In a scenario of commemoration of the 112th anniversary of the University of Porto, 20 students received the Incentive Award, created to reward the performance and the results of the students who conclude their 1st year of their course with the best average.

In the list of students who concluded their 1st year, 2021/2022, with the best average, we find three students from L.EIC (FEUP/FCUP) with an average higher than 19 values. They are Félix Martins (19,73 values), Marco Vilas Boas (19,45) and Mansur Mustafin (19,33).

Félix Martins, who has always been curious about what is behind the functioning of programs and games, saw in Computer Engineering a so obvious choice that ended up influencing, in some way, the choice of his sister, 3 years older. He tells us that “the first year at the University of Porto was a challenging but very rewarding experience” and that what he liked the most was to realize that he was in the right course. The young student from Vila Nova de Famalicão, who hopes, 10 years from now, to have already completed his first major project with a positive impact on society, collaborating with people from different parts of the world, in order to enrich his experience and broaden his knowledge.

Marco Vilas Boas, who entered L.EIC from Barcelos Secondary School, where he discovered the taste for programming “because it involves a lot of logical reasoning and allows him to develop interesting and useful projects”, tells us that “this award symbolises the potential reward that arises when I put everything I am into something I like to do”. Despite the difficulties felt in the first year due to so many sudden changes, like leaving secondary school and entering university, with a move to the city of Porto in between, it was a year full of good experiences that “made him grow as a person”. The taste for solving “programming problems” is one of the reasons that led him to be part of the nucleus NIAEFEUP and neACM, but he says that were the several moments of conviviality provided by the nucleus that helped his integration in the FEUP community. He does not usually think much about the future but he believes that he will certainly be working in something that he likes and that challenges him, either in the areas of research, teaching or in the industry.

Mansur Mustafin was born in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan and acknowledges that the “pleasant and international environment” was one of the points that most impressed him in his first year at the University as well as his experience teaching in the “Uniformização de Matemática” course for other international students. He defined U.Porto with the word “opportunity” and hopes in 10 years’ time “to have a significant positive impact on the industry and at the same time continue my connection with the University to share my experience and knowledge”. He has lifelong learning ambitions and at this point wishes to “thank all the people who support me in this challenge”.

The Incentive Award, given annually since 2010, corresponds to an individual monetary prize, corresponding to the value of the annual tuition fee applied to national students at the U.Porto.

The Pavilion Prof. Dr. Galvão Telles was the stage for the final of the U.Porto Staff Cup 2023, in a night that was of celebration for FEUPSal, when beating the FMUP team by 1-0.

The FEUP Futsal team (currently composed by teachers, technicians and researchers), has 3 players from DEI, Amílcar Fernandes, João Pedro Dias and Pedro Miguel Silva, who highlighted the team spirit and sportsmanship that is lived in so many nights of play and that culminates now in a great achievement.

Pedro Silva, author of the only goal scored at 18 minutes of the first half, tells us that “it was a balanced game but FEUPSal team had greater control. Until the final whistle, there were several opportunities for both teams, but the result remained unchanged”.

FEUPSal thus won its first Cup, after being defeated in the previous finals in 2017 and 2019. On April 17, the FEUPSal team will take the field again, this time for the Championship final against the UP Inter team.

On April 4^th, Rui Filipe Lima Maranhão de Abreu, Full Professor at DEI, took office as the new Director of the Doctoral Program in Informatics Engineering.

Prof. Rui Maranhão (publishes as Rui Abreu) holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science – Software Engineering from the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, and a M.Sc. in Computer and Systems Engineering from the University of Minho, Portugal. His research revolves around software quality, with emphasis in automating the testing and debugging phases of the software development life-cycle as well as self-adaptation. Dr. Abreu has extensive expertise in both static and dynamic analysis algorithms for improving software quality. He is the recipient of 6 Best Paper Awards, including a Distinguished Paper Award at ESEC/FSE 2019, and his work has attracted considerable attention. Before joining FEUP as a Full Professor, he was an Associate Professor at IST, U.Lisbon and a member of the Model-Based Reasoning group at PARC’s System and Sciences Laboratory and an Assistant Professor at the University of Porto. He has co-founded DashDash in January 2017, a platform to create web apps using only spreadsheet skills. The company has secured $9M in Series A funding in May 2018. He was a Visiting Researcher at Google NYC between 2019 and 2020, working on building systems and tools to increase the security of C/C++ codebases.

The 15th edition of the European BEST Engineering Competition Challenge (EBEC Challenge) was held at FEUP from 4 to 6 March (local round) and challenged dozens of teams formed by students from FEUP and FCUP to design in 24 hours a prototype testing their creativity, problem solving skills, teamwork, and the possibility to be present at the national/regional round, with the winners of all local rounds in Portugal and Spain, in a final that will take place at the Polytechnic University of Madrid between 5 and 8 May 2023.

This competition is divided in two modalities, Case Study (theoretical test where a real problem of a company is given to solve) and Innovative Design (practical test where the main goal is to build a prototype, with a limited number of materials and at a low cost), being the “magic FoRMuLa” team the winner of this last modality, composed by four students of the Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering.

Lucas Santos, Francisco Pires, Rita Ramada and Mafalda Magalhães worked their magic and in 24 hours created a prototype capable of picking up rubbish from a water tank, both at the surface and at depth, and depositing it on a platform. To achieve their goal the team could only use materials available in the designated shop, which had a credit cost associated with them. Lucas Santos tells us that they were limited to existing stock, so having quickly started to run out of some essential materials, they were forced to make quick decisions between planning ahead for the prototype, managing the credits spent (which would influence the final score) and purchasing the materials they needed while they were still in stock.

And what was the secret to success? “Teamwork was one of the keys to our success, as each member brought different skills and knowledge to the challenge. Communication and coordination between each of us was key to ensure everyone was on the same page and working towards the same goals,” tell us the winning team whose decision to enter the EBEC Challenge was motivated by the desire to test their practical skills and the challenge of competing against other students.

Since the academic year 2013/2014 EBEC Challenge Porto is credited with 1.5 ECTS as a training action of 40.5 hours. The Case Study competition is called “EBEC Porto 24h – Case Study” and the Innovative Design competition is called “EBEC Porto 24h – Team Design” having been a success in each edition.

Photo: BEST Porto