News: News

Webinar Series Startup Life | West to West | “Bridging Portugal and Silicon Valley”
Topic: “Funding for Silicon Valley newcomers”

Monday, October 31 2016

Time: 8:30am PDT (16h GMT+1)

The speaker will be Will Bunker, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor. Will is the co-founder of GrowthX and has invested in more than 150 start-ups. Will was also the founder of One-and-Only.com, the largest internet dating site in the 90s, later rebranded as Match.com.

Abstract:

This webinar will cover best fundraising strategies with a special emphasis on challenges faced by founders new to Silicon Valley. The event will be broadcast online and there will also be rooms set up in several of the leading incubators in Portugal. Check with yours if you belong to one.

Webinar Info

Registration URL:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/182153171076722435

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About the Webinar Series

This initiative will run monthly and each webinar will cover one topic relevant to startup life: from ideation to exit, through fundraising, product development, and others. The webinars will be presented by Silicon Valley experts and will always have time reserved to discuss the necessary adjustment to the Portuguese reality.

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About West to West

West to West was launched recently in Silicon Valley to create and support a thriving environment for Portuguese entrepreneurship. It’s network expands wide and deep building on over a century of Portuguese History in California and a very strong tech immigration wave in the last decade. West to West offers landing support, mentorship, networking and funding opportunities in Silicon Valley.

Feedzai, one of the first startups created in the scope of CMU Portugal, joins Citi Ventures portfolio, as the venture capital branch of Citibank has announced a “strategic investment”, of an undisclosed amount, in the Portuguese startup.

The decision of investing in the future of the AI-based fraud detection Portuguese startup is explained by Ramneek Gupta, Managing Director and co-head of Venture Investing at Citi Ventures: “As cyberattacks become increasingly sophisticated, investing in technologies that have the potential to advance security for our customers’ financial lives is a priority.”

Feedzai applies machine learning technology to large data sets to detect anomalies and highlight potential cases of fraud associated with banking and shopping. “This investment will help Feedzai continue to develop next generation security services that transcend data and business silos throughout the commerce ecosystem,” said Nuno Sebastião, CEO and co-founder of Feedzai.

Entrepreneurial Research Initiatives
The Phase II of the CMU Portugal Program emphasizes advanced education and research that can lead to significant entrepreneurial impact. The activities of the program are for the most part configured in Entrepreneurial Research Initiatives (ERIs).

ERIs are projects in science, engineering, management and policy that link both fundamental and applied research to technological innovation and economic development. This bridging is pursued by explicitly focusing on important real world problems entailing significant scientific challenges. ERIs consist in integrated activities in research, innovation, advanced education and training of human resources, with industry collaboration and emphasis on the commercialization of technology for real world impact.

ERIs seek to stimulate and promote Portuguese innovation in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as such, and as enabling technologies in nearly all application sectors, in a global context where markets, industries, resources and talent are internationally distributed. These projects seek to advance technology and engineering, develop talented innovators in Portugal and increase the competitiveness of the Portuguese ICT industry in today’s globalized economy.

Ultimately, they seek to foster a culture that integrates discovery, innovation and internationalization by acting as international engines of innovation and growth. The ERI should strategically use professional master or doctoral education programs already in place in Portuguese universities, most importantly the dual degree programs of the CMU Portugal Program.

_______ An international innovation engine is a symbiotic relationship between researchers and industry partners, embedded in international knowledge and business networks, to create new ideas and to translate them into products, processes and services. _________

Entrepreneurial Research Initiatives
2013 Call – Overview	2014 Call – Overview
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Research Opportunities more

Part of the WEConnect International, a global network of women-owned businesses Women Only: Connect to Success Trains Female Entrepreneurs in Azores
The program Connect to Success , hosted a weekend long series of workshops for female entrepreneurs in Azores, in the scope of the WEConnect International program. This initiative is supported by the American Embassy in Portugal, the Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento (FLAD) and IBM Portugal .

The workshop’s goal was to identify and address the specific hurdles the female business leaders face and promote networking in the Azorean startup ecosystem. The number of participants in this initiative impressed Kim Swayer, US ambassador and the program’s mentor, that said she was “very happy and surprised that more than 100 women participated in the Connect to Success workshops in the Azores”.

The Connect to Success program was launched in September 2016 and plans to provide the participants with many services, such as business mentoring and lower priced attorney services. As ambassador Kim Swayer explains, “I hope this program helps women to do what they want to do in two or three years.” (…) “It’s really about helping women achieve what they want in business”.

Read the coverage in Portuguese at Diário dos Açores (PDF of print version) (October 16, 2016)

All in Surf is one of the 2016 inRes teams, currently in Pittsburgh Bio Boards – Longboards for the Road
One of the 2016 CMU Portugal Program inRes teams, All In Surf, together with Bio Boards, have launched a modified skateboard inspired in surfboards and the way they behave in the water. The Portuguese weekly magazine, Notícias Magazine, interviewed Ricardo Marques for a long article detailing his journey, how the idea for the boards came about and the startup’s direction in the future.

Bio Board is a Portuguese innovation made with materials that are recycled, recyclable, reusable, and biodegradable. It is a three wheeled skateboard, that tries to imitate the handling of a surf board, for the same experience in the water and on the road.

Read the article in Portuguese at Notícias Magazine (October 9, 2016)

X hockware one of the participating teams of the 2014 edition of inRes Startup Challenge: the Eight Finalists Compete for a Spot in the Web Summit 2016
A CMU Portugal inRes team, Xhockware, is one of the finalist startups competing today for a place in the Web Summit 2016, in Lisbon. The eight selected startups will present their final pitch today, the last challenge in the competition.

“It was extremely difficult to select the eight finalists. There were at least another 30 that could have been chosen, which proves the increasing quality of the Portuguese startup ecosystem”, admitted Jason Nadal, Development and Entrepreneurship director of Microsoft Portugal.

Xhockware is a startup created in Porto, incubated at the Science and Technology Park of the Universidade do Porto, Portugal, and one of the participating teams of the 2014 edition of inRes. Xhockware’s project youbeep, is a patented new checkout system, compatible with every existing checkout, and available free to anyone with a smartphone, allowing shoppers to checkout a full shopping cart, pay and leave the store in under a minute.

Read the article in Portuguese at Observador Online (October 17, 2016)

Undergraduate Internship Program:
A Valuable, Rewarding and Unforgettable Experience
Albert Linde, Mariana Oliveira, Tiago Cardoso, and Salomé Azevedo, were the first young Portuguese researchers of the Undergraduate Internship Program, offered by the CMU Portugal Program, that went to CMU to experience an entirely different culture and to participate in state-of-the-art projects. After their return, they see it as a valuable cultural and social experience that they will remember forever.

João Claro, national director of the CMU Portugal, is positively impressed with the support and receptiveness of academia in Portugal and at CMU to this Program, as well as with the strong research experiences these young researchers are bringing to Portugal. “The students typically stay at CMU between eight to twelve weeks and are hosted by a faculty member that guides their immersion according to the work plan submitted during the application process,” João Claro explains. “I had the opportunity to read the reports of these four students, and to talk with some of them, and their feedback is enriching,” says João Claro adding that “we should look at UIP as a seed for collaboration that can flourish according to the willingness and research interests of all parties involved.”

A Learning, Social and Cultural Experience

Tiago Cardoso is a student at Faculdade de Engenharia of the Universidade do Porto (FEUP), who was at CMU between July and September, 2014. Hosted at CMU by David Garlan, Tiago Cardoso carried out research at the Institute for Software Research (ISR), on the ABLE group to help out with their research on time/fidelity trade-off models for end user compositions.

“I found the project to be very interesting and was able to fulfil the goals that I set out for myself,” the student states. “During my stay, I met other researchers at ISR, namely Bradley Schmerl, Ivan Ruchkin and Vishal Dwivedi. Working with them and with Professor David Garlan was a very valuable learning experience and I look forward to collaborating with them again in the future,” he adds.

David Garlan accepted to host Tiago Cardoso because of his research collaboration with Rui Maranhão, from Faculdade de Engenharia of the Universidade do Porto (FEUP), that began in the Fall of 2010 when Rui was at CMU, under the Faculty Exchange Program. “I have been working with Rui Maranhão for several years on NSF-funded research. Rui strongly recommended Tiago, and the topic that he was interested in fit well with my research projects.” says David Garlan. “Tiago did an excellent job,” states David Garlan emphasising “his final presentation to my research group was excellent. I think he learned a lot by being here.”

But not only did CMU leave an impression on Tiago Cardoso, but also the Pittsburgh area. “I was very impressed with the city of Pittsburgh and was glad to have the chance to see many of its attractions, as well as meeting many nice people from different cultures. For that reason, this internship was very valuable for me, not only as a learning experience, but socially and culturally as well,” he concludes.

A Way to Get New Skills

Mariana Oliveira is currently studying at Faculdade de Ciências of the Universidade do Porto (FCUP) and she was at CMU between August and October, 2014. Hosted by J. Ziko Kolter, assistant professor at CMU’s School of Computer Science, her main goal “was to develop a web platform for new materials science database.” Since she had no previous experience with web development, Mariana Oliveira says “this task was particularly valuable to me as it allowed me to obtain new skills.” The final result was a web framework for finding, parsing and managing image data, “which laid the foundations for a collaborative effort between the Computer Science and the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) departments,” she explains.

Meeting other professors and students involved in the project was also an asset, and “in the future I hope to remain involved in the work they are doing,” Mariana Oliveira reveals. According to the student, the environment at the Gates-Hillman Complex “was very stimulating, in particular the lecture I attended on ‘Watson and the Era of Cognitive Computing’ given by Guruduth S. Banavar, which especially peaked my interest.’ Overall, the “entire experience was very enriching from a cultural and social standpoint. The city of Pittsburgh has a lot to offer and it was great to explore it, while enjoying the company of wonderful people. I would definitely recommend it to anyone in my field of study,” she concludes.

Expanding the Network

Salomé Azevedo is a young research assistant at Católica-Lisbon School of Business and Economics, who went to CMU between August and October 31, 2014. Salomé Azevedo was hosted by Pedro Ferreira, from CMU, and carried out research at the Engineering and Public Policy department.

During her two-months stay, Salomé Azevedo had the opportunity to meet David Hounshell, researcher at CMU, who helped her “in the exploration of methods to search for the sources of innovation,” as well as provided her valuable feedback about “the set of validation criteria to authenticate the sources of patient innovations.”

One of the goals of Salomé Azevedo is to publish a book “that translates an investigation of patients to innovate,” she states. This young researcher, also met Doug Sicker and Erica Fuchs, researchers at CMU, that guided her to talk “to the right people, and they gave me their feedback on my work allowing me to evolve.” Salomé Azevedo also attended many seminars related to different areas such us the “Academic Conference and Memorial Event, ‘Celebrating the Work of Steven Klepper’ at Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, CMU and “A conversation with Serkan Piantino, Facebook New York” at the School of Computer Science, CMU.

A Will to Study Led to Research Outcomes

“I gave a small talk on my findings and an overview of Naiad and it’s incremental computation capabilities.” This was one of Albert Linde’s achievements during his stay at CMU which was hosted by Umut Acar, researcher at CMU. Between August and October 2014, Albert Linde, from Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCTUNL), accepted the challenge to study Naiad, “an investigation by Microsoft Research on data-parallel data flow computation, with a focus on low-latency streaming and cyclic computations.” This study led him to “get performance measures of Naiad, and a better comparative analysis with the system being built at CMU,” Albert Linde explains adding that he “also participated in a small comparative study between Spark Streaming and Naiad.”

Recently, the CMU Portugal Program announced the name of the 11 Portuguese young researchers that will benefit from the Undergraduate Internship Program (UIP).

December 2014

UIP Members: Bernardo Cardoso and João Martins “Both Bernardo and João Did an Excellent Job in Research”
The strong collaboration between researchers from Portuguese universities and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has been an enabler for young Portuguese researchers to embrace the unique opportunity to spend a two-month period at CMU. Bernardo Cardoso and João Martins, both from Faculdade de Engenharia of the Universidade do Porto (FEUP), spent a period during the 2015 spring semester at CMU.

“Both Bernardo and João were recommended by Vítor Grade Tavares, from FEUP/INESC TEC, with whom I have a collaboration, and both students have excellent academic records,” explains Xin Li, the faculty member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department at CMU who hosted these young researchers.

Xin Li is very pleased with the commitment and research work from both students. “Both Bernardo and João did an excellent job in research. Their research tasks were not trivial,” he explained adding, “They worked on hardware (FPGA) implementation for real-time image processing.” According with Xin Li “within a very short time period, they were able to fully understand the image processing algorithms and then design the appropriate hardware architecture to accelerate these algorithms for real-time processing. I am very impressed by their outcome.

“I am very confident that the research work done by Bernardo and João will have a significant long-term impact on the community,” said Xin Li explaining that “their work is part of a large project that the group is actively pursuing. Today, there is a strong need to implement computer vision algorithms in real time (e.g., for self-driving cars).”

“High Cooperation Between Students and Professors”

“My participation in this Program was very enriching, not only on a professional note, but also on a cultural and social level, because I had the opportunity to meet people from other cultures and experience the amazing city of Pittsburgh,” stated Bernardo Cardoso after returning from his internship at the Center for Silicon System Implementation (CSSI) of the ECE department, at CMU (Feb. to May, 2015; report).

Bernardo Cardoso, who is 22 years old, was encouraged to apply to the Undergraduate Internship Program by Vítor Grade Tavares, faculty member at FEUP and researcher at INESC TEC. While at CMU, Bernardo Cardoso had the opportunity to “develop a hardware implementation of the BM3D image denoising algorithm.” At the end of his stay, he is very proud to say, “The hardware module description and validation was complete.” This task involved “the functional analysis of the algorithm in order to find bottlenecks, which are more suitable to be hardware accelerated, leading to reduced execution time and power consumption,” he explained.

Before going to Pittsburgh, Bernardo Cardoso wanted to get acquainted with best practices in research, to participate in research activities within the project “Hardware architecture and design for scene recognition,” and to be in contact with other types of organization, teaching/learning at a top American university.

For Bernardo Cardoso, the working environment was very stimulating as well as the several lectures he participated in. “I had the opportunity to attend several lectures given by leading researchers on various subjects, for example, novel manufacturing techniques for integrated circuits”, the young researcher stressed.

“Experience a Different, More Dynamic Work Environment”

João Martins is very grateful for having had the opportunity to be part of a “different work and research environment”. João Martins, main goal with the internship was to participate in research activities within the project “Energy-efficient hardware implementation for compressive sensing,” and that was what he did. (Feb. to April 2015; report). During his stay at CMU, he was able “to develop and test hardware implementation of a recovery algorithm for compressive sensing measurements, especially images,” he explained.

“The development of this project went through several phases starting with a high level implementation of the algorithm using Matlab,” the young researcher stated, adding that “after this phase, an architecture for the hardware processing core was devised and implemented using the hardware description language, Verilog.”

By being part of Xin Li’s research group and taking part of its weekly meetings, opened the opportunity to “experience a different, more dynamic work environment where while each person had a different task to complete, there was an effort to help each other.” João Martins added that “the presence and input from both professors (Xin Li and Donald Thomas), also led to a better and faster development.”

Bernardo Cardoso and João Martins emphasized the different opportunities offered to the students within CMU. From job fairs to carnival, as well as other activities outside the campus. Both visited the city of Pittsburgh, which has a lot to offer, namely sports, art and natural museums.

After returning from CMU, João Martins “continued working on the optimization of the hardware developed. Having as the main focus this project, I have since then written my thesis, which allowed me to achieve my Master’s degree, and will soon start working on digital microelectronics design.” João Martins is proud to say that “given the interest on the work developed, a paper will also be written.”

On the other hand, Bernardo Cardoso finished his Master’s, and is doing research on the same areas he did his internship. “At the moment I am searching for work opportunities in Europe in the area of Digital IC Design,” he explains.

Bernardo Cardoso and João Martins were at CMU in the scope of the Undergraduate Internship Program (UIP), offered by the CMU Portugal Program, funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).

September 2015

Portuguese Undergraduates Awarded with a CMU Portugal Scholarship to do Research at CMU
The CMU Portugal Program has recently announced the name of the 11 Portuguese candidates accepted to its Undergraduate Internship Program (UIP). Launched less than a year ago, this initiative raises to 17 the number of Portuguese undergraduates that have the opportunity to benefit from an intensive eight to twelve weeks of research experiences at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

The main goal of UIP is to provide high-quality research opportunities, offering undergraduates the possibility of developing their knowledge and skills as researchers, while opening perspectives for graduate studies and career opportunities in cutting-edge fields of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

The 11 candidates accepted are:

Name	Affiliation	Host at CMU	Host Department at CMU	Sponsor in Portugal	Semester
Artur Balanuta	IST-UL	Anthony Rowe	ECE	Ricardo Lopes Pereira (IST-UL)	Spring ‘15
Bernardo Cardoso	FEUP	Xin Li	ECE	Vítor Grade Tavares (FEUP)	Spring ‘15
Guilherme Rito	FCT-UNL	Umut A. Acar	CS	Hervé Paulino (FCT-UNL)	Spring ‘15
João Martins	FEUP	Xin Li	ECE	Vítor Grade Tavares (FEUP)	Spring ‘15
João Sá Sousa	UC	Patrick Tague	ECE	João Paulo Vilela (UC)	Fall ‘15
José Fonseca	FEUP	Jeyanandh Paramesh	ECE	José Machado da Silva (FEUP)	Summer ‘15
Maria Beatriz Fonseca	IST-UL	Manuela Veloso	CS	João Paulo Costeira (IST-UL)	Spring ’15
Miguel Silva	FCUP	Frank Pfenning	CS	António Mário Florido (FCUP)	Summer ’15
Pedro Neves	ISEC	David Garlan	ISR	Jorge Bernardino (ISEC)	Spring ’15
Renato Negrinho	IST-UL	Noah A. Smith	CS	André Martins (Priberam)/ Mário Figueiredo (IST-UL)	Spring ’15
Rui Teixeira	IST-UL	Manuela Veloso	CS	Francisco Melo (IST-UL)	Spring ’15

The applications were reviewed by a panel of academics composed of João Claro (national director of the CMU Portugal Program), João Paulo Cunha (FEUP), Luís Caires (FCTUNL), Joana Mendonça (IST-UL), and Peter Steenkiste (CMU).

This unique opportunity is provided by the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program to encourage and prepare talented undergraduates to pursue careers in research in the scope of the scientific areas of the dual degree doctoral programs offered by the Program. I n the first call, the Program selected the selection of six young researchers. The reports of the first four students who have already benefited from this program are available here .

December 2014

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Undergraduate Internship Program (UIP)
The Undergraduate Internship Program, offered by the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program, is an intensive eight to twelve weeks research experience for talented undergraduates, who will have the opportunity to participate in state-of-the-art research projects, interact with prominent research teams, and be mentored by leading faculty and researchers, in a cultural immersion at Carnegie Mellon University.