 Jorge Lopes is the first PhD student under the MIT Portugal Program to graduate in Transportation Systems. Jorge, who started is PhD in 2008, has developed research integrated into the City Motion project promoted by MIT Portugal. The work presented on the thesis entitled “Traffic Prediction for Unplanned Events on Motorways” offers a service platform capable of generating traffic forecasts for short-term traffic conditions (unplanned events or incidents) on highways. This study was complemented by real case-studies that proved the performance of the proposed solution with real traffic and actual incidents from A5 - Estoril Coast Highway. Jorge PhD was supervised by João Bento (IST) and Moshe Ben-Akiva (MIT) and was developed in partnership with BRISA, Jorge’s employer company and partner of the project City Motion, aiming to improve the performance and service reliability of transport highways.
1) Where are you from? Proença-a-Nova, Portugal 2) How did you learn about the MIT Portugal Program and what motivated you to apply for a PhD in Transportation Systems? Since I join Brisa, in 2001, I’ve been involved in a couple of R&D projects, investigating and developing solutions to thoroughly apply Intelligent Transport Systems concepts. As part of this networking research, there was a collaboration between Brisa and the ITS research group of MIT. Besides my strong interest in this research topic I was strongly convinced by the positive contribution of my background knowledge and professional experience for the success of such collaboration program and therefore the positive contribution for the ITS field and for the development of my own competences 3) What was your research project about and what do you hope to achieve? My research project aims to improve the operational performance and reliability of motorway transportation systems, by applying proactive management strategies based on dynamic traffic and demand management. To this end I propose a model-based approach to predict traffic and demand under the influence of unexpected events or incidents. The final goal is to anticipate network conditions in order to address congestion both influencing the car usage and improving the efficiency on congested facilities 4) What are the major benefits of this project on peoples’ lives? The actual model framework developed throughout this research has revealed promising results. Effective benefits on peoples’ lives can be found in applications to improve road safety by informing en-route drivers to adjust route choice and prevent shockwave crashes. Can also be used to improve mobility and route guidance by providing timely information on expected travel conditions to travelers prior their trip or while en-route. 5) How do you see this area evolving in the future? In the sustainable mobility era it is necessary to count on transportation businesses to contribute to the economic development, environmental protection, social equity and human welfare. To this end, transportation systems have to mitigate its own negative effects as exhibited by congestion, accidents, emissions and resources consumption. 6) How do you think this kind of research project/ international partnership can positively contribute for Portugal’s economic development? Over the past 20 years, Portugal has invested increasingly in modern motorway systems, mostly to encourage industrial development, trade and social cohesion. This open research project can contribute positively to improve the quality, efficiency and sustainability of transportation systems and infrastructures. Leading companies and R&D groups can also take advantage of national developments and experiments to create new business opportunities in international markets. 7) How was your experience at MIT? It was mostly an experience with MIT, since I haven’t had a long stay at MIT but about a dozen short visits in the last four years. On the other hand, my research topic was fully integrated with the past and current research program of MIT ITS Lab, namely with the DynaMIT simulation platform, which was a great opportunity to get involved with past researchers and to contribute to the future. | 
Leonardo Rosado is a PhD student from the MPP Doctoral Program in Sustainable Energy Systems (SES). Leonardo entered the program in 2007 and he is conducting his research under the theme Urban Metabolism: Contributions to establish standard methods to analyze Urban Material Flows. Supervised by Paulo Ferrão (IST) and co-supervised by John Fernandez (MIT) and Samuel Niza (IST). Leonardo aims to contribute towards the field of Urban Metabolism. Urban areas have become one of the main focal points in order to tackle sustainability problems. The urban metabolism of a city depends on anthropogenic and natural physical flows of energy and materials, what might be studied by Material Flow Analysis (MFA). Therefore, Leonardo took it upon himself to develop a standard method to measure the MFA that can be applied to different Urban areas, namely in European Countries. During his PhD, Leonardo spent a month at MIT. He has published at the Journal of Industrial Ecology, presented his work at several conferences related with Industrial Ecology and Material Flow Accounting, created a standard model to describe Metropolitan Areas flows of materials, within the Urban Metabolism concept and has contributed to the development of two FCT projects – iTeam and Resist. Besides his demanding academic work, Leonardo Rosado is also a successful musician (access his latest work Mute Words 
On October 10th, Sérgio Tavares was the first student from 
Pedro Andrade has recently been awarded with a PhD in Bioengineering by Instituto Superior Técnico under the MIT Portugal Program. Together with 4 fellow PhD students, he found the company 
Daniel Machado is a third-year PhD Student at Minho University under the MIT Portugal Program, in the field of Bioengineering Systems. His work is focused on systems biology and the objective is to develop mathematical and computational models that simulate the internal mechanisms of a cell to predict its behavior under different conditions. Daniel won recently the "Best Poster Award" in the 5th Annual Workshop on the Business-Government Interface: Systems and Synthetic Biology.
