As part of the New Masters 2024 Celebration, which took place November 23rd at the José Marques dos Santos Auditorium of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), the Prof. Doutor Raul Vidal/Deloitte Prize was awarded for the third time.
The jury awarded the prize to Gonçalo José Cerqueira Pascoal, a recent graduate of the Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering, who received a cash prize of 3 000 euros.
Gonçalo developed a Master’s thesis that proposes an innovative method, based on deep reinforcement learning, to compose quantum algorithms more efficiently for specific architectures, helping to mitigate the detrimental effects of noise on the reliability of the computations performed. “Noise-Adaptive Reinforcement Learning Strategies for Qubit Routing”, supervised by Professors João Paulo Fernandes and Rui Maranhão, was considered highly innovative, with an academic contribution and practical interest, leading to a subsequent scientific article.
During his four years at FEUP, he was a member of the Associação Tuna de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (TEUP), an academic group with over 35 years of history that aims to facilitate the integration of students into the university, preserve student traditions and promote the love for music. During this time, he has actively participated in the organisation of various events of a charitable and cultural nature.
On the day of the award ceremony, Gonçalo on this recognition: “(…) after completing my academic career at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, today I had the honour of being present at the New Masters 2024 Celebration and being honoured with the Prof. Dr. Raul Vidal Award, created by Deloitte. I would like to thank Prof Dr Raul Moreira Vidal, Deloitte, the members of the jury and all the teachers and colleagues who marked my time at FEUP. In future activities, I will strive to continue to apply the same level of dedication, perseverance and rigor that this award seeks to recognise’.
*This award is intended to recognise each year a recent graduate from one of the following FEUP courses, Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering (M.EIC) and Master in Software Engineering (MESW), who has excelled in curricular activities, for the quality and innovation of the work carried out in the field of Software Engineering, and for student support and social and solidarity activities.