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A new research partnership proposed between MIT Portugal and Continental Mabor and 96 doctoral students’ posters were two highlights of the MIT Portugal Program’s strong presence at this year’s edition of Ciência, an annual conference that offers an “encounter with science and technology.”

The Ciência 2010 conference was held July 4-7, 2010, at the Lisbon Centro de Congressos, organized by the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) and the Council of Associated Laboratories (CLA) in association with Ciência Viva.

This year’s edition was marked by the participation of a record 2500 participants, 150 research units, more than 400 PhD posters, and many university representatives and elected officials. It gathered not only students and faculty but also around 60 companies and research centers, allowing the program to address a wide variety of thematic areas and to foster symbiosis among companies, universities and research centers.

The MIT Portugal Program presence in Ciência 2010 was grounded in the posters of 96 PhD students from the Program’s four educational areas, as well as several session speakers and moderators. MIT Portugal National Director, Paulo Ferrão, Lino Ferreira from the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology - CNC, José Viegas and Miguel Tavares da Silva from IST, Vítor Leal from LAETA and Luís Rocha from the University of Minho were some of the faculty that presented sessions in their fields of expertise.

Luis Rocha (UMinho) presents on his "smart stent" project

Reinforcing the industry linkage with the MIT Portugal Program, Continental CEO Lopes Seabra gave a session in which he explained a three-year research project that will be developed with the Program. This project will involve three PhD students and the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), Instituto Superior Técnico of the Technical University of Lisbon (IST), and the University of Minho (UMinho). Building on Continental’s participation in the JobShop initiative of the Leaders for Technical Industries doctoral program of the Engineering Design and Advanced Manufacturing area, the ultimate goal of this project is to increase Continental’s competitiveness.

Among the PhD students that presented their work at the conference, Leonardo Rosado and André Pina, PhD students in Sustainable Energy Systems, were also session presenters, in a session that featured João Nuno Mendes, Director of Innovation from GALP, and which focused on a research project being proposed with MIT Portugal in the area of smart metering of home energy consumption.

João Pita, a PhD student in Transportation Systems, also moderated a session dedicated to Post-Graduate Programs in Portugal that included panelists Marco Leite and Hrvoje Keko, PhD students from the LTI and Sustainable Energy Systems courses, and which featured a debate among students about what kind of enhancements are needed for Post-Graduate Studies in Portugal.

As in previous editions of this event, there were also Bio-Teams sessions given by MIT Portugal PhD students in Bioengineering, who had the chance to show their latest innovations derived from research collaborations with Portuguese universities, companies and research labs.

The Secretary of State of Science and Technology, Professor Manuel Heitor, highlighted the human potential underneath the scientific skills and the new challenges ahead in terms of science internationalization for the upcoming years. Professor João Sentieiro, the President of FCT, concluded that “moments like these makes us want to do more, searching continuously for new solutions and new improvements and being curious for knowledge”.

For additional information and session presentations please consult the website of Ciência 2010.

The final presentations of the third edition of MIT-Portugal Bio-innovation teams (BioTeams) took place July 7, 2010, in a public session within the Ciência 2010 Program in Lisbon. BioTeams is a mandatory course of the advanced program in Bioengineering Systems of the MIT Portugal Program, with very particular characteristics. During a full semester the students are given real technologies, selected from Portuguese labs, and are asked to engage in a search to evaluate and exploit their market potential.

BioTeams student project team members at Ciência 2010

As real projects, the BioTeams ideas and assumptions have to be validated through contacts with worldwide professionals and other stakeholders. This makes the interview process very intense and provides the students with a sound perception of the business reality. These contacts take place globally, and the students have the opportunity to develop their own networks that include Portuguese companies, such as MIT-Portugal Program affiliates and others. During the semester, the students visited several entities, including technological parks such as BioCant, Spinpark, CITEVE and CENTI, and companies such as Biotempo, Stremmaters and GenIBet. At the final presentations, Pedro Pissarra (Biotecnol) and Raquel Fortunato (GenIbet) presented their business experiences and guests from different business fields were invited to discuss the projects with the students.

The projects developed in this edition were diverse including the use of new biomaterials, development of new bioprocesses and state of the art bioinformatics systems. The technologies proposed for the BioTeams were developed at laboratories from University of Minho, Universidade Nova Lisbon (ITQB and FCT) and Instituto Superior Técnico.

Recommended actions for 2010 BioTeams projects

As is usual practice in the BioTeams presentations, a group of professionals was invited to comment on the different projects, not only from the point of view of the technological impact and market opportunity, but also to give inputs on the communication strategy, and more importantly on the final recommendation. These recommendations are transmitted to the principal investigators (PIs) and universities from which arose the different technologies, with the aim of directing the PIs to appropriate exploitation of their discoveries or to re-direct their research. The main recommendation directs the PIs towards one of these options:

(a) assess the potential for a new technological based start up
(b) try to license their technology to a existing company, or
(c) make further refinements in the lab before commercialization is attempted

To support the idea of launching a company, another alternative recommendation can be to submit these projects to further entrepreneurial programs or competitions such as the IEI-MIT Portugal Technology Ventures Initiative, Start Prize, Cohitec, or BES innovation.

As Master’s graduate Lisa Rayle (advisor: Chris Zegras) and PhD graduates Travis Dunn (advisor: Joe Sussman) and Angelo Guevara (advisor: Moshe Ben-Akiva) leave MIT this year, they share the experience of having dedicated their thesis research to Portuguese transportation and planning issues, and of collaborating in many ways with Portuguese students, faculty and transport stakeholders thanks to their involvement in the MIT-Portugal Program Transportation Systems focus area.

MIT-Portugal’s Director of Education Josh Jacobs sat down with the three new MIT graduates to talk about their experience working with Portuguese colleagues and how they see these collaborations continuing in their future careers.

JJ: Tell me about the ways in which your research built on the connection to Portugal.

Angelo Guevara

AG: I spent a lot of time working in the Transportation Systems program, both as an instructor and as a researcher. I was a teaching assistant on two occasions in Portugal, with the Technology Planning and Performance Assessment and Transport Economics and Project Evaluation modules. I also shared lab space at MIT with visiting MPP students and interacted in research as part of my involvement with the SOTUR project with students and faculty from Portugal. I also worked to integrate Portuguese data into my thesis project model, on “Endogeneity and Sampling of Alternatives in Spatial Choice Models”. My research was mainly concerned with the implementation of a residential location choice model for the city of Lisbon, which was a component of a larger land-use model built, with other researchers, using an UrbanSim platform. Although in the end the dispersed zoning data across different municipalities was not complete enough to build a fully operational UrbanSim model, some valuable results were obtained.

Travis Dunn

TD: My thesis focused on improving our understanding of the relationship between institutional structures and infrastructure investment patterns, and it relied on a range of data requirement – both quantitative and qualitative – from a variety of Portuguese sources. While it’s true that data in Portugal can be hard to put together, like they are anywhere, I found one of the most powerful experiences was in spending significant time in Portugal, and following the contacts I made through faculty and other grad students at IST to the people that manage the data. My process and results were definitely influenced by being present in Portugal to understand the perspectives of researchers and transportation practitioners.

LR: Yes, for sure Skype is no substitute for being there in person. My research on inter-agency collaboration in metropolitan planning relied on my doing in-person interviews with policymakers and other figures within the Portuguese urban planning community. I could not have done the work without being in Portugal.  Still, at first it was difficult to find the right contacts and it took a long time to get interviews.  But eventually I found ways to meet with the right people and was able to get very good information from the interviews.  My only regret is that I did not have the chance to really learn Portuguese.  Although most of the people I worked with spoke English well, I’m sure that my work would have been easier if I had known Portuguese.

JJ: How do you see your work in the MIT-Portugal Program continuing to impact your career after you leave MIT?

TD: I found Portugal to be fascinating and I think more people around the world should know about its policy approaches and challenges in the area of transportation planning. I’ll spend another few months finishing up some research projects at MIT and then begin a Fulbright scholarship working in the Mexican Ministry of Transportation, where I’m sure I will apply some of the lessons I’ve learned in Portugal. I think the most enduring aspect of this experience for me will be the friendships and collaborative relationships I’ve formed with Portuguese students, which I’m sure will continue.

Lisa Rayle

LR: The Portuguese setting turned out to be a very good case for my study of collaborative issues in planning. From my conversations with many Portuguese students, I think that this program has helped build a new generation working in transportation that is committed to an international perspective, and that is exposed to MIT’s ideas and distinctive ways of collaborating in research.   As a planner, I think international collaboration is essential, especially for research, and I can’t imagine not having similar relationships in the future.  This was definitely a good learning experience in that light.

AG: The network of professional and personal relationships I formed will continue to be important for me in the future even if it doesn’t lead to immediate collaborations. I will return to the Universidad de los Andes in Santiago, Chile later this summer as a Research Professor. I am hopeful that my long-term connection to Portugal will allow me to apply my model to Portuguese data sets eventually.

The students admitted for 2010 to the four MPP doctoral programs and its Master’s in Complex Transportation Infrastructure Systems are the most selectively-admitted cohort in the Program’s history, and continue the Program’s record of strong internationalization with a second consecutive year of over 40% of accepted candidates from outside Portugal.

Out of 388 candidates for the doctoral courses, 101 were accepted to begin their studies in September 2010. This represents a new selectivity record with a 26% acceptance rate. The Master’s in Complex Transportation Infrastructure Systems course received 64 applications and accepted 25 students, an acceptance rate of 39%.

Proportion of accepted candidates for MIT Portugal Program doctoral courses since 2007: BIO – Bio-Engineering Systems, EDAM – Engineering Design and Advanced Manufactering, SES – Sustainable Energy Systems, TR SYS – Transportation Systems.

The admitted candidates hail from Portugal and 25 other countries. They are graduates of such distinguished institutions as MIT, Imperial College London, the University of Michigan, ETH Zurich, Chalmers University of Technology, the Indian Institute of Technology—Bombay, and KTH Stockholm. And reflecting their strong interest in applying their studies to industrial and social challenges, the candidates had prior work experience  in international organizations including Volvo Sweden, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, the Office of the Prime Minister of France, and the World Resources Institute.

Applications for the Advanced Studies courses in Sustainable Energy Systems and Technology Management Enterprise, closed on July 15,  showed continued strong interest, with a record 45 candidacies to Sustainable Energy Systems and 21 candidates to TME matching last year’s record level.  These courses aim at training mid career professionals of Portuguese and International companies to become leaders in Energy Systems and  Engineering Design. These future leaders come from Portuguese companies such as  Martifer, SECIL, Robbialac, REN, Portugal Telecom, OGMA, Solvay Portugal, Alstom Portugal, Siemens Portugal, Ericsson, and EDP. The candidates are graduates of prestigious universities including Yale, the University of Manchester and Chalmers University of Technology.