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Series of Seminars on “AI in Healthcare” under IntelligentCare project

From June 23, 2022, to March 9, 2023, Hospital da Luz Learning Health will host a series of Seminars on Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) in Healthcare, focusing on applications of A.I. in health-related issues. Throughout this series of seminars, held under the scope of CMU Portugal Large Scale project IntelligentCare, invited speakers will share their contributions and ideas on Advanced Analytics in Healthcare.

Next Sessions: 

  • 4th Session | July 21 | 5 pm (Lisbon) “Personalized medicine in the era of A.I.” by Ana Teresa Freitas
  • 5th Session | September 22 | 5 pm (Lisbon)
  • 6th Session | October 6 | 5 pm (Lisbon)
  • 7th Session | October 20 | 5 pm (Lisbon)

The complete program is available here.

The Seminars will be held onsite and online. Registration is free but mandatory.

The CMU Portugal Large Scale Project IntelligentCare is promoted by Hospital da Luz Learning Health, in collaboration with Priberam, Hospital da Luz Lisboa, INESC ID, Instituto Superior Técnico, and the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon.

Previous Sessions:

  • 1st Session | June 23 | 5pm (Lisbon) “A blueprint of the AI-enabled hospital: Data, infrastructure, algorithms and applications” by Jorge Cardoso
  • 2nd Session | June 29 | 5pm (Lisbon) “Multimorbidity analytics: Disease progression and treatment pathways for chronic conditions” by Rema Padman
  • 3rd Session | July 5 | 5pm (Lisbon) “Towards understanding biomedical complexity with actionable models” by Luis Mateus Rocha

Five new Dual Degree Ph.D. Students will join CMU Portugal in 2022

The CMU Portugal Program welcomes five new Dual Degree Ph.D. candidates for the academic year 2022/2023. Funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), the new Ph.D. candidates will start their journey in September 2022, for the next five years (full-time), with up to 2 years at CMU and up to 3 years at a Portuguese University. All candidates were selected after a rigorous selection process by a committee of faculty members from Portuguese Universities and Carnegie Mellon University, with an overall acceptance rate of 5%.

This year the scholarships were granted in the following areas: two in Human-Computer Interaction, one in Electrical and Computer Engineering, one in Language Technologies, and one in Software Engineering. From these, four will be hosted at Instituto Superior Técnico and one at Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa (FCUL).

The group includes four students from Portugal and one from Italy. This year represents a new step forward in gender equality in the CMU Portugal Dual Degrees in ICT. For the first time, the majority of the accepted candidates, three of the five (60%) are female, confirming a growing tendency from 2021/2022 (36%).

Of the 161 enrolled students since its 1st edition, the Program will now have 50 active students (Dual Degree and Affiliated), already considering the 2022/23 candidates, and 86 alumni.

Here are our new students by Ph.D. Program:

Ph.D. Program in Human-Computer Interaction

  • Carolina Carreira (Human-Computer Interaction Institute at CMU / Instituto Superior Técnico – Universidade de Lisboa)
  • Beatrice Maggipinto (Human-Computer Interaction Institute at CMU /Instituto Superior Técnico – Universidade de Lisboa)

Ph.D. Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering

  • João Tomé (Electrical and Computer Engineering at CMU/ Instituto Superior Técnico – Universidade de Lisboa)

Ph.D. Program in Language Technologies

  • João Coelho (Instituto Superior Técnico – Universidade de Lisboa/ Language Technologies Institute at CMU)

Ph.D. Program in Software Engineering

  • Catarina Gamboa (Institute for Software Research at CMU/ Faculdade de Ciências – Universidade de Lisboa)

CMU Portugal Alumnus Jihoon Shin won the “Best Student Paper” Award at IAMOT 2022

CMU Portugal dual degree alumnus Jihoon Shin won the “Best Student Paper” Award at the International Association for Management of Technology (IAMOT 2022). He is CMU Portugal’s most recent Dual Degree Ph.D. Alumni (April 2022) in Engineering and Public Policy by FEUP and CMU Department of Engineering and Public Policy. The winning paper “Foreign direct investment and host firms’ technology development: The moderating role of overall and STEM education” was distinguished for its theoretical and empirical contributions in technology management.

Jihoon Shin Ph.D. was conducted under the CMU Portugal Entrepreneurial Research initiative (ERI) E4 Value led by Miguel Amaral at the Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research (IN+)  from Instituto Superior Técnico and Granger Morgan at Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) at Carnegie Mellon University.

The Conference was organized by two of the leading communities on Management of Technology, Engineering and Innovation, IEEE TEMS and IEEE and gathered around 350 participants, both online and onsite in Nancy, France. Jihoon joined the Conference onsite and referred to it as an excellent experience.

“It was a great opportunity to get to know the recent trend in the field of technology management and network with many students, researchers, professors, and practitioners mainly from Europe.” Jihoon Shin 

Jihoon Shin shares that the paper “explores the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and firms’ technology development. Moreover, it assesses the moderating role of overall education and STEM education. Our empirical analysis uses a unique matched employer-employee micro dataset, the “Quadros de Pessoal”, that covers nearly all private companies and their employees of the different broad sectors of the manufacturing industry in Portugal. We apply an improved comprehensive measure of technology development based on the transition of industrial codes of firms. The results contribute to the technology management literature indicating that FDI is positively associated with the technology development, and education, particularly STEM education, is important to gain larger technological benefits from FDI.”

Prior to joining the CMU Portugal Program, Jihoon Shin worked at Korea Development Bank and Korea Finance Corporation which are Korea’s policy-based financing institutions. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, a M.S. in Technology Management from Seoul National University, and a M.S. in Development Policy from KDI School.

CMU Portugal headquarters at the new “Hub Criativo do Beato”

CMU Portugal will be expanding its Lisbon offices to the “Hub Criativo do Beato” (HCB). In September, the Program will be part of the project launched by Câmara Municipal de Lisboa (CML) to build a new “Unicorn Factory” in Lisbon, creating an innovation center of excellence for creative and technological companies.

HCB will be a space for open innovation in the heart of the Beato neighborhood, where work, leisure, and cultural areas will unveil a new urban dynamic in a daily living space shared by the Hub residents, from entrepreneurs to freelancers, startups, and companies, with the surrounding community, an ambition shared with CMU Portugal. In the past 15 years, CMU Portugal has contributed to interdisciplinary and interinstitutional collaborative projects. It has supported the creation of startups nowadays reference in their sectors, such as Veniam, Unbabel, and the fintech unicorn Feedzai and Mambu.

CMU Portugal will not be the only one moving to HCB in September. Under a new partnership between the two institutions, Instituto Superior Técnico will join the Hub as an academic partner. As a result, the Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI – Instituto de Tecnologias Interactivas), founded in 2009 through the CMU Portugal partnership and member of the Tecnico’s research unit LARSyS, will also relocate to the HCB.

Nuno Nunes, CMU Portugal National Co-Director, and ITI President, see this as “a great opportunity to be part of a new and ambitious innovation center launched by CML to foster research and entrepreneurship involving some of the best academic and industrial Institutions in Lisbon.”

This center will combine technology and creativity, which is exactly the focus of the area of HCI of CMU Portugal and the newly affiliated Ph.D. program in Digital Media which involves the University of Porto, Nova University of Lisbon and more recently University of Lisbon, so we are excited to see what the future will bring. – Nuno Nunes

To Inês Lynce, CMU Portugal National Co-Director, and INESC ID President, “it is gratifying to see the investment that the City is making in Lisbon, supporting and promoting these innovation initiatives. This industrial area in Lisbon, formerly from the Portuguese Army, will soon gain a new life by hosting over 3 thousand people worldwide who want to produce innovation. ”

This new Hub that will count with CMU Portugal and Instituto Superior Técnico is surely a way to strengthen our capital’s position as an innovation and research ecosystem. I’m extremely proud to be part of it. – Inês Lynce

Regarding the Program’s role in this initiative, José M.F. Moura, CMU Portugal Director at CMU,  explains that “the CMU Portugal Program is highly focused on promoting research initiatives between companies and academic institutions in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University. This new Hub will surely be a new platform to showcase what is being done under the Program and possibly establish the ground for new collaborations.”

We look forward to renewing the Program and continue our collaboration beyond 2023. Who knows what new opportunities this might bring.
– José M.F. Moura

According to the Lisbon Mayor, Carlos Moedas, “This project was only possible thanks to a strong collaboration between the academic sector, CML, companies, and entrepreneurs, both nationally and internationally. ”

This spirit of cooperation and diversity produces the best projects and innovation, and that is what I want for Hub Criativo do Beato. The new IST center and the international partnership with Carnegie Mellon is an important first step toward that goal. – Carlos Moedas

On the relevance of the CMU Portugal partnership, which connects Técnico and Carnegie Mellon University, Carlos Moedas says it “brings great prestige to Lisbon. These are two institutions of excellence that come together to develop unique technology in the world. It’s yet another evidence that Lisbon is becoming Europe’s innovation capital.”

Alexa TaskBot Challenge: Portuguese team stands out in 2nd place

A Portuguese team won the second prize at the 2022 Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge . Promoted by Amazon USA, the ten university teams in competition had to develop bots to assist customers in completing cooking or do-it-yourself home improvement tasks requiring multiple steps and decisions. The awarded team was led by CMU Portugal Faculty member, João Magalhães, professor at the Department of Informatics at NOVA School of Science and Technology (FCT NOVA) and researcher at NOVA LINCS, and counted, among others, with the participation of 3 CMU Portugal Ph.D. students: Diogo Tavares, Diogo Silva and Gustavo Gonçalves.

After nearly a year of research, the three best conversational assistants were announced and the FCT NOVA Portuguese team has proudly won second place. Their bot TWIZ, a conversational Task Wizard with multimodal curiosity-exploration, stood out by introducing curiosity to the challenge and mentioning curious facts related to the tasks being performed, which increased customer engagement. João Magalhães and David Semedo led the Portuguese team composed by Diogo Tavares and Diogo Silva (CMU Portugal Affiliated Ph.D Students), Gustavo Gonçalves (CMU Portugal Dual Degree Ph.D.) and 6 other students (Rafael Ferreira, Hélder Rodrigues, Mariana Bonito, Frederico Vicente, Rui Margarido, Paula Figueiredo).

The opportunity to participate in the 2021 edition of the Alexa TaskBot Challenge was possible thanks to the research work that was already being developed on conversational assistants under the CMU Portugal large-scale collaborative project IFetch, which is being led at FCT NOVA by João Magalhães. Under this project, the FCT NOVA team is supporting the development of a multimodal conversational agent for the online fashion marketplace with the company Farfetch.

Regarding CMU Portugal contribution to this achievement João Magalhães explains that “the Program played a key role as an enabler, both through the iFetch program and through the CMU Portugal funded PhD students. The iFetch team at NOVA University had already a running solid research program in multimodal conversational agents, so this was a natural step. Now, this outstanding achievement was mainly due to a combination of several groundbreaking AI advances invented by our students: the robust dialog understanding Transformer algorithm, and the language generation algorithms capable of talking about curious facts and algorithms to answer questions about the recipe and its video.“

Being part of this competition had, according to the team leader two very rewarding aspects “first, the access to real-world data and real-world users. This offered us a great opportunity to push the frontiers of the state of the art. Second, working with an amazing team towards this goal was extremely fulfilling.”.

About the Alexa Taskbot Challenge, sponsored by Amazon, João Magalhães states that it “was a great test-bed to validate multimodal conversational assistants that guide users in executing complex tasks like fixing a broken chair or cooking a chocolate cake. There were 10 universities participating world-wide and our solution was among the top three systems. “

The first place went to GRILLBot, a “multimodal task-oriented digital assistant to guide users through complex real-world tasks” developed by a team of graduate students at the University of Glasgow. A team from Ohio State University (OSU) won third place with its TacoBot.

The prize money for the top three was $500,000 for first place, $100,000 for second, and $50,000 for third.

Amazon News article here.

Nuno Sabino leads Team Europe to victory in the International Cybersecurity Challenge

Team Europe was the winner of the 1st International Cybersecurity Challenge (ICC 2022) concluded on Friday, June 17, in Athens, Greece. After two days of competition, the European team, which included CMU Portugal Dual Degree Ph.D. student Nuno Sabino as captain and his Supervisor, Pedro Adão, as one of the team trainers, took the trophy home.

The E.U. team counted fifteen young talents from twelve different European Union and EFTA countries, aged between 21 and 27, including Nuno Sabino: “the whole thing has been an adventure, and I feel honored to have been part of it. I was captain of the team, together with Danique, a player from the Netherlands. Part of our responsibilities involved assigning people to tasks, helping whoever is stuck on a challenge or find someone else to help, deciding who to attack (mainly in the second competition), and trying to solve some challenges ourselves.”

Team Europe
Team Europe

It all started in March 2021 when ENISA, the competition organizer, began selecting who would be part of Team Europe. Each country nominated 2 to 4 young people to be part of the initial pool of candidates. Nuno Sabino was nominated along with Manuel Sousa, both from Instituto Superior Técnico, for performing well on the European Cyber Security Challenge (ECSC). Both applications were accepted and became part of the initial pool of around 40 to 50 people from all around Europe, and all trained together in four in-person bootcamps. Through individual competitions, 15 people from 12 countries were selected to represent Europe in the 2022 ICC event.

From June 14 to 17, all worked together and did their best to achieve this fantastic result. “We played together and developed tools together for the final event. Everyone was experienced in programming and knew the usual techniques we learned in college. But somehow, I felt that each of us was bringing something different from our own countries and cultures, something that improved the overall state of our tools. I learned a lot from my team, and I feel honored to have been part of a group with such great talents,” shares Nuno.

The 2022 ICC event consisted of two main competitions. A Jeopardy-style, which consists of static challenges that each team needs to solve, and an Attack-Defense competition, a more dynamic game where each team has a common set of services running on a server and must attack other teams and patch services so that they can no longer attack you.

 “This competition was also a great way to improve my leadership skills, study cybersecurity in a very practical context, and we might also open-source some of the tools we developed for common use of all CTF teams.” Nuno Sabino

 

At the prize-giving ceremony the team was, according to Nuno, extremely nervous: “I noticed some were shaking at least as much as me, as we had practiced intensely to be there and perform well. When they announced that Team Asia took second place and in third place was Team USA, our main competitors, we knew immediately we had won it.”

“I never had experienced so much enthusiasm and sense of accomplishment as the day when we found we were world champions.” Nuno Sabino

Team Europe at the Prize giving Ceremony

Nuno Sabino is currently a CMU Portugal Dual Degree Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Instituto Superior Técnico and at Carnegie Mellon, Computer Science Department, supervised in Portugal by the competition trainer, Pedro Adão (Técnico) and by Rui Maranhão (FEUP). His thesis is focused on detecting and exploiting DOM-XSS vulnerabilities, and regarding his future in Cybersecurity, he is sure to say, “definitely yes. I am not sure what I want to do after my Ph.D., but my passion is for Cybersecurity, and I intend to keep working on this area.”

The next “International Cybersecurity Challenge” (ICC) will take place in August 2023, hosted by ENISA from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and CISA in the United States of America.

ENISA news article
Team Europe members

 

 

Results from WoW project lead the way for a new generation of electronic devices

A team of researchers at the Universidade of Coimbra have developed a highly promising material for a new generation of electronic devices under the CMU Portugal project WoW. The research work presents a promising material that can be used in flexible displays, flexible solar panels, and even wearable biosensors among others. Led by Mahmoud Tavakoli, the Institute of Systems and Robotics team from Universidade de Coimbra recently published their findings and graciously was featured on the Advanced Materials Technologies journal cover page.

This graphene-coated liquid metal nanocomposite is a novel and promising class of biphasic composite that can be used as a transparent conductor. The authors used an infrared laser source for simultaneous laser sintering, thinning, and ablation of reduced graphene oxide coated eutectic gallium-indium alloy films and demonstrated their application in the fabrication of a high-resolution semitransparent sensor for human breath monitoring.

This is the first report showing a transparent conductor based on liquid metal. According to Mahmoud Tavakoli, “Liquid metals are interesting because they provide stretchability and self-healing, and they are excellent in thermal dissipation. So, this is an important step toward screens that are very resilient, and very resistant.”

The structure of the new material and the manufacturing method presented in this study represents an important step towards a rapid, low-cost, and scalable fabrication of graphene-based electrodes. The next step of the investigation will be, according to Mahmoud Tavakoli, «to explore the use of other types of lasers to improve the conductivity or transparency of the electrodes, as well as to study other applications of this technique such as film electronics, gas sensors, and moisture and energy storage devices.”

Link to Article
Link to Coverpage

In the Media: RTP, Visão, Porto Canal, Notícias de Coimbra, Sapo, Greensavers, Planeta Algarve, Ambiente Magazine

 

In the Media: CMU Portugal project TAMI supports results for an early detection of Covid-19

Researchers at Institute of Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (INESC TEC) led a study on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning (DL), in the complementary diagnosis of COVID-19 by Chest radiography (CXR) through deep learning. The work was recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature – Scientific Reports under the scope of CMU Portugal TAMI project. 

TAMI proposes to put AI at the service of the health sector, more specifically to support clinical decisions to increase confidence in medical diagnosis. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted healthcare systems across the world and the speed of transmission made crucial a fast and early diagnosis of the disease. Chest radiography has been one of the main complementary methods for experienced radiologists to diagnose/follow COVID-19 patients, throughout the pandemic. However, the workload of qualified technicians during this period has been compromising the decision process, leading to the use of less experienced clinicians. Automated image analysis through AI techniques and deep learning can play an important role in assessing CXRs, providing a crucial second opinion for radiologists and technicians in the decision process.

Since the pandemic’s beginning, there has been a great effort from the scientific community in these ICT areas to find new approaches to support the medical diagnosis. According to Aurélio Campilho, one of the project PIs, “the goal of this research was exactly to study how Deep Learning can be placed at the service of medical diagnosis”. He adds that “we wanted to evaluate how Deep Learning could help the interpretation/reading of CXRs and support the diagnosis and follow-up of COVID-19 patients. Our study showed that the use of these algorithms in a clinical environment is much more complex than expected”. In close collaboration with ARSN (Regional Health Administration of the North) it was possible to identify the main challenges in applying these Deep Learning tools and develop new techniques that can increase the robustness of these systems.

Deep Learning is a branch of Machine Learning that provides computers with the ability to learn and perform human-like tasks, such as identifying images, recognizing speech, or making prognoses. This study evaluated the performance of a DL system in diagnosing COVID-19 by comparing it to the analysis of radiologists. One of the main conclusions is that distinguishing between COVID-19 and other pathologies on CXRs is a difficult task, even for experienced radiologists. However, it was possible to demonstrate that the performance of DL algorithms in identifying COVID-19 can be significantly improved if they learn directly from radiologists, more clearly identifying the radiological signs of COVID-19 and leading to a better diagnosis.

Although this methodology is still at an early stage, the goal is to apply this research to other pathologies identified by CXR: “Although COVID-19 has been the main focus of our research over the past two years, there are many other pathologies and findings that can be identified on CXRs. Our goal is to develop a system that can identify these automatically. A tool of this sort would be extremely useful to help radiologists, technicians, and less experienced physicians in interpreting CXRs”, concludes Aurélio Campilho.

In a broader scope, the TAMI project that is being led by First Solutions, with INESC TEC, Fraunhofer Portugal, Administração Regional de Saúde do Norte (ARS Norte) and CMU Electrical and Computer Engineering Department will develop tools to support the medical decision, based on artificial intelligence algorithms that will explain to both clinicians and researchers the diagnosis of a specific disease and its causes, focusing on cervical cancer, lung diseases and eye diseases. The project will work on a commercial, scientific, and academic platform that will provide “consumers” access to results and explanations of diagnostic orders, filtered data sets access for investigators or scientists, and a knowledge base for academic purposes.

In the Media: Expresso Online, Público, Observador, SIC Notícias Online, Sapo 24, Sapo Lifestyle, Atlas Saúde, Cidade FM Online, Smooth FM Online, Diário de Notícias da Madeira, HealthNews Online, M80 Online, Notícias ao Minuto, Rádio Comercial Online, S+ Online.

More about the project: https://cmuportugal.org/large-scale-collaborative-research-projects/tami/

 

CMU Portugal Visiting Faculty initiative resumes in 2022

CMU Portugal Visiting Faculty initiative will resume in the Summer of 2022.  A group of five faculty from Portuguese Institutions will visit Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the second semester of 2022. This initiative allows faculty from Portugal to be hosted at CMU to develop ICT research and reinforce cooperation between the two countries. The 5 candidates were selected in the 2020 Call for Visiting Faculty and Researchers. The CMU Portugal Mobility Programs planned for 2020 and 2021 were suspended due to travel and health constraints caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The five participants will now have the opportunity to spend a research period at CMU, Pittsburgh. The Visiting Faculty and Researchers Program is directed to researchers with a doctoral degree and supports an extended exposure to research and education best practices at a global level at Carnegie Mellon University. It fosters the integration of Faculty from Portuguese universities into international knowledge networks.

Since 2007, 81 faculty had the opportunity to visit CMU under the scope of CMU Portugal mobility programs. The Program has offered faculty the possibility of further developing their knowledge and skills as researchers, establish new research collaborations or reinforce exisiting ones, and experience Carnegie Mellon University culture and best practices.

This year’s edition will be attended by researchers from Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa (FCUL)/ LASIGE, Instituto Superior Técnico (IST)/ INESC-ID, Instituto Superior Técnico (IST)/ Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) and  Universidade do Minho/DEI.

The faculty will be granted a scholarship supported by the CMU Portugal Program and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).

2022 Participants Profile:

Arlindo Oliveira: Instituto Superior Técnico (IST)/ INESC-ID
Department and Host at Carnegie Mellon University: Machine Learning Department, Professor Roni Ronsenfeld
Research topic: Developing the application of deep learning to novel areas

João Ascenso:  Instituto Superior Técnico (IST)/ Instituto de Telecomunicações
Department and Host at Carnegie Mellon University: Computer Science Department, Professor Artur Dubrawski
Research Area: Exploring new visual representation, processing and coding techniques leveraged on machine learning advances and their potential multimedia application.

João Saraiva: Universidade do Minho/ Department of Industrial Electronics
Department and Host at Carnegie Mellon University: Computer Science Department, Professor Claire Le Goues
Research topic:  Defining automated techinques and tools do repair energy inefficient programs

Naercio Magaia: Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa/ LASIGE
Department and Host at Carnegie Mellon University: Computer Science Department, Professor Justine Sherry
Research topic: State consistency framework for programmable network data planes

Paulo André: Instituto Superior Técnico (IST)/ Instituto de Telecomunicações
Department and Host at Carnegie Mellon University: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor Elias Towe
Research Area: Planning of the collaborative research effort in quantum photonics and neuromorphic photonic systems