News: Success Stories

Professional Master of Human and Computer Interaction and Entertainment Technology
Capstone Projects Final Presentation
Date: December 18th, 2014

Venue: Reitoria da Universidade da Madeira, Colégio dos Jesuítas – Rua dos Ferreiros

Agenda

14:30~14:45 Official opening by

Nuno Jardim Nunes, President of M-ITI
José Carmo, Rector of University of Madeira* TBC Jaime Freitas, Regional Secretary for Education* TBC @ Auditório Poente

14:45~14:50 2 minutes madness Team Firecrest

Team Frontier Team Spark

14:50~15:00 Pause

MET Interdisciplinary Project

15:00~15:30 Team Firecrest (Luís Ferreira, Paulo Bala, Rui Trindade, Rui Rela, Sandra Câmara) – Madeira Civil Protection (Protecção Civil da Madeira)

Abstract: Given the recent incidents that happened at the Levadas and walks, we intend to raise awareness of the tourists and locals about the different possible dangers and safety precautions, in order to make them prevent and better respond to said situations in the Levadas. To accomplish this, we created a small campaign composed of an animated short, interactive video, website and pamphlets.

15:30~16:00 Pause for Coffee Break and Demo Session @ Galeria Ala Poente Sul @ Auditório Poente

MHCI Capstone Projects

16:00~16:30 Team Frontier (Chrys Francisco (Filipinas),Maria Cabral (PT), Som Chakravarty (India) – Outsystems

Abstract: Team Frontier is designing a modern enterprise solution for OutSystems, with the goal of enabling business professionals to creatively solve their problems by quickly creating desktop and mobile applications without programming.

16:30~17:00 Team Spark (André Aguiar (PT), Alejandro Machado (Venezuela), Trixy Basu (Saudi Arabia),Rui Marçalo (PT) – WoW! Systems

Abstract: Wow!Systems is a creative interactive multimedia agency and software house based in Funchal. They approached the Masters of Human Computer Interaction students to develop a project that focuses on promoting mental well-being through today’s technologies. Team Spark will present “Spark”, an application designed to create a safe sharing community, where users are challenged to complete daily tasks that inspire them to go out of their comfort zones and disrupt their daily routines.

17:00~17:30 Madeira D’Honra @ Garden

*TBC – To be confirmed

Veniam Raises $4.9 Million Series A Funding to Accelerate Deployment of Connected Vehicles and Cities

[l-r] Susana Sargento and João Barros

Veniam’Works, led by two Portuguese entrepreneurs, recently announced a $4.9 million Series A funding led by True Ventures, with participation from Union Square Ventures, Cane Investments and private investors. Veniam is the leading global innovator of true citywide WiFi networks of connected vehicles that expand wireless coverage and enable the Internet of Things. The Series A funding will be used to grow the company’s Mountain View office and accelerate deployment of vehicular networks in U.S. cities.

“Building on the fantastic success we’ve had in Porto, Portugal, this funding will allow us to expand rapidly in the U.S. with significant momentum,” said João Barros, CEO and founder of Veniam, who is former national director of the CMU Portugal Program and faculty member at Faculdade de Engenharia of Universidade do Porto. “The interest in our technology has been overwhelming and we feel confident that large-scale vehicular networks, enabled by our proprietary technology, will be the foundation for a faster expansion of the Internet of Things in cities and industrial environments.”

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Veniam has built and deployed the largest vehicular network in the world, with more than 600 connected vehicles currently operating in Porto, Portugal. By turning vehicles into WiFi hotspots, Veniam is the first to deliver ubiquitous, reliable WiFi accessibility to citizens and wireless machines across sprawling cities. Right now in Porto 73 percent of bus riders with mobile devices – 55,000 monthly – are using Veniam’s free WiFi, and across the vehicular network three terabytes of data are being transmitted monthly, collectively offloading 50 percent of traffic from cellular networks in the busiest areas. Veniam’s technology is also being deployed in controlled spaces, like ports and container terminals, to deliver improved wireless coverage, increased security, two-way communication and new real–time data.

“Much has been said about the Internet of Things in the past decade, but we have seen little significant movement in the space,” said Om Malik, Partner at True Ventures. “Veniam’s technology will make it possible for cities to provide the bandwidth necessary for devices to connect to the Internet and each other.”

Leveraging the 1 billion vehicles around the globe, the company’s proprietary vehicular network technology connects infrastructure, people and things to the Internet and to each other. The ability for citizens, their devices and anything with a sensor to efficiently and cost effectively connect is unprecedented and will bring to the cloud massive sets of new physical data that shed light into the inner-workings of urban settings. This new data will usher in smarter cities, connect more people to the environments through which they move, improving the quality of life and enabling myriad socioeconomic benefits that to-date have only been conceptualized in theory.

Veniam’s hardware and software solutions deliver the networking fabric for the Internet of Moving Things, establishing a platform for a whole new set of apps and products that people use every day. Veniam-connected cities offer WiFi in public transport and use new large-scale data sets to address environmental concerns, respond to real-time public transportation needs, adjust waste collection routes dynamically, and support a host of yet to be imagined solutions for rising urban challenges.

About Veniam

Veniam is based in Mountain View, California and has an office in Porto. Together with Instituto de Telecomunicações, Universidade de Aveiro, Universidade do Porto and industry partners, Veniam secured research grants to sustain its work until 2016 from the European Commission and the Portuguese government. Currently, the largest vehicular network in the world is in operation in Porto, Portugal.

Source: Veniam’Works Press Release

December 2014

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Veniam’Works Makes Buses Wi-Fi Hotspots more

Faculty Exchange Program
A First Step Towards Strong and Continuous Cooperation

Between June and September 2014, Vera Miguéis, faculty member at Faculdade de Engenharia of the Universidade do Porto (FEUP) , was at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) as part of the Faculty Exchange Program offered by the CMU Portugal Program. Her objective was two-fold, focusing both on research and education. According to Vera Miguéis, this visit constitutes a first step for identifying similar research interests and for strengthening the cooperation with CMU faculty.

Hosted by Alan Montgomery , associate professor at Tepper School of Business, Vera Miguéis started off by working on a research project where the goal was to develop a model to estimate the frequency and the quantity of each product category found in customers’ shopping carts. “For that, we analyzed data provided by a company that was used as case study. The model developed should encompass the effect of e-mail communications by considering the association between the categories included in the communications and the products available in the online shop,” Vera Miguéis explains. A topic model should be used to identify a small set of dimensions that summarizes the information contained in the full corpus of terms created through the Internet search of the products included in the e-mail communications. “Afterwards we studied the econometric models and techniques used to address this type of problem, and used text mining techniques to extract the topics underlying sets of unstructured data. The next stage consisted of defining the model to estimate the quantities purchased,” she adds.

According to Vera Miguéis, the results revealed that despite the potential of the model specified, the data available do not make it possible to prove that the model was effective. In fact, “the data represent only one month of transactions, and that was a poor sample to support the study. For that reason, the researchers are now trying to collect further data that can be used to empirically validate the approach,” Vera Miguéis explains.

While at CMU, this faculty member from FEUP worked with Robert Blattberg , the Timothy W. McGuire Distinguished Service Professor of Marketing at Tepper School of Business. Robert Blattberg also runs the Center for Marketing Information and Technology (CMTI), which works to bring together marketers to discuss new innovations in the marketing technology field and to predict their impact in the future marketplace. “Because we have similar research interests, we decided to develop a project where the goal is to use text mining in a marketing context. More specifically, the idea is to identify and distinguish customer feelings and attitudes towards different stores belonging to a chain of supermarkets using social media,” she describes. At this stage, the researchers are establishing contacts in order to collect relevant social media data to be used in the empirical validation of the methodology.

During the four-month stay, Vera Miguéis also attended several seminars and was allowed to visit different schools and experience their environment. “This allowed me to get some insights about the pedagogical practices and methods used at CMU. For me, this was a very good experience both in terms of research and education, and I think that in the future I will revise some elements of my teaching method based on that particular experience,” she stresses. And what does the future hold? “I hope that in the future I can go back to CMU for short term visits to conduct some research.”

November 2014

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The Faculty Exchange Program is offered by the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program and it allows academics from Portuguese universities to spend at least one term working in research and education at Carnegie Mellon, experiencing the culture of a top university in the United States. Carnegie Mellon professors are also given the opportunity to spend time in Portugal to engage in teaching and research activities with local higher education institutions and research labs.

Researchers Develop Energy Efficiency System for Datacenters

Through a research project carried out in the scope of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program, a unique and unprecedented technology that improves the operational performance of large-scale datacenters, making them more energy-efficient and secure, has been developed. The new system was recently deployed in the datacenter of Portugal Telecom in Picoas, Lisbon, Portugal. In the near future, a second system will be implemented in one of the largest datacenters in Europe, which is being built in Covilhã, Portugal. [Eduardo Tovar, the Portuguese principal investigator of the SENODs project and the coordinator of CISTER]

The project SENODs – Sustainable Energy-Optimized Datacenters started in 2010 with the aim of contributing to address some of the critical issues associated with the growing demand for datacenters, facilities that house server infrastructures for search engines, mail servers, e-commerce, data warehousing, and other cloud computing functions from different companies. Datacenters are vital infrastructures that face enormous challenges, such as energy costs, a negative impact on the environment, cooling management, and operational complexity, among others

In order to tackle the challenges created by virtual and physical energy and by the cooling and operational needs of large scale datacenters, the researchers at INESC TEC’s Research Centre in Real-Time and Embedded Computing Systems (CISTER) started working on an integrated solution that constitutes an “advance of the state of the art and of the methodologies in this research area,” highlighted Eduardo Tovar, the project’s Portuguese principal investigator and the coordinator of CISTER.

Temperature is one of the major concerns of companies that operate large-scale datacenters. Excessive cooling can result in substantial costs due to waste, while inadequate cooling can lead to hardware errors that drive the performance of a datacenter to an unacceptably low level. The way the research team at CISTER is dealing with this question is completely different from what has been done before. “Previous technology, which uses thermal cameras to send information on heat, is not the most appropriate,” Eduardo Tovar observed.

“We are developing pervasive sensor networking with high resolution that is able to obtain information on physical quantities, such as humidity, temperature, and pressure at different points in the datacenter,” explained Eduardo Tovar. With this information, it is easier to keep a datacenter operating and efficiently regulating temperature. “It is like having a computer network with thousands of small computer nodes – which is what we call an embedded network – to obtain a precise measurement of how much energy is consumed by each server,” explained Nuno Pereira, a researcher who is bridging the project with Portugal Telecom. “An integrated toolset that couples physical and cyber information will lead to significantly better thermal models,” the researcher concluded.

[Nuno Pereira, researcher at CISTER]

The Project has Made Important Achievements

Some researchers involved in the project received a Best Paper Award for a paper submitted on this subject to the 7th International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems, and Applications (WASA 2012), which took place in August of last year in China. Entitled “Building a Microscope for the DataCenter” ( link: http://tinyurl.com/ctlh9ym ), the paper, written by Nuno Pereira, Stefano Tenina (also from CISTER), and Eduardo Tovar, describes a data collection and distribution architecture that makes it possible to gather the physical parameters of a large datacenter using measurement sensors. The data obtained can present a very high temporal and spatial resolution. The paper was an important achievement for the researchers since it confirms that this technological advance is important to the scientific community.

Along with the sensor networking for monitoring the temperature of the servers in the datacenters, Eduardo Tovar’s research team is designing a smartphone interface, which will make it possible to remotely monitor the datacenters using a mobile phone or similar equipment. “The software will provide information on alarms, fires, high temperatures—in short, the thermal behavior of the datacenter,” said Eduardo Tovar. This is part of the human-computer interaction research that CISTER is conducting where the aim is to promote an open-ended dialog between the user and the computer, providing a good user experience.

The Technology will Be Instal led in One of Europe’s Biggest Datacenters

PT is deeply involved in the project, playing a major role in promoting technological advances by constantly elevating the challenges. The technology is now installed in one of the company’s datacenters in Picoas, Lisbon, for testing prior to being installed in Covilhã, where PT is building one of the biggest datacenters in Europe. The Picoas datacenter has around 2000 square meters, one third of the size of the datacenter in Covilhã, and each of its 15 racks contains about 40 servers. With a total area of 75,500 square meters, the infrastructure in Covilhã is expected to save at least 15 per cent in energy consumption, reducing costs in the order of millions of euros, and avoiding thousands of tons of CO2 emissions.

On the other side of the Atlantic, a team of researchers at CMU headed by Raj Rajkumar is also contributing to this research project, as well as Vikram Gupta, a dual degree doctoral student who establishes a bridge between ISEP, Faculdade de Engenharia of the Universidade do Porto and CMU. In Portugal the team includes also João Loureiro, Ricardo Severino, Bruno Saraiva, and Filipe Pacheco from ISEP, and Luis Almeida from the Faculdade de Engenharia of the Universidade do Porto (FEUP), among others. This project is carried out in the scope of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program, funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.

Having completed all major tasks, and with the project to be concluded in a few months, the researchers are already thinking about future projects and the possible commercialization of this technology. “There is a potential proposal for an entrepreneurship project on smart cities,” said Eduardo Tovar. The ENCOURAGE project, which aims at developing embedded intelligence and integration technologies to directly optimize energy use in buildings and enable active participation in the future environment of smart grids, could be the next step.

April 2013

The Role Of Mathematics in the CMU Portugal Program

Mathematics is a science that studies patterns and structures, and it is about performing logical analyses, deductions and calculations within those patterns and structures. The notion of ‘computing’ alone would not have made sense without Mathematics, and it was the analysis of mathematical methods by mathematicians, philosophers, logicians and engineers that led to the concept of ‘programmable computers.’

In Portugal, José Miguel Urbano , full professor at the Universidade de Coimbra, has recently taken on the challenge of leading the Mathematics area in the CMU Portugal Program, succeeding to Diogo Gomes , professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico of the Universidade de Lisboa (IST-UL) .

One Plus One Equals Many

“I see Mathematics as an area on its own within the CMU Portugal Program,” states José Miguel Urbano, “but for me the best thing about the Program is that it strengthened the relations between mathematicians in Portugal and at CMU.” According to the researcher, “that has brought additional notoriety to the area and has enabled a number of collaborations with top mathematicians at CMU, and that is outstanding.”

“We mathematicians have always had some problems finding applications for our work because we have a tradition of fundamental research as opposed to applied research,” the researcher explains. “This happens because mathematical applications are not immediate.” But did you know that the mathematics of error-correcting codes is applied to CD players and to computers, or that the pictures from distant planets sent by Voyager would not have their crispness and quality without Mathematics?

“We have been doing a great effort to change this tradition of uncooperativeness. In the UT Austin Portugal Program, for instance, we have been applying our work in the medical imaging area. So it’s possible and I think we can go down that road with the CMU Portugal Program as well,” he states.

An Opportunity to Get the Work Out There

“We have three ongoing projects within the CMU Portugal Program, one of them in financial mathematics. Basically, researchers involved in these projects have been producing research papers,” he explains. But more than that, the fact that people, professors, students, and post-docs have the opportunity to spend some time at CMU, through the Faculty Exchange and the dual degree programs, “is a way of getting collaborations going and of getting the work out there,” he adds.

Rita Ferreira, advised by Irene Fonseca (CMU) and Luísa Mascarenhas (Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa – FCT-UNL), and Robert Simione, advised by Diogo Gomes (IST-UL) and Dejan Slepcev (CMU), are the two alumni of the dual degree Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics. “I think that while some people view programs like CMU Portugal with some doubt and keep their distance, others see them as an opportunity,” the professor explains, adding that “I think we have been collaborating at the same level, although we don’t have infrastructures as developed as American universities do.”

Post-docs have also been an important way to foster and strengthen collaborations in Mathematics between Portuguese universities and CMU. The post-doc Marco Morandotti, mentored by José Matias (IST-UL) and Irene Fonseca (CMU), started his post-doc at CMU and then came to Portugal, in the scope of the research project “Thin Structures, Homogenization, and Multiphase Problems,” carried out under the CMU Portugal Program. While in Portugal, Marco had the opportunity to teach Recitations for the course “Complex Analysis and Differential Equations,” and was involved on the organization of the Workshop“Trends in Non-Linear Analysis,” at IST-UL, among other research activities.

The Program provides access to a world-renowned university, it is an opportunity to leverage the science made in Portugal. According to José Miguel Urbano, “those who have had the opportunity to participate in the CMU Portugal Program brought a lot of notoriety to their research, and even the conferences that we organized together brought more attention to these researchers and their work. Without the CMU Portugal Program, this would not have been possible.”

The Next Step for the Future

The next step now is promoting projects involving both mathematicians and scientists from other areas. “Although mathematicians find it hard to collaborate with other scientists sometimes, that’s something we would like to work on in the future,” he adds. Because there has been a shift in the Program’s goals with the new phase, “now we want to try to identify potential collaborations and projects to which mathematicians can provide some relevant input and contributions,” he concludes.

September 2014

Projects approved in the Call 2009 in Applications of Mathematics Thematic Areas, in the framework of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program and UT Austin-Portugal Degenerate Elliptic and Parabolic Equations and its Applications to Front Propagation more Diogo Gomes (IST/UL) and Dejan Slepcev, David Kinderlehrer (CMU) SANAF: Stochastic Analysis and Numerical Approximations in Mathematical Finance more Cláudia Philippart (IST/UL) and Dmitrry Kramkov (CMU) Thin Structures, Homogenization and Multi Phase Problems more Luísa Mascarenhas (FCT/UNL) and Giovani Leoni, Irene Fonseca (CMU)

Related Articles:

Trends in Non-Linear Analysis in Discussion
Irene Fonseca Receives Highest Faculty Distinction at Carnegie Mellon
Robert Simione Successfully Defended his Ph.D. Dissertation
Rita Ferreira personal webpage

CMU Portugal Program Strengthens Scientific Team
Joana Mendonça (Universidade de Lisboa), João Paulo Costeira (Universidade de Lisboa), João Paulo Cunha (Universidade do Porto), José Miguel Urbano (Universidade de Coimbra), and Paulo Marques (Feedzai) are the new scientific directors of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program, joining the team composed by Luís Caires (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Nuno Nunes (Universidade da Madeira) and Peter Steenkiste (Carnegie Mellon University). The Program’s Board of Directors made the appointment on June 2014.

João Claro and José M.F. Moura, directors of the Program in Portugal and at CMU, respectively, are confident that expanding the scientific team will help “strengthen and advance the CMU Portugal Program.”

	Joana Mendonça is a researcher at the Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research (IN+/IST-UL), a senior researcher at International Risk Governance Council (IRGC), and the Portuguese representative on the Steering Group on Human Resources and Mobility (SGHRM) working group for the Directorate General for Research. Joana is the co-principal investigator of the Entrepreneurial Research Initiative (ERI) “Innovation Dynamics in Aeronautics and Embraer in Évora.”
	João Paulo Costeira has been with the Program since its beginning, as co-director of the dual degree Ph.D. program in Electrical and Computer Engineering and co-advisor of several doctoral students. João Paulo is associate professor at IST-UL, and a researcher at ISR-Associate Laboratory.
	João Paulo Cunha was the co-principal investigator of the Vital Responder project, and more recently was awarded a grant for the ERI “VR2Market: Towards a Mobile Wearable Health Surveillance Monitoring Product for First Response and other Hazardous Professions”, both funded through the CMU Portugal Program. João Paulo is associate professor with “agregação” at FEUP, a researcher at INESC TEC, and the co-founder of Biodevices, a spin-off of IEETA/UA.
	José Miguel Urbano is a full professor in the Mathematics department of the Universidade de Coimbra, a member of the National Council for Science and Technology, of the Scientific Council for the Exact Sciences and Engineering of FCT, and of the Steering Committee of the Gulbenkian Program “Novos Talentos em Matemática”.
	Paulo Marques is a co-founder and CTO of Feedzai, a company specialized in applying machine learning and big-data techniques for fraud prevention. Before Feedzai, Paulo was the Portuguese director of the dual degree Professional Masters in Software Engineering, between the Universidade de Coimbra and CMU, and an assistant professor at the Universidade de Coimbra.

August 2014

M-ITI Appoints New ERAChair in Human-Computer Interaction and Design Innovation

Christopher Csikszentmihályi is the new ERAChair in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Design Innovation at the M-ITI – HCI Research Institute in Madeira, an Institute created in the scope of the CMU Portugal Program, funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia.

Nuno Nunes, president of the board of M-ITI, explained that Christopher Csikszentmihályi was chosen for his “broad experience in research, teaching and in creating meaningful partnerships with non-profits and industry,” adding: “Chris is a great leader that could leverage our positioning between Europe and the Americas,” which will be key to pursuing M-ITI’s strategic development plan to become a research center of excellence in HCI and design. “Chris will also open new opportunities to research that could be conducted within LARSyS [national associate laboratory in Robotics and Systems in Engineering and Science]. Our strong engineering basis benefits a lot from the innovative ideas coming from art and design innovation that people like Chris are capable of providing,” stated João Sentieiro, director of LARSyS.

Prior to joining Madeira-ITI, Christopher Csikszentmihalyi taught at different colleges, universities and institutes, including Parsons The New School for Design, the University of California in San Diego, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Turku University. He cofounded and directed the MIT Center for Future Civic Media (C4), which is dedicated to developing technologies that strengthen communities. He also founded the MIT Media Lab’s Computing Culture group, which works to create unique media technologies for cultural and political applications. He was a Rockefeller New Media Fellow in 2005, and a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2007-2008.

The Madeira-ITI is a not-for-profit innovation institute of the Universidade da Madeira, founded by this university, by the Madeira Tecnopolo and by Carnegie Mellon University, as an honorary partner. Since its creation, in 2009, the Madeira-ITI has been carrying out its mission of expanding the understanding of human experience and interactive technologies through basic and applied research that is innovative and responsive to manifest real-world needs using multi-disciplinary collaboration drawing on varied perspectives.
The ERA Chairs initiative

The ERAChairs initiative aims at helping universities and other eligible organizations to achieve the level of research excellence required to be competitive at an international level. Operating with €12 million provided by the current Seventh Framework Program for Research (2007-2013), the pilot stage of ERA Chairs will test the concept. If successful, the Commission will fund a larger number of ERA Chairs, depending on the budget of the future Framework Program Horizon 2020 (2014-2020).

September 2014

Veniam’Works Makes Buses Wi-Fi Hotspots

As the bus starts and the passengers hop on, they immediately grab their smartphones or tablets. But now passengers don’t have to wait until the next hotspot to go online – now the bus can be a hotspot itself. All that thanks to the Wi-Fi service provided on the buses of STCP – Sociedade de Transportes Colectivos do Porto (the bus network in the city of Porto, Portugal) by Veniam’Works, a spin-off company that uses technologies developed at Universidade de Aveiro and Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) under the CMU Portugal Program. Available in 404 buses, the service is open for the STCP users, 300 thousand per day, for an experimental period of six months.”

This service is delivered by Veniam’Works – created João Barros, former national director of the CMU Portugal Program and faculty member at Faculdade de Engenharia of Universidade do Porto, and Susana Sargento, faculty member at Universidade de Aveiro. –, in partnership with various entities, including the Câmara Municipal do Porto (City Council of Porto) and the STCP. The spin-off’s team also includes two U.S. entrepreneurs, Robin Chase (who created Zipcar, the largest car sharing company in the world) and Roy Russell (Chief Technology Officer at Zipcar), as well as several doctoral students.

The system allows buses to be connected to a wireless network shared by all vehicles and to Porto Digital’s optical fiber network. Reading e-books, responding to e-mails, and even checking your Facebook while on the bus are just some of the things that you can now do on the STCP buses thanks to the service provided by Veniam’Works.

This project was developed as part of Future Cities, a project co-supported by the European Commission under the Future Cities project, which builds on previous projects supported by FCT under the CMU Portugal program, wants to make the city of Porto a ‘living laboratory’ for innovation. The Wi-Fi service provided on the STCP buses is the continuation of a project called SITMe, led by INESC TEC, and developed in partnership with the STCP. The goal of the project by Veniam’Works is not only to provide a Wi-Fi service, but also to collect large amounts of scientific data that will be used by the Future Cities initiative to create knowledge on the Internet of the Future, including data on how to improve energy consumption, reduce the environmental impact and manage public roads and transportations.

The founders of Veniam’Works are very grateful for all the support they received from the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program, “which not only co-funded some of the research that led to Veniam’s products and services, but also opened new avenues for collaboration with U.S. companies and Institutions.” João Barros and Susana Sargento, co-founders of Veniam Works, said: “Veniam’s vehicular networking solutions are an excellent example of technology transfer and commercialization of solutions that are rooted on groundbreaking scientific research carried out in Portugal.” Although still a very young company, Veniam already created 17 highly-qualified jobs and employs 6 Ph.D.s.

Various Cities are Interested in the Service

Different cities are already interested in the service, including Barcelona (Spain) and San Francisco (United States). The success of the service will be measured by the reaction of the users as they will be encouraged to provide feedback on their experience, not only through the STCP’s usual channels, but also through the company’s Facebook page. Only then will the parties involved decide whether the service should continue.

Veniam’Works was born in 2012 following the research project DRIVE-IN, developed in the scope of the CMU Portugal Program, and funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. The goal with DRIVE-IN was to investigate how vehicle-to-vehicle communication can improve user experience and the overall efficiency of vehicle and road utilization.

The company offers vehicular mesh networking solutions for connecting vehicles to each other and to the Internet. Veniam’s main product is the vehicular Wi-Fi box, a combination of hardware and software that can be installed in each vehicle, thus turning it into a hotspot, and building a network between vehicles that can be leveraged for business, safety and entertainment purposes. In 2012, Veniam’Works was the Track Winner of the Building Global Innovators Venture Competition.

The Future Cities initiative started in 2013 and will be concluded in 2015. With a total funding of 2.3 million Euros – 1.6 million from the European Commission (FP7-Capacities) and 700 thousand Euros from the QREN – Quadro de Referência Estratégica Nacional (National Strategic Reference Framework) –, Future Cities is based on a multidisciplinary concept that combines several areas, such as ICT, psychology, urban planning or civil engineering.

September 2014

Madeira-ITI Wins European Grant of €2.35 Million to Boost Research

The Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute (Madeira-ITI), created under the auspices of the CMU Portugal Program, funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, ends 2013 with two major accomplishments: the inauguration of its new facilities, and an European Research Area (ERA) Chairs grant of €2.35 million for the next four years.

Nuno Nunes, president of the Madeira-ITI and scientific director of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program, explains that these two outcomes are the result of the hard work carried out by the Madeira-ITI researchers, students, partners and friends. “They all believed in a project, and were able to actively contribute to its success,” said Nuno Nunes, adding that “nevertheless, we need to continue to work very hard.”

The grant of €2.35 million for the next four years, under the pilot program of the European Commission’s (EC) Horizon 2020 Framework Program, was given to the Portuguese project LEAPFROG HCI-DI (HCI standing for Human-Computer Interaction, and DI for Design Innovation), presented by the Madeira-ITI. This was the only grant awarded to Portugal. This funding will be used “to expand and to maximize the potential of the Institute, particularly in terms of interdisciplinary research in interactive technologies, so that we can strengthen innovation, technology and knowledge transfer, in close collaboration with local and global business partners,” explained Nuno Nunes.

The LEAPFROG HCI-DI project aims at unlocking the full potential of interdisciplinary research in interactive technologies, and contributing to the smart specialization strategy of the Madeira Island. “Through this approach, it will be possible not only to transversely demonstrate the impact of open innovation and crowdsourcing, but also to extend the capabilities of creative research, and contribute to the international positioning of the Madeira-ITI,” Nuno Nunes stressed.

The €2.35 million funding will help upgrade the Institute’s Research and Technological Development (RTD) capacity and capability by expanding human potential and fostering a critical mass of researchers with interdisciplinary expertise in human-computer interaction. It will also be used to improve M-ITI’s innovation potential and impact at regional, national and European levels, by promoting design-driven innovation. “Finally, the grant will raise international awareness about the Institute and connect M-ITI and its industry affiliates to global knowledge networks,” said Nuno Nunes.
Madeira-ITI: An Outgrowth of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program
The Madeira-ITI is a not-for-profit innovation institute of the Universidade da Madeira, founded by this university, by the Madeira Tecnopolo and by Carnegie Mellon University, as an honorary partner. Since its creation, in 2009, the Madeira-ITI has been carrying out its mission of expanding the understanding of human experience and interactive technologies through basic and applied research that is innovative and responsive to manifest real-world needs using multi-disciplinary collaboration drawing on varied perspectives.

On March 22, 2013, M-ITI opened its new facilities. During this ceremony the national director of the CMU Portugal Program, João Claro, stated that M-ITI is “an exemplary realization of the mission of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program,” adding that “M-ITI’s perseverance in investing in Professional Master’s and in finding sustainable solutions for their future is unique and is an example that many other institutions should follow.” This institute is one of the six research units of the associate laboratory LARSyS.
The ERA Chairs initiative
The ERA Chairs initiative aims at helping universities and other eligible organizations to achieve the level of research excellence required to be competitive at an international level. Operating with €12 million provided by the current Seventh Framework Program for Research (2007-2013), the pilot stage of ERA Chairs will test the concept. If successful, the Commission will fund a larger number of ERA Chairs, depending on the budget of the future Framework Program Horizon 2020 (2014-2020).

December 2013

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Features:
DN Madeira online (November 28, 2013); Jornal da Madeira online (November 28, 2013); NetMadeira online (November 28, 2013); Diário da Cidade online (November 28, 2013); ComputerWorld (November 28, 2013); Portugal News (November 28, 2013); Tek (November 29, 2013); BIT (December 1, 2013); Fibra (December 2, 2013); Local.PT (December 2, 2013); Rádio Renascença (December 5, 2013).