenting a study from Portugal and Spain on how to leverage domestic industry to enter the strategic markets carried out under his Dual Degree in Engineering and Public Policy at Instituto Superior Técnico and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy.
Margarida Ferreira, a Dual Degree Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Instituto Superior Técnico and at CMU Computer Science Department, presented her work on Program synthesis for reverse engineering congestion control algorithms that she has been developing atCMU School of Computer Science, INESC ID, and Técnico.
Next, Manuel Reis Carneiro spoke on his work on biostickers for digital health that can be stretchable and comfortable. A work being developed at FCTUC and CMU Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
Sofia Martins,Dual Degree Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at FEUP and at CMU Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, introduced how she is developing an experimental testbed energy model for virtualized RANS under CMU Portugal Large Scale project FLOYD.
CMU Portugal student in Language Technologies at Técnico and CMU LTI Institute, Gabriel Moreira, spoke about his collaboration with the iFetch team, a Large Scale Project promoted by the Portuguese ICT Unicorn Farfetch on “Multimodal conversational agents for the online fashion marketplace”.
Catarina Fidalgo is doing her CMU PortugalDual Degree Ph.D. on Enhancing Remote Collaboration in Mixed Reality by Manipulating Perception atHuman-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.andTecnico. Her preliminary thesis title is “Enhancing Remote Collaboration in Mixed Reality by Manipulating Perception”.
Luis Borges also had the opportunity to share his Ph.D. work toward optimizing the time to find relevant documents. Luis is aCMU Portugal Dual Degree Ph.D. candidate atthe LTI Institute andTécnico.
During her presentation, Maria Casimiro highlighted the work developed under her internship last year at Feedzai and the collaboration with CMU Portugal visiting students. Maria is a CMU Portugal Software Engineering Dual Degree Ph.D. student at the Distributed Systems Group of INESC-ID/Instituto Superior Técnico, and at CMU Software and Societal Systems Department.
To close the CMU Portugal Student Presentations Session Tamás Karácsony, CMU Portugal Affiliated Ph.D. student at FEUP currently spending his research period at CMU Robotics Institute, guided us through his work on innovative AI solutions to classify epileptic seizures.
The session was followed by a network lunch offering a great opportunity for students and Minister Fortunato, Ambassador Lopes and President Alves, to interact and learn more about the research being carried out under CMU Portugal Program’s flagship’s Educational initiatives. In the 2023 spring semester, 28 students are at CMU under the CMU Portugal Program and 17 are hosted at different Universities in Portugal.
The afternoon of the first day was dedicated to the Research Initiatives being developed under CMU Portugal Exploratory (ERP) and Large Scale Collaborative Research Projects (LSCRP).
Six Projects were presented. Starting with the ERP SyNAPSE – Synthesizing Network Accelerators using Programmable Switching Equipment – by Justine Sherry from the Computer Science Department from the School of Computer Science in collaboration with Luís Pedrosa andFernando Ramos fromINESC ID. According to Justine, Exploratory projects are “a great opportunity to create other projects that will keep the collaboration between researchers in Portugal and CMU growing.”
David Garlan, from the School of Computer Science, discussed the results of CAMELOT, a project led byFeedzai in collaboration with the Software and Societal Systems Department at CMU, FCUL and Técnico and the work of the three CMU Portugal Ph.D. students that he is currently co-advising.
Limin Jia of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Departmentpresented the Exploratory project DIVINA – Detecting Injection Vulnerabilities In Node.js Applications developed in collaboration with José Santos, Nuno SantosINESC ID, and Pedro Adão from Instituto de Telecomunicações.
The Exploratory project PROMETHEUS – PocketQube Framework Designed for Research and Educational Access to Space – is being developed in collaboration with Alexandre Silva atUniversidade do Minho and Rodrigo Ventura at Técnico. The presentation was led by the project’s researcher at CMU Zachary Manchester . The audience, including Portuguese Minister Elvira Fortunato,had the chance to hold the microsatellite prototype developed under the project.
David Wettergreenfrom CMU Robotics Institute presented SAFEFOREST, a Semi-Autonomous Robotic System for Forest Cleaning and Fire Prevention led by Ingeniarius with the Association Development Industrial Aerodynamics (ADAI LAETA), ISR Coimbra /FCTUC and Silvapor. The final demonstration of the project, with the robot and the drone developed under this project, is planned for next June.
Finally, to close the session Nicholas Christin, jointly appointed in the School of Computer Science (Software and Societal Systems Department) and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, from CMU’s College of Engineering gave a look into the exploratory project DAnon – Supervised Deanonymization of Dark Web Traffic for Cybercrime Investigation, which is the third ERP that he leads. The project is a collaboration with Portuguese researchers at INESC-ID, INESC TEC, and FCT NOVA.
Day 2
On the second day, CMU President Farnam Jahanian, welcomed and had a working meeting with Minister Elvira Fortunato, Ambassador Francisco Duarte Lopes, and FCT President Madalena Alves to Carnegie Mellon.
The meeting was followed by the Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) workshop led by CMU Portugal Scientific Director Lia Patrício (FEUP), former CMU Portugal National Director João Claro (INESC TEC), and Peter Adams Head of the CMU EPP Department. The workshop included presentations from Afonso Amaral, CMU Portugal Dual Degree Ph.D. in EPP; and, via Zoom, CMU Portugal EPP alum Miguel Godinho de Matos, Full Professor of Information Systems and Management at Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics. Professors Pedro Ferreira, Baruch Fischhoff, Erica Fuchs, Valerie Karplus, Granger Morgan, Jay Whitacre, and Kate Whitefoot, all from CMU, presented some of the projects being developed in a wide range of areas.
The afternoon of the first day was dedicated to the presentation of LSCRP GOLEM led by OutSystems. It was represented by Nuno Carneiro, AI Strategy Lead at Outsystems, and Ruben Martins, PI of the project at CMU Computer Science Department. The project is setting a new benchmark for easy-to-use enterprise application development platforms and revolutionize the low-code and no-code development market
Next was iFETCH, an LSCRP that is developing a new generation of conversational agents for the fashion market led by the leading retailer company Farfetch. Ricardo Sousa, the project PI and Principal Data Scientist at Farfetch presented the main achievements of the project and highlighted the importance of having 3 CMU Portugal Ph.D. students working on the project. iFetch was also represented by João Magalhães (FCT NOVA) and João Paulo Costeira (Técnico) and Alexander Rudnicky (CMU).
IntelligentCare aims to develop a patient-centric solution to help manage Multimorbidity. To present the project’s main outcomes Pedro Ferreira PI of the project at CMU Heinz College. Hospital da Luz Learning Health leads this project in collaboration with Priberam, ISR Lisboa, INESC ID, and Técnico.
The session ended with a presentation on MAIA, which is developing an innovative multilingual conversational platform led by Unbabel represented by Paulo Dimas, VP of product innovation at Unbabel, and Graham Neubig from CMU Language Technologies Institute. Two of our Ph.D. students, John Mendonça and Patrick Fernandes are part of the research and attended the meeting.
The final part of the day was dedicated to the research conducted at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII). Following an introduction by HCII Director Brad Myers, Jessica Hammer presented the eGames Lab, a project recently funded under the Portuguese European recovery and resilience plan. eGames is a unique games development and creative industries cluster in Portugal, bringing together 14 companies, R&D centers, and public & private entities, and counts CMU as one of its partners.
Next, Hon Shen & Motahhare Eslami gave a presentation on Responsible AI. This area is strongly growing at Carnegie Mellon, namely with the Responsible AI Initiative to bring research in this field under the umbrella of fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics, and to apply these principles to real-world applications affecting society.
The Morphing Matter Lab led by Lining Yao develops materials, tools, and applications of adaptive, dynamic, and intelligent morphing matter from nano to macro scales. Innovative research that intends to advance science and society with the design of morphing materials.
The Interactive Structures Lab led by Alexandra Ion develops interactive computational design tools that enable the digital fabrication of complex structures for novice users—an excellent opportunity to see firsthand the work produced at the Lab and interact with some great prototypes.
The day ended with a dinner hosted by Farnam Jahanian, President of Carnegie Mellon University, and his wife, Trish Jahanian, at their residence. Minister Elvira Fortunato, Ambassador Francisco Duarte Lopes, and FCT President Madalena Alves were joined by the CMU Portugal Directors, that included Provost James Garrett and a group of invited CMU Faculty members, and representatives from Portuguese companies. The dinner gave the opportunity for a broad discussion of the CMU Portugal Program by President Jahanian and Minister Elvira Fortunato and all the present guests in an informal setting.
Day 3
The last day of the working visit to Carnegie Mellon started with presentations by CMU Robotics Institute Director Matthew Johnson-Roberson. Next, Fernando de La Torre gave an overview of his work, focusing on the impact and the revolution the next generation of virtual reality will bring.
After the presentations, it was time to visit the Biorobotics Lab, guided by its co-director Howie Choset, who offered a look into the work developed by one of the world’s leading Robotics Institute.
After the lunch presentations, Carmel Majidi guided a tour to the Soft Machines Lab, an exciting opportunity to see the outstanding research being developed on soft robotics, stretchable circuits, or printable conductive inks. The tour included a demonstration by Manuel Carneiro, a CMU Portugal Dual Degree Ph.D. student developing his research work at the SoftMachines Lab, co-advised by Mahmoud Tavakoli and Carmel Majidi atCMU Mechanical Engineering Department.
To wrap up the CMU Portugal Summit, CMU Provost James Garrett and Dean Bill Sanders joined the Minister, the Ambassador, FCT President, and CMU Portugal Director at CMU José M.F. Moura for a closing meeting. The day was not over without a fruitful discussion with CMU Portugal students to hear their feedback about their ongoing Ph.D. During the conversation, the Minister highlighted that they are not only regular Ph.D. students but are representing Portugal at one of the most renowned Universities.
As the event came to a close, it became evident that the event went beyond its jam-packed schedule to create a space where researchers and companies could convene and explore novel opportunities and synergies. In addition to upholding the Program’s legacy of fostering collaboration between the CMU community and Portuguese academia and industry, the visit served as a catalyst for a new era of innovation that promises to unfold in the coming year.
The 2023 International Women’s Day has run under the theme “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”. The CMU Portugal Program is proud to count on inspiring Women to contribute to its goal of supporting innovation and technology initiatives. Here are some CMU Portugal researchers highlighted in the media for their role in Science and Technology.
Elvira Fortunato, the Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education; Susana Sargento, CMU Portugal Scientific director at Universidade de Aveiro; and Filipa Fixe from our industry partner Glintt who is leading our project WoW, were included in Sapo Tek 20 Women, to highlight Women who stand out in the field of Science and Technology.
Elvira Fortunato, Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology
Susana Sargento, CMU Portugal Scientific director
Credits by Daniel Rocha I Ciência Viva
Filipa Fixe, CMU Portugal Industry partner at Glintt
After having our National Director Inês Lynce featured in the last edition of the book “Mulheres na Ciência” by Ciência Viva, this year’s edition includes Ana Paiva, CMU Portugal researcher and PI of CMU Portugal project Agents and Catarina Barata, a researcher within our project IntelligentCare.
Inês Lynce, CMU Portugal National
Ana Paiva, CMU Portugal Researcher
Catarina Barata, CMU Portugal Researcher
Credits: Ciência Viva
Inês Lynce’s interview with Exame Informática back in 2021 was again mentioned in an article by the same magazine on how to attract Women to Technological areas referring to the fact that no one knows how to do it but that there are a lot of people trying. CMU Portugal is proud to be part of those who are trying and to have amazing women involved in the Program’s educational and research activities.
We are looking forward to continuing to pave together ways to create equal opportunities for all Women!
CMU Portugal Ph.D. student in Engineering and Public Policy, Afonso Amaral, was distinguished with the best paper at the Babbage Industrial Innovation Policy Awards 2022 and received a $10K prize money for his work. Afonso had already won a “highly commendable work” distinction in the last edition but, in 2022secured the first prize.
“Winning this award in such an early phase of my career is motivating. I thought only professors could get these types of awards. It feels excellent to be still doing my Ph.D. and be already recognized at this level!”
The Dual Degree Ph.D. student at Instituto Superior Técnico and Carnegie Mellon’s Engineering and Public Policy Department co-authored the winning paper “National and Sub-National Policy for Domestic Manufacturing Flexibility: A Policy Framework to Incentivize Flexibility Based on Lessons from the COVID-19 Medical Supply Response”along with Nikhil Kalathil,hisPh.D. colleague at CMU.
“Nikhil Kalathil and I have similar research interests and share a CMU supervisor, Professor Erica Fuchs. Our collaboration comes almost as a natural thing. We look at similar problems in two different regions: I focus on Europe, and he focuses on the United States. We decided to combine our findings and think about how countries (and states) could make the best use of the full suite of federal and local policies to leverage their domestic industry. In a sense, what we have done is that we have combined several best practices across US states and EU Member-states, and we put them together in a policy framework focusing on investments in manufacturing flexibility”, Afonso Amaral.
By combining their expertise, the authors introduced a policy framework to support economic dynamism and manufacturing flexibility that uses the full suite of local, regional, and national policy mechanisms. The goal of this framework is to appropriately incentivize both pre-crisis and during-crisis investments in flexibility among firms of all sizes, taking advantage of the specific strengths and weaknesses of firms of different sizes. The study performs a five country case study to unpack the different policies implemented by Germany, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States of America to help domestic firms increase or pivot their production of medical supplies and equipment during COVID-19.
As a curiosity, the prize money will eventually be applied, according to Afonso, to another common goal: “We are currently writing a book together where we expand this and other ideas on how nations can best leverage their domestic industry. Maybe we can use this money for the publishing process? That would be a good idea!”
As a Women in Science, female researchers can serve as important role models and contribute to attracting and inspiring other young women to this field. Inês Lynce, CMU Portugal Program National Director and currently President at INESC ID, is a computer scientist highly recognized for her work in the field of Artificial Intelligence.
Under an invitation by Ciência Viva to celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (IDWGIS), she was part on February 11th at Pavilhão do Conhecimento of the Roundtable “Pergunta-me o que é ser cientista” (Ask me what it means to be a scientist), where female researchers and university students from different areas of science shared ideas on what it means to be a “woman in science” in each one of their fields.
According to Inês, “It was a great Roundtable. To have two college students as part of the discussion gave a great perspective on the importance of having female role models to follow in academia, research, or in leading positions in Companies. Women are stronger than they know, but it is easier to believe in that if we see and feel we are not alone.”
As a Computer Scientist and a mother of two young girls, she considers this kind of activities “essential to share experiences with a new generation of students but also with their parents. Initiatives like this, addressed to families, are crucial because parents or guardians have a huge impact on what children choose to be, and their support is essential to follow their dreams.”
The IDWGIS at Pavilhão do Conhecimento was entirely dedicated to promoting activities to encourage and promote access for all girls and women to training and education in the field of science, allowing young visitors to be part of scientific experiences or even participate in a quiz about Women who changed the world.