On March 26, the Plano B nightclub hosted the first meeting of ‘Há Conversas na Movida’. The initiative, launched by the municipality, was designed for the economic agents of Porto’s Movida area and will feature five informal talks on five topics, led by experts, at five venues in the city’s nightlife area over the course of 2025.

For two hours, this first talk focussed on the theme of sound and the role of music in developing the local economy and enriching Porto’s culture and identity.

The Councillor for Economic Activities and Supervision, Filipa Correia Pinto, opened the session and explained that the main aim of the initiative is for each talk to contribute to a regular debate and exchange of experiences between economic agents, the sharing of good practices, greater knowledge on various topicsand, above all, the recognition and appreciation of the community and the economic ecosystem of this central area of Porto.

Daniel Duque, director and editor of Cabine – Cultura Eletrónica Portuguesa, moderated the conversation with the guests Gilberto Bernardes, musician, lecturer at DEI/FEUP and researcher at INESC TEC, and Rúben Domingues, curator and director of RDZ Music Agency.

Gilberto Bernardes, head of the Sound and Music Computing Laboratory, spoke about advances in sound technology and new musical solutions, namely the existence of speakers that allow you to direct the sound of music and the possibility of creating immersive experiences by synchronising sound and light.

Rúben Domingues, a producer and curator of musical events in Portugal, presented some musical projects he has been implementing in Porto, stressing the importance of installing sound limiters and studying the location of the stage at events, as a way of minimising the noise emitted by the sound.

This was followed by a question and answer session with the participants, mostly nightlife establishments in the Movida area.

The 4th edition of the U.Porto 3MT® (Three Minute Thesis) competition, an initiative that challenges doctoral students at the University of Porto to test and put into practice their communication skills, will have its final on May 16th at the Salão Nobre of U.Porto’s Rectorate.

There are 20 finalists who will be challenged to communicate science in a final that will be open to the whole community.

Bernardo Leite, a student of the Doctoral Programme in Informatics Engineering (ProDEI), will be one of the 8 FEUP representatives to explain his research work in just 3 minutes: Student-centric question generation.

Ever since he was a child, Bernardo has had a great passion for computers and how they work. He is currently a fully motivated researcher and professional in the field of Computer Science. His main areas of interest are Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Computer Supported Education and Question Generation (his PhD project, supervised by Henrique Lopes Cardoso (DEI)).

The Three Minute Thesis is sponsored by Caixa Geral de Depósitos and will award a cash prize of 2000 euros to the winner and an honourable mention of 1000 euros.

On 24 March, at the Solemn Session of Dia da Universidade 2025, the students António Lourenço Rodrigues and Luís Barbosa, from the Bachelor in Informatics and Computing Engineering (L.EIC), were awarded the Incentive Prize 2025, for the best 1st year students from the 14 faculties of U.Porto in the academic year 2023/2024.

The 22 awarded students stood out for the exceptional quality of their academic career in the 1st year of the program, led by António Lourenço Rodrigues, who finished with an average of 19.83 marks. Luís Barbosa was also on the 19 mark (19.35) with an equally fantastic first year.

António said in an interview about the prize: ‘The Incentive Award represents recognition, on the part of the University, of my efforts throughout the first year. For me, it’s one more motivation to keep doing my best and improving academically.’

The interview given to the U.Porto’s communications team can be read in full here.

The Incentive Award has been awarded annually since 2010 and corresponds to an individual monetary prize corresponding to the annual tuition fee applied to U.Porto’s national students.

The new programme of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), ‘FEUP Boost Engineering’, has been officially launched, a project aimed at secondary schools, offering them the chance to take part in the activities that are part of the project’s offer.
We’re talking about more than 40 activities, divided into workshops (activities for young people to ‘get their hands dirty’ in real-life application activities) and the engi talks (themed lectures on current topics from an engineering perspective).

And what is FEUP’s goal with this initiative? – “To bring STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) concepts to schools and promote debate on current issues. Available throughout the year, the programme aims to raise awareness of scientific and technological culture among young people,” writes Álvaro Paralta, from the Talent Unit, in the article promoting the programme.

There will be several areas covered in these activities, including climate change, renewable energies, the circular economy, the internet of things and artificial intelligence.

At DEI, several teachers and researchers have been mobilised to foster curiosity in these young people and show them that knowledge and technology can solve very complex problems. Carlos Soares, Diana Sousa, Lázaro Costa and Luis Paulo Reis offer, respectively: (Ir)Responsible Artificial Intelligence, STEM Code: decode, play and learn!, Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence and Robotics: Challenges and Opportunities.

According to Luís Paulo Reis (DEI), “FEUP Boost Engineering provides students with an excellent opportunity to have direct contact with advanced scientific areas, enrich their training and identify interests and skills at an early stage in their lives. The activities will enable the development of essential skills such as collaborative work, complex problem solving, the use of emerging technologies and the ability to adapt to innovative contexts, which are fundamental to meeting the challenges of the future.” This is his conviction, which is clearly visible in the lectures he has given over the years, publicising STEM areas as crucial to the society we want to build.

All secondary schools are eligible and can submit their enrolment for the proposed activities at FEUP Escolas website.

Created in 2003, zerozero.pt is the largest football database in the world, with two million player records and five million matches.

A delegation from the Department of Informatics Engineering visited the facilities of zerozero.pt, the project of five alumni from the Licenciatura em Engenharia Informática e Computação (LEIC) of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), which has become the world’s largest football database, with free access, and is a benchmark on the digital and journalistic scene in Portugal.

Zerozero.pt was born in 2003, during the final years of university, as a project of five friends, four of them from the first generation of LEIC, driven by their passion for football, the need to create a reliable and detailed repository of sports statistics, and the opportunity to put into practice some of the knowledge they had acquired during the course.

Marco Sousa and Pedro Dias were the two founders of zerozero.pt who welcomed the FEUP delegation, with the former praising the bond between the two institutions. ‘The bond between zerozero and the faculty grew naturally. We believe that the fact that the five founders took their (pre-bologna) degrees in Informatics and Computing Engineering at FEUP, four of them in the ‘first batch’ of the course (1994-1999), carries a special symbolism. In fact, several of our fellow students are now professors at the university and these links have created a natural bridge between FEUP and zerozero, based on the quality, respect and admiration we have for our teachers and colleagues, who have had a real impact on our professional lives.’

The teachers who took part in this visit, Raul Vidal, João Pascoal Faria and João Cardoso – all from the Department of Informatics Engineering (DEI) – gave an overview of this relationship, which has been based on dissertation projects, partnerships within the scope of Linking Great Partners (LGP), and also on the recent recognition of zerozero as a FEUP Affiliate, on 13 January, at the Dia da FEUP ceremony. ‘This relationship materialises in zerozero’s active participation in the FEUP and U.Porto ecosystem, where we (proudly!) challenge the Academy every year and are also challenged by it. We’ve hosted several dissertations by Informatics and Computing Engineering and Information Science students, but we’ve also welcomed Communication Sciences and Journalism students to do curricular internships in our newsroom, and we’re also present in several curricular units of the current Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Informatics and Computing Engineering (L.EIC and M.EIC), successors to LEIC (pre-Bologna), such as LGP or Projeto Integrador’.

This visit took place the day after the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup trophy was exhibited on the premises of zerozero, which, in 2024, received the ‘Online Journalism’ award from the Association of Sports Journalists (CNID).

Author: Nuno Teixeira, SICC, FEUP.
Photo: zerozero