MIT Portugal: Fostering Science and Technology based University-Industry Relationships On July 6th, São Jorge Cinema in Lisbon was the setting for “This is America”, an event organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Portugal that included a session entitled "MIT Portugal: Fostering Science and Technology based University -Industry Relationships." The session was conducted by the National Director of the MIT Portugal Program, Professor Paulo Ferrão, who along with Robin Lemp (Assistant Director of MIT Portugal Program at MIT) and Graça Didier (American Chamber of Commerce in Portugal) greeted the attendants. An impressive and diverse group of speakers, both from academia and the business world, were present at the event, whose purpose was to explain how the partnerships created between Portuguese universities, industry, and MIT, within the context of the MIT Portugal Program, are creating value to the Portuguese economy. Focused on the goal established for the conference and analyzing the how the industry-university relationship process develops, Mr. Pertuze from MIT noted that the outcome of industry-university research collaboration does not always lead to impact for the company. This gap between outcome and impact can be correlated with the company project management processes and specially its genesis and nature and may be bridged by applying seven best practices identified by Mr. Pertuze. 
The session included several industry leaders and EFACEC, through Eng. António Carrapatoso, shared its experience with the audience regarding research-based industry-university relationships that have been ongoing in the company. Examples included the development of software and hardware to improve and upgrade their portfolio, and especially problems encountered while developing products for its customers. In many respects the experiences shared by EFACEC represent a perfect case study of a company maximizing the benefits of developing collaborative research projects with universities and research centers. One of the examples provided by Eng. António Carrapatoso to stress the importance of university-industry relationships was the project Sustainable Corvo. This project is being developed in collaboration with MIT Portugal, the regional Azores Government, and other private partners, with the objective of radically changing the energy paradigm of the Corvo Island, transforming it into a sustainable energy system. Presently, Corvo Island is totally dependent on fossil fuels to fulfill its energy needs, and the project aims to drastically increase the penetration of renewable energies in the islands, while also working towards the implementation of smart grids and demand side management strategies. On the same subject, Professor Carlos Silva (IST) gave the university perspective on the collaboration with EFACEC, providing the audience with detailed information about the project and its goals. Ultimately, this collaboration aims to develop and implement in Corvo a testbed for the integration of renewable energy resources and demand side management solutions that may act as a reference worldwide, with a high replication potential in islands in the same context. The collaboration that the MIT Portugal Program has with Hospital da Luz was also presented by Doctor Carlos Palos (Hospital da Luz) and Prof. João Sousa (IST). According to Doctor Palos , the main goals of the collaboration with IST, MIT and H. Luz is to establish a robust quantitative basis for systems-based interventions to improve outcomes in the ICU, and as such to help the institution become the leading provider in the Portuguese market with a presence both in private and public healthcare provision. This is to be done through data-mining strategies and neuronal intelligence applied to patients with severe sepsis or septic shock admitted on the ICU, helping the staff predict the evolution of the patient, based on clinical and monitorization data obtained from the EMR. Learning from the MIT example, entrepreneurship has been another area in which the added value being created through the MIT Portugal Program can be identified. Gonçalo Amorim, Director of the ISCTE-IUL MIT Portugal Venture Competition shared the successful results that have been achieved under this initiative that intends to foster the creation of new ventures with global outreach. Still within this topic SilicoLife, represented by its CSO (Chief Science Officer) Prof. Isabel Rocha (Minho University), is one of the 3 biotechnology spinoffs that have been created during the first years of the MIT Portugal Program. Professor Rocha shared with the audience its success story and how the MIT Portugal Program provided the right environment to launch the company in 2010. SilicoLife provides dedicated mathematical models, robust algorithms, and user-friendly software tools that accelerate and improve microbial strain design and bioprocess optimization, reducing R&D efforts and shortening the time to market of new biotechnology-based products. 
To close the meeting there was a panel session where participants had the opportunity to address issues related to universities as drivers of innovation and international cooperation. |
