Year-long Student Seminar Advances Research Dialogue in Transport, Energy at MIT

MIT student Travis Dunn demonstrates highway investment approaches in Portugal

A student research seminar held throughout the 2009-2010 academic year at MIT helped create synergies among student researchers from MPP and from MIT in Sustainable Energy and Transportation Systems.

Organized by Prof. Chris Zegras and Dr. Josh Jacobs, coordinators of the Transportation Systems area at MIT, the seminar provided an informal research forum for eleven doctoral students, drawn equally from the MIT Portugal Program visitors and from MIT graduate students addressing MIT-Portugal research themes.

Instructed to speak without Powerpoints to maximize intereaction, the student researchers presented their ongoing work at MIT and in Portugal before a group interested in the methodological approaches of each project, and the benefit to Portugal of work in such diverse areas as urban energy consumption and Portuguese highway investment strategies.

Prof. Joseph Sussman, among the MIT faculty who participated in the seminar, commented on the value of having the sessions focused on creating dialogue around the central ideas and challenges in each project. "We had a good animated discussion in the year's last meeting, which brought together Nuno Clímaco Pereira's work on energy efficiency in buildings and Lisa Rayle's study of the role of collaboration in Portuguese urban renewal policies. I liked the approach of not using Powerpoints and look forward to this series continuing in the fall."