News

IEI coordinator José Estabil talks with competitors at the Boot Camp

The Venture Competition sponsored by ISCTE-IUL and MIT Portugal is off to an auspicious start.  The breadth of technologies indicates entrepreneurial insight and critical translation of university-researched innovations that are needed to build a knowledge-based economy of products and services.  Close to 100 submissions distributed across the competition’s four tracks were received by the June 18th deadline with the following distribution by Track: Information Technology & the Web (36.8%), Products and Services (29.5%), Life Sciences (18.9%) and Sustainable Energy and Transportation (14.7%).

Twenty Semifinalists were chosen on the basis of team and innovation strength, clear path to revenue, international scope, and market opportunity. 70% (14) of the Semifinalists spring from university developed technologies; 50% (10) are from educational partners of MIT-Portugal; and 10% (2) are from FCT-funded collaborations that arose as a consequence of the MIT-Portugal Program and the CMU-Portugal Program. 45% (9) of the Semifinalists already have market traction or key development partners.

This article profiles FEUP-based Leaders for Technical Industries doctoral student Lia Oliveira, who returned to Portugal in the summer of 2010 after a four-month research stay at MIT.

LTI doctoral student Lia Oliveira during her MIT research visit

 How did you learn about MIT Portugal and what motivated you to apply for the LTI PhD of the MIT Portugal Program?

When I finished my MSc, I was strongly motivated to go on studying, as a way to increase my knowledge and personal skills to work for technology-based companies, in the development of new products and processes. Another interesting challenge was the possibility of contributing to start a small company in Portugal, capable of producing technology-based products, with new, innovative methodologies. The LTI PhD Program represented a unique and challenging opportunity to improve the knowledge and skills previously obtained at UM (University of Minho).

I had already listened about the MIT Portugal Program, but it was a professor I had at UM (Manuel Lopes Nunes) that encouraged and helped me with this idea. He played a fundamental role in my decision to apply to the LTI Program.  

The AirNets project was the subject of a long article in one of Portugal's leading business magazines, "Executive Digest." Written by AirNets principal investigator António Pais Antunes of the University of Coimbra, the article describes how AirNets has developed models to help fight congestion in major airports and air networks, which already are being used by Portuguese airline TAP and other major transportation companies and organizations.

The full text of the article (in Portuguese) is available here: 

 AirNets article, Executive Digest, August 2010

You may also download a recent technical presentation by the AirNets team made at the 12th World Congress on Transportation Research in Lisbon in July 2010:

 Research In Airports and Air Transport in the MIT Portugal Program

1.2M Euro total awards to support joint efforts by Portuguese, MIT researchers and industry partners

The Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) has announced the six projects that were selected to receive funding totaling 1.2M Euros in the 2009 FCT open call for research and development projects in the framework of the MIT-Portugal Program.

The areas of emphasis of the selected projects range across the Program’s four targeted application areas of Sustainable Energy and Transportation Systems, Stem Cell Engineering for Regenerative Medicine, Materials and Design-Inspired Products, and Engineering Systems Fundamentals.

The table below indicates the Portuguese and MIT principal investigators (PIs) for each awarded project, along with industry and other non-academic participating institutions:

Click to enlarge

The official announcement by FCT is also available.