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CMU Portugal adds 6 new exploratory projects in ICT to its research portfolio

The CMU Portugal Program will soon increase the number of projects supported by the international partnership since its beginning in 2006 to 77. The six (6) new Exploratory Research Projects (ERPs) were selected from the Call launched in May 2021 and will focus on research areas and subjects as diverse as: data science applied to healthcare, the creation of satellites (PocketQube), human-robot interaction, traffic supervision for Cybercrime Investigation, applied artificial intelligence for customizable robotic exoskins, and the detection of injection vulnerabilities in node applications.

The call for proposals featured a total of 33 projects, 6 of which were recommended for funding by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) under the scope of the CMU Portugal Program. The projects will run at 10 Portuguese research units from Universities of Coimbra, Lisbon, Minho and Porto, in collaboration with 5 different departments at Carnegie Mellon University (Electrical and Computer Engineering, Human- Computer Interaction Institute, Institute for Software Research, Engineering & Public Policy and The Robotics Institute).

This typology of projects has an exploratory basis and is planned for 12 months, granting the scientific community the opportunity to identify and explore new ideas in a bottom-up way. Overall, CMU Portugal is supporting the Portuguese teams with 391 000€ for developing their proposals.

According to Nuno Nunes, National Co-Director of the CMU Portugal Program, “it is important to foster ideas that are just starting because most of them will surely break ground into amazing research projects. As all the projects supported under the CMU Portugal Program, these Exploratory projects are built and developed in collaboration between Portuguese Institutions and CMU and this a unique way to launch a new idea.”

Even if these are short term projects, CMU Portugal National Co-Director Inês Lynce refers that “their impact goes much beyond this one year of project. From a personal experience, since I led one of the 2017 ERPs, these initiatives are a great step to establish the ground for future collaborations and a great opportunity to invest in new research opportunities focused on solving real world problems.

As well as the Large-Scale Collaborative Projects, ERPs are at the core of CMU Portugal initiatives for its 3rd phase.

“Exploratory Research Projects (ERPs) remain a building block of the Program’s research strategy, a mechanism to bootstrap high-impact potential research activities in relevant Programmatic areas.”
José M.F. Moura, Director of the CMU Portugal Program at CMU

The CMU Portugal Program supports the launch of Exploratory Research Projects (ERPs) on a regular basis, with the main objective of promoting Portugal’s international competitiveness and innovation capacity in Science and Technology (S&T) in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Since 2017, the Program launched three Calls for Exploratory Projects  for a total of 21 funded projects and counting. The first Call for Exploratory Projects in 2017 funded 8 projects in a collaboration between 11 Portuguese institutions and 4 CMU departments and the 2019 Call selected 7 new projects involving 12 Portuguese research units and 4 different departments at Carnegie Mellon University..

Now in 2021, six (6) new projects were recommended for funding under the FCT- Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program, including:

  • Trustworthy data science for improving healthcare efficiency: the case of the medical referral process

Principal Investigator in Portugal: Cláudia Soares, ISR Lisboa
Principal Investigators at CMU: Haiyi Zhu; Yuejie Chi
CMU Department: Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Principal Contractor in Portugal: NOVA.ID.FCT
Participant Institutions in Portugal: Faculdade de Economia da UNL – Nova SBE (FE/UNL) ; IST-ID
Keywords: Health recommender systems – Medical referral – Interpretable Machine learning – Value-based care

  • PROMETHEUS – PocketQube Framework Designed for Research and Educational access to Space

Principal Investigator in Portugal: Alexandre Ferreira da Silva, Universidade do Minho
Principal Investigator at CMU:Zachary Manchester
CMU Department: Robotics Institute
Principal Contractor in PT: Universidade do Minho (UM)
Participant Institutions in PT: Instituto Superior Técnico (IST/ULisboa)
Keywords: PocketQube – Research and Education – Open Access – Low Cost

  • Exploring the Transfer of Agency to Older Adults in HRI

Principal Investigator in Portugal: Tiago Guerreiro, LASIGE / FCUL
Principal Investigator at CMU:Jodi Forlizzi
CMU Department: Human- Computer Interaction Institute
Principal Contractor in Portugal: FCiências.ID
Participant Institutions in Portugal: IST-ID

  • Supervised Deanonymization of Dark Web Traffic for Cybercrime Investigation

Principal Investigator in Portugal: Nuno Santos, INESC-ID / IST
Principal Investigator at CMU:Nicolas Christin
CMU Department: Institute for Software Research, Engineering & Public Policy
Principal Contractor in Portugal: INESC-ID/INESC/IST/ULisboa
Participant Institutions in Portugal: INESC TEC; NOVA.ID.FCT ; FCiências.ID
Keywords: Online Anonymity Networks – Network Traffic Analysis – Machine Learning – Privacy and Multiparty Computation

  •  AI Codesign of Robotic and Personalized Compliant Exoskins for Physical Exercises, Prosthesis and Rehabilitation

Principal Investigator in Portugal: Mahmoud Tavakoli, Inst. for Systems and Robotics
Principal Investigators at CMU: Lining Yao; Carmel Majid
CMU Department: Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Mechanical Engineering
Principal Contractor in PT: Instituto de Sistemas e Robótica (ISR)
Keywords: Computational design – Electrónica e Robótica Impressa – Additive Manufacturing – Soft Robotics

  • DIVINA: Detecting Injection Vulnerabilities In Node.js Applications

Principal Investigator in Portugal: José dos Santos,  INESC-ID/INESC/IST/ULisboa
Principal Investigator at CMU: Limin Jia
CMU Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Principal Contractor in Portugal: INESC-ID/INESC/IST/ULisboa
Participant Institutions in Portugal: Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT)
Keywords: code injection vulnerabilities – dynamic taint tracking – symbolic execution – concolic execution

News article at FCT Website