Paulo Moniz became Chief information Security Officer (CISO) at EDP in late 2010. But how did cybersecurity come into this life? “I have always been, and still am, very eclectic in my interests and tastes, so, when it comes to my professional career in information technology, I have done programming, managed systems and databases, configured computer networks, among other tasks in this field”, he recalls.
In 2007, he decided to pursue an academic specialization and in 2010, he concluded the CMU Portugal Dual MSc degree in Information Security between Carnegie Mellon University and the Faculty of Sciences of Universidade de Lisboa , .
In this interview with Security Magazine, Paulo Moniz talks about his role as CISO, leadership and major challenges in cybersecurity. You can read the interview (in Portuguese).
Soummya Kar, long time CMU Portugal collaborator, has been named the Buhl Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).
Since 2011, Kar has co-advised five CMU Portugal Dual Degree Ph.D. students, three who have graduated and two who are currently enrolled in the Program. He is also the CMU PI for the Large Scale Collaborative Research Project Building Hope (Building Holistic Optimization of Prosumed Energy). In 2020 Kar began a multi-year partnership with REN (Redes Energéticas Nacionais), operator of the national electricity transmission grid and the national natural gas transportation grid in Portugal, aimed to modernize Portugal’s electric infrastructure.
Kar’s research interests include decision-making in large-scale networked systems, stochastic systems, multi-agent systems and data science, with applications in cyber-physical systems and smart energy systems. Kar is a Fellow of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), and, among other honors, won the 2016 O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award from the American Automatic Control Council in the Theory Category.
The College of Engineering plans to celebrate this honor as well as 5 other professorships at a formal ceremony in the coming months.
The CMU Portugal Program, supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), signed on April 9th, an agreement with NOVA Medical School and the Nova School of Business and Economics (Nova SBE) 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.
The signature event took place at NOVA Medical School, with the presence of Madalena Alves, FCT President; Inês Lynce, National Co-Director of the CMU Portugal Program; Pedro Oliveira, NOVA SBE Dean, and Helena Canhão, Nova Medical School Dean.
The Patient Innovation Bootcampis an acceleration program currently underway and funded by EIT Health, held in Lisbon, Barcelona, and Copenhagen. The Bootcamp aims to support patients and informal caregivers in implementing and scaling innovative solutions developed to address their health challenges, coordinated by Nova SBE and NOVA Medical School with Copenhagen Business School, IESE Business School, BioCat.
The CMU Portugal Patient Innovation Accelerator will allow Patient Innovation Bootcampparticipants to advance to an additional acceleration phase, during which they will receive support to expand and develop their businesses at the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. Collaborating with the CMU Portugal Program, the participants will engage in various activities, including workshops, product development support, mentoring, networking, investor presentations, expansion into the American market, corporate partnerships, and sustainability strategies. The goal is further to accelerate the growth of startups in the ecosystem, focusing on applying expertise in artificial intelligence.
The Patient Innovation Platform (PI) was launched in 2014 as an outcome of CMU Portugal project TEIPL. The online platform allows patients and caregivers around the world connect to share the solutions they developed themselves or had the help from collaborators to cope with a health-related problem.
“The CMU Portugal Program has a strong tradition of supporting entrepreneurial teams aiming to commercialize products or services in the ICT field. On the other hand, the Patient Innovation platform resulted from one of the partnership-supported projects. It is now a great pleasure to see these two features of the Program coming together to give rise to the CMU Portugal Patient Innovation Accelerator. This health-focused acceleration program will certainly be another successful initiative” shares Inês Lynce, co-director of the CMU Portugal Program.
Every year Carnegie Mellon University’s Pittsburgh campus celebrates Graduate and Professional Student Appreciation week with a variety of events for graduate students. To recognize our students, the CMU Portugal Program joined the celebrations by hosting an Iced Coffee Bar and desserts on Wednesday April 3rd in Scott Hall. Attendees included Dual Degree Ph.D. students, Affiliated Ph.D. students as well as some friends of the program. Attending departments included Electrical Computer Engineering, Engineering and Public Policy, Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, and Software & Societal Systems.
Graduate and Professional Student Appreciation Week was launched in 1993 by student members of the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS). Celebrated nationally each year during the first week of April, the event seeks to recognize and celebrate the contributions, impact, and value of graduate and professional students on campuses throughout the United States.
The CMU Portugal Program hosted on March 26th an Info Session to guide potential candidates to apply to the Open Call for Mobility Programs “Visiting Students”and “Visiting Faculty & Researchers”.To date, the CMU Portugal Program has supported 59 Visiting Students and 89 Faculty and Researchers visits to Carnegie Mellon University.
The Info Session was addressed to all researchers and students who want to participate in these initiatives to spend a visiting research period at CMU, and guiding them through the requirements to submit a successful application.
The Info Session, held via Zoom, was moderated by the Program’s Executive Director in Portugal, Sílvia Castro, and started with a Welcome Note by CMU Portugal National Co-Director Inês Lynce. According to Lynce, the Mobility initiatives provide “a life-changing experience”, encouraging participating students and researchers to apply and benefit from this great opportunity to be immersed in one of the top ICT universities in the world.
João Fumega, CMU Portugal’s Education Officer, presented an overview of the CMU Portugal Mobility initiatives, focusing on the application process and main requirements. Megan Berty, CMU Portugal Associate Director at CMU, spoke next on the CMU requirements and the support available by the Coordination office in Pittsburgh.
Next, André Duarte, Master alum at Técnico, who was part of the Visiting Students initiative in 2023, shared his experience with the online participants. He was considering pursuing a Ph.D. and didn’t look back after being part of this initiative, being hosted by the Language Technologies Institute, by Professor Lei Li. Duarte’s research topic is exploring retrieval-based question answering for knowledge extraction from legal text / scientific articles and sustainable deployment of large language models.
Alexandra Mendes is currently Assistant Researcher at School of Engineering (University of Porto). In 2023, as Visiting Faculty and Researcher, Alexandra was hosted by the Department of Software and Societal Systems by Professor Nicolas Christin. Mendes’ research area is Usable Security, Blockchain usability in security software.
Both spoke highly of the experience at CMU, each one talking about the straightforward and simple application processes, advising potential applicants to take care of logistics as soon as possible, especially applying for a visa and housing.
Finally, to end the session, there was a 15-minute Q&A, which allowed the participants to ask questions of the panelists.
The CMU Portugal Program also has an Open Call forAffiliated Ph.D. Programsuntil May 2nd, 2024. This Call will support up to 12 Ph.D. Candidates to study in Portugal, hosted by a Portuguese University, with up to one year conducting a visiting research period at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
For further questions about all our initiatives, please visit our website, FAQ Page, or contact us at apply@cmuportugal.org.
On March 16th, 2024, Carnegie Mellon University former President, Jared Cohon, passed away at the age of 76.
Serving as CMU President from 1997 to 2013, Cohon played a pivotal role in launching the CMU Portugal partnership. In October 2006, Cohon signed the original agreement and, during the first seven years of the Program, made frequent visits to Portugal, demonstrating his support for this international collaboration. In 2011, when the first phase concluded, he was one of the main advocates for the renewal of the partnership.
“Jerry was an enthusiastic supporter of the CMU Portugal Program since the very beginning, traveled close to a dozen times to Portugal, and during his 7 years on our Board never failed to attend all our biannual meetings. Over the years, he interacted with many rectors, deans, and faculty from Portuguese universities, as well as our students and corporate sponsors. We were fortunate to have Jerry’s counsel during our formative years and our partnership is much stronger and strategic because of that.”, shares José M.F. Moura, CMU Portugal Director at CMU.
Carnegie Mellon University President Farnam Jahanian issued a statementon March 16th, extending his condolences on Cohon’s death: “This is a devastating loss for our CMU community, for Pittsburgh and the nation. Jerry Cohon’s extraordinary and humble leadership, brilliant mind, unyielding energy and unimpeachable integrity are the hallmarks of a legacy that will continue to impact generations to come—both here in the region as well as far beyond. I was honored to have called him a colleague, mentor and friend and am deeply grateful for his wise counsel over the years, and for the many ways he served the CMU community. We extend our deepest condolences to his beloved family and many friends during this difficult time.”
Jared Cohon academic journey started at Johns Hopkins, where he held administrative positions from 1973 to 1992. He later assumed the position of dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale until 1997, when he assumed the Presidency of Carnegie Male University until 2013. In 2014 and 2015, he co-chaired the Commission to Review and Evaluate the National Energy Laboratories, followed by his chairmanship of the National Academies Board on Energy and Environment Systems from 2016 to 2022.
In honor of Jared Cohon’s memory, the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program community pays tribute to CMU President Emeritus extraordinary legacy.
Isabel Trancoso was recognized as the 2024 recipient of the International Speech Communication Association’s (ISCA) Medal for Scientific Achievement for her “pioneering contributions to speech coding and resources for the Portuguese language, and sustained service to the speech community.”
Dr. Alex Acero Senior Director and Distinguished Engineer and Siri Chief Scientist at Apple shared: “The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA), the largest professional association of speech scientists and engineers, awarded Prof. Isabel Trancoso the 2024 ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement for her pioneering contributions to speech coding, speech resources for the Portuguese language, and sustained service to ISCA and the speech community at large. The ISCA Medal, established in 1989, is ISCA’s highest honor and acknowledges extraordinary contributions to the field of speech communication, science and technology.” Dr. Acero is a leading expert on speech recognition, speech synthesis, language understanding, and dialog for Siri, Apple’s personal assistant for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Carplay, Macintosh, and HomePod.
This is Isabel Trancoso’s second distinction by ISCA, following her Special Service Medal in 2020 for her ‘sustained service for ISCA and the Speech Communication community in terms of leadership, outreach, and society recognition’. Currently a faculty member at CMU Portugal and a researcher at Técnico I INESC ID, Isabel Trancoso becomes the 30th honoree of this prestigious Medal for Scientific Achievement and the first Portuguese awardee.
Reflecting on her achievements, Isabel Trancoso expressed her gratitude, acknowledging the collaborative efforts of her colleagues and friends: “Some years ago, I received the ISCA Special Service Medal. After 16 years in the Boards of ESCA (the previous European Speech Communication Association) and ISCA, including being President of the association, I felt very grateful for the recognition of my efforts to build this community. But I never expected to get the ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement. Over the years I have successfully nominated many colleagues for this Medal and feel very humble. Whatever I have accomplished, I had a lot of help from colleagues and friends. It is a huge honor to be shared with many.”
Isabel Trancoso is a long-time CMU Portugal collaborator. She was recently PI of CMU Portugal Exploratory Project Privadia and researcher under the Large Scale Project MAIA, working closely with teams at Carnegie Mellon University. She is currently the supervisor of CMU Portugal Ph.D. student John Mendonça, and previously of Ph.D. students Wang Ling and Maria Correia.
The ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement is an annual distinction, established in 1989 that honors each year an individual who has made extraordinary contributions to the field of speech communication science and technology. The Award Ceremony is scheduled to take place at the Interspeech 2024 Conference in Kos, Greece between September 1-5, 2024.
Isabel Trancoso is a retired full professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, former President of the Scientific Council of INESC ID and founder of INESC ID Human Language Technologies Group. She has been a long-lasting collaborator of the CMU Portugal Program, as a project PI and researcher under CMU Portugal Exploratory research Project Privadia and Large Scale Project MAIA and as the supervisor of CMU Portugal Ph.D. students.
Isabel Trancoso served as president of ISCA between 2007 and 2011, and was appointed as a Fellow in 2014. She was recently nominated as the IEEE Fellow Committee Chair 2024.
AEROS-MH-1, the first satellite built and operated from Portugal for ocean observation, was launched on March 4th, 2024, from Space-X base in California, USA. MH-1 was born from the collaboration of 12 national entities, condensed into a final product coordinated by two CMU Portugal Industry affiliates: CEiiA – Engineering and Development Center, which handled the hardware components, and Thales Edisoft Portugal, in the software and programming department, with an investment of €2.8 million funded by PT2020.
The name MH-1 honors Manuel Heitor, Portugal’s Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education between 2015-2022 and Portuguese Secretary of State of Science, Technology and Higher Education between 2005-2011. Heitor has been a longtime supporter of international partnerships, including the CMU Portugal Program, and of all its initiatives, strengthening the relationship between Carnegie Mellon and the Portuguese scientific and innovation ecosystem throughout the years.
“It was a surprise, but more than my name, we must look into the future. The reinforcement and investment in the international partnerships with American universities, which included the launch five years ago of a space strategy, have now striking results. But this is a path that started way back in 1999, with Portugal’s participation in the European Space Agency, the creation of a program for space in Ciência Viva, and the establishment of CEiia”,shared Manuel Heitor in an interview to Público.
Credits: CEiiA
The Aeros project is led by two CMU Portugal Industrial Affiliated partners, Thales Edisoft Portugal and CEiiA, and counted with the collaboration of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology through the MIT Portugal program. The consortium includes 12 other Institutions, namely the companies SpinWorks and Dstelecom and the Universities of Minho, Porto and Algarve, Instituto Superior Técnico (Técnico), CoLab + Atlântico, the Okeanos and the Air Centre.
CEiiA is the owner of the satellite and was responsible for developing the structure and the complete integration of the satellite, including qualification tests and logistics, from its conception until its launch. The operation of MH-1 is ensured by GEOSAT, a subsidiary of the Center and Omnideia.
According to Rui Magalhães, director of the CEiiA Space unit in an interview with RTP, “one of the main challenges of the Aeros project, which in June was still a prototype, was to transform it into a flying space system. We set the goal of developing, designing, integrating, defining all logistics and monitoring the entire launch logistics, in a truly national partnership.”
The MH-1 is equipped with a Hyperspectral camera from Spinworks and communications from Dstelecom. Thales was responsible for the software, ground station, the first checks after launch and the first cycle of operation.
Thales – Edisoft
“We have developed a series of technologies, from payloads and software to the satellite itself, designing the entire system architecture and providing additional support. Throughout this time, we have overcome numerous obstacles, made possible only through teamwork, mutual support, and a commitment to excellence. Now, we have reached a moment like this, where we have an integrated, tested satellite ready for launch, along with all the infrastructure and operational support in place to assist the satellite in orbit.”, shared José Freitas, Aerospace & Security Director at Thales Edisoft in his interview to RTP.
Opencosmos played an important role in the logistics supporting the launch. It is also worth highlighting the importance of ANACOM in the satellite licensing process.
The Aeros project represents a step into a much broader strategy in the Space area, involving the development of the first family of high and very high-resolution satellites already in progress in Portugal. This new generation of satellites will replace the current satellites operated by Geosat (which, alongside Airbus, is one of the two operators of very high-resolution satellites in Europe) and are part of Portugal’s participation in the Atlantic Constellation.
According to Manuel Heitor’s statement in Público, it is crucial to invest future efforts in the space sector: “Portugal still invests very little in space. This satellite will last for three years and is an experimental satellite, so the important thing is to see MH-2, MH-3… MH represents for me multiple hackathons, meaning multiple challenges. Testing new challenges, new technologies. Each new scientific knowledge generated in the space sector creates more jobs. And what has been done here over the years, has created hundreds of new jobs for young people in Portugal. Space is a new science that creates jobs and, therefore, improves the quality of all.”
Applications are now open for the 2024 CMU Portugal Mobility Initiatives Visiting Faculty & ResearchersandVisiting Students aimed for research periods at Carnegie Mellon University within 2024. The application deadline for both calls – launched under the scope of the CMU Portugal Program with the support of Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) – is April 15th, 2024, with visits to be completed by December 31st, 2024.
Visiting Faculty & Researchers Program
The CMU Portugal Visiting Faculty & Researchers Program will support up to 8 grantees to spend between 2 weeks to 2 months collaborating 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 Initiative builds on the success of the Faculty Exchange Program, launched in 2007. Currently, CMU Portugal has supported Up until 2023, 89 Visits have taken place under the CMU Portugal Program.
The CMU Portugal Visiting Students Program will support up to 10 master’s students or masters who have been awarded a degree in the last 5 years in Portugal and in ICT-related areas to spend 2 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 citizens or foreign citizens with permanent residence in Portugal.
The Visiting Students Initiative builds on the success of the Undergraduate Internship Program initiated in 2014 and has already hosted 59 student Visits to CMU.
Paulo Moniz became Chief information Security Officer (CISO) at EDP in late 2010. But how did cybersecurity come into this life? “I have always been, and still am, very eclectic in my interests and tastes, so, when it comes to my professional career in information technology, I have done programming, managed systems and databases, configured computer networks, among other tasks in this field”, he recalls.
