News

International companies such as GlaxoSmithKline—and other leading participants in the Portuguese innovation ecosystem—joined MIT Portugal students and researchers at the second annual IdeaSpring conference to celebrate outstanding potential technologies.

Ideaspring

The conference, held on March 2, 2009 at the Biocant biotechnology innovation center in Cantanhede, Portugal, was organized by the MIT Portugal Program’s Bioengineering Systems focus area. The annual event spotlights its student “Bio-Teams” and their go-to-market innovation projects. Each BioTeam collaborates with a Portuguese research lab on a selected technology; a key student challenge is to devise a strategy for launching the technology in the marketplace.

This year, more than 100 people attended the conference. They represented venture capital firms, companies, technology licensing offices, and students and faculty from the MIT Portugal Program and other programs.

MIT Portugal Program faculty will contribute to—and, in one case, lead the development of—a major new initiative announced on March 4, 2009 by MIT designed to tackle large-scale, global transportation challenges.

Called Transportation@MIT, the initiative, according to its website, is “a coordinated effort to address one of civilization’s most pressing challenges: the environmental impact of the world’s ever-increasing demand for transportation.” It will begin as a two-year pilot program, and plans exist for the formation of two labs, one in Cambridge and one located outside the United States.

This article was written by Tina Rosan, Postdoctoral Associate in MIT Portugal’s Sustainable Energy Systems focus area.

From March 2–6, 2009, 22 Sustainable Energy Systems mid-career (one-year) Advanced Studies students from the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) came to MIT for a week-long seminar on sustainability and innovation that consisted of workshops, visits to industry, and presentations by MIT faculty.  The week exposed students to new ways of thinking about the challenges and opportunities they will face in their future careers as leaders in sustainable energy.

DFA students João Schmidt and Dillon Banerjee (photo by José Oliveira)

DFA students João Schmidt and Dillon Banerjee (photo by José Oliveira)

On Monday, the students were welcomed by Professor Dave Marks, Co-Director of MIT Portugal’s Sustainable Energy Systems focus area, and Professor Dan Roos, Director at MIT of the MIT Portugal Program.

This story was originally posted on January 7, 2009. It is re-posted here with a link to the full list of FCT awardees.

 Fourteen outstanding projects from consortia of Portuguese research institutions and partners from industry have been awarded research grants to collaborate with MIT Portugal Program researchers. Following an open call for proposals, the grants were awarded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).

Each of the 14 projects were rated as excellent or very good by the international evaluation committees, which reviewed a total of 40 proposals addressing the ongoing research themes of MIT Portugal’s four Focus Areas. The investigators who submitted the 14 top-rated proposals will receive three-year contracts with FCT.