Over 170 people gathered to discuss research progress in ICT under the CMU Portugal Program
The CMU Portugal Program Summit 2022 “New Frontiers in tech” gathered, on November 9 and 10, 179 members of its community for two days of discussion on cutting-edge topics in ICT. The Factory Lisbon was the gathering place for the community of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Portugal.
The CMU committee counted sixteen faculty members, including the Dean of the College of Engineering at CMU, Bill Sanders, and the University’s Provost and Chief Academic Officer, James H. Garrett. They were joined in Lisbon by many CMU Portugal students, faculty & researchers from Portuguese partner research Institutions, and representatives from Portuguese partner Companies, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, and the Embassy of the United States of America in Portugal.
The Program’s National Co-Director, Inês Lynce, opened the Welcome Session, highlighting the Program’s achievements over the past 16 years. Afterward, Sir John O’Reilly, who has Chaired the CMU Portugal External Review Committee (ERC) since its beginning, shared his view on the evolution of CMU Portugal to this point, and CMU Provost James H. Garrett emphasized the importance of the Partnership to Carnegie Mellon University’s global reach. The President of Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), Madalena Alves, closed this session by expressing the Institution’s long-lasting support to the CMU Portugal international partnership that counts on more than 16 years of activity in Research, Education, and Innovation in the field of Information and Communication Technologies.
Watch the Welcome Note on Youtube.
The CMU Portugal Program Summit 2022 also served as a platform to present to the CMU Portugal External Review Committee the work and the outcomes that have been made by the Program in the last year, giving them a broad perspective of the research and education initiatives being developed under the scope of the Program. Throughout the two days, the ERC had the opportunity to evaluate the Program’s activities and assess its overall performance at internal meetings. ERC Chair Sir John O’Reilly, Giulio Sandini, Senior Researcher and Founding Director of the Italian Institute of Technology, and Fernando Pereira, VP and Engineering Fellow at Google, attended the Conference onsight, leading the discussion in several panels as moderators. Joining remotely were Yvonne Rogers, Professor and Director at the Centre of Excellence in Human-Computer Interaction of the University College London, and Ali Sayed, Dean of Engineering EPFL School of Engineering.
Among Portuguese ICT companies were Feedzai, a Portuguese Unicorn company and the first start-up created under the scope of the Program, OutSystems, Farfetch and Unbabel, all CMU Portugal Affiliated Companies and Large-Scale collaborative project promoters. Also, to present their CMU Portugal projects were part of the event dstsolar, Glintt, Mobileum, Hospital da Luz Learning Health, Ingeniarius among others, and other potential partner companies like Wow Systems and Neurospace.
As keynote speakers were part of the event: Inês Oom de Sousa, President at Fundação Santander Portugal; Vasco Pedro, Co-Founder and CEO at Unbabel; Gil Azevedo, Executive Director at Startup Lisboa; Nicolas Christin, Professor in Engineering and Public Policy, Software and Societal Systems at CMU; and the only speaker joining remotely from Sweden, Michela Magas, Chair at the Industry Commons Foundation and innovation advisor to the European Commission and the G7 leaders.
This two-day meeting was a great platform to gather expertise from Industry and Academia from both sides of the Atlantic, opening a pathway for network collaborations between the two countries and exploring the many opportunities offered within the scope of the international partnership.
