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The Portuguese Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education, Manuel Heitor, is one of the 2022 Carnegie Mellon Honorary Degree Recipients, one of the highest distinctions presented to an individual by Carnegie Mellon. Heitor will deliver, on May 13, the keynote address at the Commencement ceremony for master’s and doctoral degree graduates and receive a Doctor of Science and Technology honorary degree. CMU Honorary recipients are a source of inspiration to Tartans and their families gathered at graduation between May 13-15.

Manuel Heitor has served since November 2015 as Portugal’s Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education and was, between 2005-2011, the Portuguese Secretary of State of Science, Technology and Higher Education. Heitor has been a longtime supporter of the CMU Portugal Program and of all its initiatives, strengthening the relationship between Carnegie Mellon and the Portuguese scientific and innovation ecosystem throughout the years.

 

Two of his most recent visits to Carnegie Mellon University Campus in Pittsburgh, 2019 and 2021, were focused on strengthening and reinforcing the cooperation between Portugal, Carnegie Mellon University, and Industry through the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program.

Among many other initiatives, Manuel Heitor has promoted the Program Go-Portugal — Global Science and Technology Partnerships Portugal to stimulate the internationalization of Portuguese science and technology research, fostering the creation of scientific and qualified jobs and new technology-based companies. He has also been particularly involved in the development of the Portuguese and European Space strategies, and the enforcement of research and innovation policies, including advanced computing. Heitor is a full professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) from Universidade de Lisboa and was the founder and director of IN+, IST´s Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research.

This year, two other recipients will join the Portuguese Minister in delivering Commencement keynote addresses, including Billy Porter and Frances Arnold. Billy Porter is a CMU alumnus, an Emmy, Tony and Grammy Award-winning actor, singer, director, composer, author and playwright. He will receive a Doctor of Fine Arts degree and deliver the keynote address at the Commencement ceremony for bachelor’s degree graduates on Sunday, May 15. Chemistry Nobel Laureate, Frances Arnold, will receive a Doctor of Science and Technology degree and will deliver the keynote address at the doctoral hooding ceremony on Saturday, May 14.

The full list of honorary degree recipients I available on CMU’s original article.

 

 

Manuela Veloso, CMU Portugal Faculty, Emeritus Herbert A. Simon University Professor in the CMU School of Computer Science, and head of J.P. Morgan AI Research was one of the 111 Members and 22 International Members elected by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) this year.

The world-renowned computer scientist and AI researcher was distinguished “for contributions to machine learning and its applications in robotics and the financial services industry” adding this recognition, which is among the highest professional distinctions awarded to an engineer, to her long list of achievements.

The NAE honors individuals who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”

These most recent members bring the total of U.S. membership to 2,388 and the number of international members to 310. The newly elected engineers will be formally inducted during the NAE’s annual meeting on Oct. 2, 2022.

The full list and more information is available in the NAE’s original press release available here.

The second edition of the CMU Portugal initiative “Affiliated Ph.D. Programs” ,supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), will accept applications between February 15 to March 31, 2022 for up to 12 Scholarships for the 2022/2023 academic year. The selected candidates will be hosted by Portuguese Universities and benefit from a research period at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh for up to 12 months.

The Affiliated Ph.D. Programs initiative has the objective of strengthening the collaboration between the Portuguese higher education institutions and Portuguese companies through a strong partnership with Carnegie Mellon University and with the support of FCT. It offers Ph.D. scholarships in selected cutting-edge areas of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in any Portuguese University, in the following CMU Portugal related areas:

• • • Computer Science,
    • Electrical and Computer Engineering ,
    • Engineering and Public Policy,
    • Human-Computer Interaction,
    • Language Technologies
    • Robotics,
    • Software Engineering.

The scholarships are available on a competitive basis and will fully support the tuition fees plus provide a monthly stipend for up to 4 years, including financial support during the research period at CMU. After the Ph.D. conclusion, candidates will be awarded one degree granted by the Portuguese Host Institution.

The admissions period will run from February 15th 2022 at 12:00 (GMT) to March 31st 2022 at 12:00 (GMT).

To apply please visit the “Admissions and Scholarships” page on the CMU Portugal website. You can also check the Call information at FCT Website. 

The Affiliated Ph.D. Program was launched for the first time last year and selected 12 PhD candidates for the 2021/22 academic year. The CMU Portugal Program has currently 46 active students, including both Affiliated and Dual Degree students and so far 85 have successfully graduated.

 

Susana Sargento, a researcher at Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) of Universidade de Aveiro (UA), is one of the nominees for the Inspiring Women Activa Award in the Business category, along with three other Portuguese female candidates.

In 2018, Susana joined the list of eight CMU Portugal Scientific Directors but her connection to the program comes long before that. In March 2012, she co-founded the vehicular networking company Veniam, a CMU Portugal Program startup born as a spin-off Universidade de Aveiro, Porto and Instituto de Telecomunicações. The company works on the development of an Intelligent Networking platform to allow vehicles and other moving objects to exchange large amounts of data between each other and the cloud, towards the creation of an ‘internet of moving things’.

With a PhD in Electrical Engineering from UA (2003), she is currently Professor at the Department of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics of the same University. In 2016, she won the European Union Women Innovators Award and under the CMU Portugal scope, she led the large-scale project S2Movingcity, a 4-year project launched in 2014 on massive urban sensing of people, vehicles, and environment, supporting data-driven city planning and decision making.

Throughout her career, she has worked very closely with telecom operators, manufacturers and municipal entities being currently responsible for the European project Aveiro STEAM City, for the construction of a multi-technology communication infrastructure in Aveiro to support innovative services in the area of mobility, environment and energy.

Soummya Kar, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and Faculty member of the CMU Portugal Program has been elevated to fellow status in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer (IEEE), the world’s largest technical professional organization for the advancement of technology.

The CMU Professor is currently the principal investigator of CMU Portugal Large- Scale Collaborative project, Building Hope. This 3-year project proposes to develop and validate a tool for Holistic Optimization of Prosumed Energy (HOPE) of buildings. Kar is also presently the Supervisor at CMU of Dual Degree Ph.D. student Cláudio Gomes and has supervised three other Dual Degree students, now alumni.

IEEE Fellow is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest are deemed fits this prestigious grade elevation. Kar’s research interests span several aspects of stochastic adaptive control, decision-making, learning, and inference in large-scale networked dynamical systems.

CMU Original article: https://engineering.cmu.edu/news-events/news/2022/01/18-kar-ieee-fellow.html

Throughout 2021, the CMU Portugal Program has continued to support its main activities but has also launched some new initiatives, such as the new Educational Program“Affiliated Ph.D. Programs” which offered 12 Scholarships for students to attend a Portuguese University, and a new Call for Exploratory Research Projects which added 6 new projects to the portfolio of 77 that were already supported since the launch of the Program in 2006.

But the year started with a change in the Program’s leadership with the appointment on January of a new CMU Portugal National Co-Diretor, Inês Lynce, Full Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico and President of INESC ID who assumed the co-direction alongside Nuno Nunes, replacing Rodrigo Rodrigues who was in office since the renewal of the Program in 2018.

Here’s a brief overview of 2021 :

 

January (27) – Inês Lynce appointed as CMU Portugal National co-director in replacement of Rodrigo Rodrigues (2018-2020).

January (25-27) – External Review Committee Meeting (ERC) with the evaluation of the Program’s performance between 2018 and 2020 (online)

January to February – “Data Science Talks @CMUPortugal”:

• • • • Session 1 I Jan. 28: “Conversational Assistants for Complex Search Tasks” by Jamie Callan (CMU)
      • Session 2 I Feb. 11: “AI Learns to Race: Machine Learning for Autonomous Driving” by Eric Nyberg (CMU)
      • Session 3 I Feb. 23: “Social, Cultural and Political Biases through the Lens of NLP” by Ashique Khudabukhsh (CMU)

February (15) – Announcement of the first CMU Portugal Call under the new initiative “Affiliated Ph.D. Programs” offering up to 12 Scholarships for the 2021/2022 academic year.

February (25) – Online Info Session: “How to apply to a CMU Portugal Affiliated Ph.D. Program Scholarship”.

From April to June – “User Experience Design Talks @CMU Portugal”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May (19) – Announcement of the CMU Portugal Call for Exploratory Research Projects (ERPs) in strategic emerging areas of ICT.

May (20) – CMU Portugal participation as partner of the Bauhaus of the Seas International Conference under the scope of the  New European Bauhaus (NEB) Initiative.

June – Announcement of the 11 new Dual Degree Ph.D. Students selected under the Program’s Dual Degree Ph.D. Initiative for the 2021/22 Academic year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June (28) – CMU Portugal at Encontro Ciência 2021 Summit with the Session “The contribution of the CMU Portugal international partnership for the high-tech ecosystem in Portugal”

July (7-15) – 11th edition of the Lisbon Machine Learning Summer School (LxMLS 2021), a virtual school co-organized by Instituto Superior Técnico, Instituto de Telecomunicações, INESC ID, Unbabel, Priberam and CMU Portugal.

September (21) – Announcement of the 12 CMU Portugal students selected under the Program’s Affiliated Ph.D. Programs Initiative.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September (13) – José M.F. Moura, CMU Portugal Director at CMU awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by Universidade de Lisboa

September (15) – 2021 CMU Portugal Doctoral Symposium at Pavilhão do Conhecimento in Lisbon with the participation of CMU Portugal dual-degree, CMU Portugal affiliated and Ph.D. candidates conducting their doctoral thesis under one of the CMU Portugal research Projects

September (16) – IST Distinguished Lecture by CMU Portugal Director José M.F. Moura titled “A story that weaves itself by detecting data on hard drives”

October (7) – “2021 Fall Welcome Back Lunch” organized on campus at Carnegie Mellon University to welcome CMU Portugal Ph.D. students at CMU.

October (27) – Online Info session “How to apply for a CMU Portugal Dual-Degree Ph.D. Scholarship” with the participation of +90 potential candidates

November (29 and 30) – Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education visits CMU

December (7) – Webinar #1 of the AIDA Webinar Series (5 Webinars September 2022) organized by the project with CMU Portugal support.

December (10) – Announcement of the 6 new Exploratory Research projects supported under the CMU Portugal Program for 12 months

December (21) – Minister Manuel Heitor distinguishes José M.F. Moura with the Medal of Scientific Merit

The CMU Portugal Program has an Open Call for applications to the first edition of the Advanced Training Program in User Experience Design, an initiative promoted in collaboration with Técnico +, the Advanced Training School from Instituto Superior Técnico, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa (FCUL), Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCT UNL) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

The Course will start in March 2022 and convene through June 2022 for 10 modules (216h). Classes will take place primarily onsite at Técnico+ facilities, at the Alameda Campus in Lisbon, and count on Carnegie Mellon Faculty members that will lecture some of the modules.

The Advanced Training Program in User Experience Design aims to educate and qualify active agents, aspirants, or well-established professionals, and researchers and academics in Human-Computer Interaction, in an interdisciplinary, structured, and stimulant learning environment.

This Program offers curricular units on the design and evaluation of interactive systems, emphasizing human-centered design techniques and the technologies that support novel user experiences. The course will be fully taught in English.  It will focus on the comprehension of human skills and the consequences using interactive technologies as tools for work-related tasks, new lifestyles and experiences mediated by computing technology.

Eligible candidates should have a pre-Bologna degree (Licenciado) or master’s degree in one of the main areas of the Advanced Training Program: Informatics or Computer Science, Design and Psychology or similar areas such as Sociology, Anthropology, Multimedia, Communication Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering Or Telecommunications, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Management.

Applications are open at: Técnico+ website.  

More on the modules, faculty and course structure at the UxD page or in the Program’s brochure.

Here’s a brief overview of the 10 modules:

User-centered Research and Evaluation – March 2022 (TBC)
Coordinator: Raelin Musuraca (CMU)
Lecture hours/ weeks: 30h/1

Interaction Design Studio – March 2022 (TBC)
Coordinator(s): Skip Shelley (CMU)
Lecture hours/ weeks: 30h/1w

Programming Usable Interfaces / Software Structures for UIs – April 2022 (TBC)
Coordinators: Augusto Esteves (IST), Manuel Fonseca (FCUL), Nuno Correia (FCT-UNL)
Lecture hours/ weeks: 30h/1w

Service Design  – May 2022 (TBC)
Coordinators: Valentina Nisi (ITI/LARSyS), Jodi Forlizzi (CMU)
Lecture hours/ weeks: 18h/1w

Digital Media and Storytelling – May 2022 (TBC)
Coordinators: Nuno Correia and Teresa Romão – FCTUNL
Lecture hours/ weeks: 18h/1w

Human AI Interaction – May 2022 (TBC)
Coordinators: Tiago Guerreiro and João Guerreiro – FCUL
Lecture hours/ weeks: 18h/1w

Augmented and Virtual Reality – April 2022 (TBC)
Coordinators: Daniel Lopes, Augusto Esteves, Diogo Cabral – IST
Lecture hours/ weeks: 18h/1w

Data driven Design – Date TBC
Coordinator: João Magalhães (FCT-UNL)
Lecture hours/ weeks: 18h/1w

Web and Mobile Accessibility – June 2022 (TBC)
Coordinator: Carlos Duarte and Luís Carriço – FCUL
Lecture hours/ weeks: 18h/1w

Digital Service Innovation – June 2022 (TBC)
Coordinator: Skip Shelly (CMU)
Lecture hours/ weeks: 18h/1w

In a Ceremony held on December 21, the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Manuel Heitor, distinguished 12 personalities, including CMU Portugal program Director at Carnegie Mellon University José M.F. de Moura, with a Medal of Scientific Merit (Medalha de Mérito Científico). This distinction rewards national and foreign individuals who, by virtue of their high professional and performance duties, have been recognized by their exceptional contributions to the development of science or scientific culture.

With a career of more than 50 years and living in the United States since the 70s, José M.F. Moura has been supporting research and educational initiatives between Portugal and the United States for the last three decades and since 2006 through initiatives supported under the CMU Portugal Program. This year he was already awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by Universidade de Lisboa, in recognition of his academic, scientific and professional outstanding contributions, worldwide and with a strong impact in Portugal and Instituto Superior Técnico, in signal processing and data science.

The group of individuals now recognized by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education (MCTES) for their contribution to the development of science and scientific culture in Portugal also included: Maria José Miguel and Dulce Anahory from the MCTES office; Helena Pereira who is currently FCT President, Emília Moura and Isabel Vitorino also from FCT; Ana Noronha and Rosalía Vargas (Ciência Viva), Raúl Capaz Coelho (SGEC), Luís Magalhães (IST) and Paulo Ferrão (COST and former FCT President).

Photo by MCTES