By Nuno Teixeira, SICC, FEUP
“The Portuguese Association for Artificial Intelligence (APPIA) award for the Best Doctoral Thesis in Artificial Intelligence of 2024 was awarded to Miguel Abreu, a former student of the Doctoral Programme in Informatics Engineering (PRODEI) at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP).
The award-winning thesis, entitled “Symmetry, hierarchical structures and shallow neural networks: Advancing reinforcement learning for humanoids” and developed under the supervision of Luís Paulo Reis (FEUP) and Nuno Lau (University of Aveiro), represents a significant advance in the application of reinforcement learning to humanoid robots, exploiting symmetry, hierarchical structures and shallow neural networks to increase the efficiency and robustness of complex robotic systems.
Miguel Abreu’s contribution was fundamental to the successes of the FC Portugal team, four-time world champions in the RoboCup 3D Humanoid Robot Simulation league (2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025), where he actively participated in the development of advanced algorithms for control, planning and co-operation between robots.
Miguel Abreu currently works at the DLR (German Aerospace Centre) in Munich, where he continues his research into intelligent robotics and autonomous systems.
The award ceremony for the Best PhD Thesis in Artificial Intelligence 2024 took place on 2 October, during the dinner of the 24th edition of EPIA – Portuguese Meeting of Artificial Intelligence, held in Faro.
The prize includes an official certificate and a symbolic monetary value of 1000 euros.
Created in 2007, the APPIA Prize for the Best Thesis was initially awarded biennially, but since 2022 it has become annual, with the aim of highlighting the scientific merit of excellent research in the field of Artificial Intelligence in Portugal.”