Profiles

This article profiles SES doctoral student Vasco Portugal.

Vasco Portugal is a Second-year PhD student in the Sustainable Energy Systems program. His undergraduate studies in Architecture Design were pursued at the FAUTL in Lisbon, and he has an Advanced Architecture degree from IaaC-UPC in Barcelona, receiving his diploma in 2006.

After graduating he moved to Italy, where he worked from 2006 to 2007 at Massimiliano Fuksas studio, in Rome. In 2008 he left for Barcelona, where he collaborated as a freelancer for a number of architecture studios while concluding a master in self-sufficient habitats at IaaC. During his studies he grew an interest in social, cultural and humanitarian design. His master thesis focused on social housing for Romania, through the use of passive design structured according to a pre-set number of rules of colonizing space. Subsequently, in 2009 he worked for Julien de Smedt Studio and ADEPT architecture in Copenhagen, addressing sustainability outcomes to promote sustainable planning. Presently he is deeply committed to explore how to achieve sustainable development while working on his PhD thesis.

Prof. Helge Brattebo

Helge Brattebø is a Full Professor at NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. From 1996 to 2004 he was the Founding Director of NTNU’s Industrial Ecology Programme (IndEcol). In 2004 an international expert committee concluded IndEcol has become “a world leading academic program” in Industrial Ecology. This was partly because NTNU launched the world’s first programs leading to an MSc (1998) and to a PhD (2003) degree in Industrial Ecology, and partly due to the comprehensive and strongly interdisciplinary activity, with a group of PhD students and PostDoc fellows growing towards a stable level of about 20 people. In 2006 and 2008 the EESD Observatory ranked NTNU N.º 1 and 2 among 50 European universities, respectively, for its high level in Engineering Education for Sustainable Development, much on the basis of the achievements of IndEcol.

This article profiles EDAM Leaders for Technical Industries (LTI) doctoral student Isa Santos. 

Isa Santos, MIT

Isa Santos is a PhD student from the MPP Doctoral Program in Leaders for Technical Industries (EDAM). She has an academic background as a mechanical engineer and a master degree in Industrial Design by the University of Porto.

Having product development and biomedical devices as her major areas of research interest, she is developing her thesis under the topic “Concept selection in the development of medical devices”. Between September and December 2010, she visited MIT to obtain the necessary tools to develop a new methodology.

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

This article profiles EDAM Leaders for Technical Industries (LTI) doctoral student Jean-Loup Loyer. 

Could you tell us about your academic background?  

I graduated from a French engineering school in aeronautics – called ISAE/Supaéro and located in Toulouse – followed by an exchange year in Imperial College, London.

Please describe your previous professional experience.

During my studies, I was eager to discover new sectors. Therefore I undertook internships as an engineer in a laboratory of theoretical physics and then in a biotech start-up. This last assignment was particularly fulfilling since it gave me an introduction to entrepreneurship.  Then, as graduation arrived, I searched for engineering jobs in the French aeronautics sector. However, I was lucky enough to have two great professional opportunities. First, I studied American and European lunar space programs within the French embassy in Washington D.C. Then, I worked three years in the Office of the French Prime Minister on technology-related issues, contributing to working groups and writing public reports or memos on various subjects like telework, the automotive sector, or innovation policies.