In the week that marks the Rare Disease Day, which since its creation in 2008 is celebrated on the last day of February, the 28th, or 29th, the rarest day of the year, we learn about PLAY-THE-ODDS, a project led by the University of Porto that encourages families to talk about the risk of hereditary cancer and rare diseases.

This project, which included in the research team António Coelho (DEI), Hernâni Oliveira (alumni PDMD) and Juliana Monteiro (PDMD), is part of a research line of the Psychology Center of the University of Porto, dedicated to the well-being of families with hereditary cancer risk. This line of research began in 2018 with a joint project with IPO Porto, the TOGETHER project, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-030980). TOGETHER studied the processes of psychological adaptation to the performance of genetic susceptibility tests to cancer. All the scientific output can be found here and has been compiled in this White Paper. We find in this documentation very useful content about genetic syndromes of risk for cancer and prevention of hereditary cancer, family adaptation to genetic cancer risk, and some of the main genetic syndromes of risk for cancer and their characteristics and the importance of health services.

In the course of TOGETHER, both families and health professionals indicated the need for specific preparation to disclose to their children the presence of a syndrome in the family, as well as to deal with the challenges of this condition over time.

PLAY-THE-ODDS is an 18-month exploratory project, funded by FCT (EXPL/PSI-GER/1270/2021), which responds to this need. Based on scientific research, and using participatory methodologies, PLAY-THE-ODDS brings together people with hereditary cancer syndromes and their families, genetic counseling specialists, psychologists, communication designers, and gamification experts to co-create solutions. Specific preparation to disclose to children the presence of a hereditary cancer syndrome in the family, as well as to deal with the challenges of this condition over time, is a need that families have come to feel.

According to Célia Sales, the principal investigator, “this reality can be very distressing. The person with the syndrome is dealing with his or her own diagnosis and, at the same time, with the fear that he or she may have passed this condition on to their children. They don´t know if they should tell their children, or how, or when the time is right. Our goal is to create a prototype of an interactive communication tool to help parents and children communicate about hereditary cancer risk, which can be integrated in routine genetic counseling and psycho-oncology settings as a support resource for families.”
One of the novelties brought by this project is its co-creation approach: the project brings together people with hereditary cancer syndromes and their families, health professionals (Genetic Counseling and Psychology) and technology professionals (Communication Design and Human-Centered Design) in the active search for solutions to the real needs of their daily lives. For Hernâni Oliveira, co-principal investigator, “this project is innovative because it is the family itself and the health professionals who, together with specialists in technology, define the solution that helps them the most, a real solution defined by those who live this reality”.

Communicating health-related problems and the possibility of hereditary cancer is not an easy task, especially in a family context, where the generational difference can be an added difficulty. Serious games can help bridge these differences and serve as facilitators to help both in communicating the implications of the disease for all family members, and in helping the patient better internalize and understand the situation they are in.

With this in mind João Monteiro Leite, recent M.EIC graduate, collaborated in the project through the dissertation “Collaborative platform for soundwalks to improve health literacy and communication”, where he developed a framework for a platform that will host several solutions aiming to help patients better understand their condition and the associated genetic risks, as well as facilitate the communication of this syndrome to other relatives. These solutions should also assist users in understanding the risks they face, as well as the measures that exist to deal with these. One such solution, the main focus of this thesis, is the development of a soundwalk, which presents a narrative story with some challenges designed to help facilitate communication between the parental dyad.

+ information about PLAY-THE-ODDS, can be obtained from the researcher Juliana Monteiro through the email jmonteiro.playtheodds@gmail.com.

After a short interregnum in its activities, the ACM FEUP’s student chapter is back with the appointment of the new board on February 8, at 17:30, in room I-105.

Tiago Viana (Chair), João Ramos (Vice-Chair), Carolina Gonçalves (Secretary), João Coelho (Treasurer), Filipe Correia (Chairperson), Marco Costa (Chairperson) and Pedro Landolt (Chairperson), constitute the new team that, under the mentorship of Professor André Restivo, Director of L.EIC, intends to establish a community of students interested in the several emerging areas of computer science, and to train students capable in domains such as competitive programming and computer security.

ACM’s Professional and Student chapters worldwide serve as hubs of activity for ACM members and the computing community at large. They provide seminars, lectures, learning forums and networking opportunities with peers and experts across the computing spectrum.

ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) was founded in 1947, and today is the world’s largest educational and scientific society, uniting  computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.

E-REDES Top Women Scholarship is a scholarship programme aimed at rewarding young women finalists of Masters in the areas of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, with the aim of encouraging an increase in the number of women opting for the technology sector, where gender imbalances still persist.

“We are committed to promoting full participation and equal opportunities in our organization, but also to supporting and extending to other technological areas” can be read on the website of E-Redes, the main electricity distribution grid operator in mainland Portugal for high, medium and low voltage grids.

In a public ceremony on December 6th, the 15 winners of the 1st edition of the program were known at Central Tejo, in Lisbon, where the students of the Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering, Ana Inês Oliveira de Barros and Diana Cristina Amaral de Freitas are included.

Talking to Ana Inês she told us that she wasn’t expecting the news that she had won this award. “I was very happy to see my commitment and work being recognised and it is an honour to be among the best engineering students. Being one of the winners of this edition motivates me to continue to show my worth as a woman in engineering. I am also excited for the future, to get to know E-Redes better, the rest of the winners and to finally start my career as an engineer at FEUP. I am ready and motivated to develop new ideas that contribute to the engineering area and I would like to thank E-Redes and my family, friends and teachers that supported and helped me along this path”, shares the student that soon will start the final phase of the master with a dissertation in the software engineering area.

Diana Freitas, also a 2nd year M.EIC student, shares that being one of the winners of the E-Redes Top Women Scholarship is an incentive to continue to fight for her academic and professional goals. “This small achievement was the result of continuous effort and also the helpfulness of teachers to clarify questions and the spirit of peer-to-peer help. This award in particular reflects the potential of women in the technology sector, where I believe our skills, opinion and working method are still not properly valued. It also gives me the chance to take part in a mentoring programme, which can help me prepare for the next stage”, she says enthusiastically.

All the winners of this prize, which has a pecuniary value of 2 thousand euros and the opportunity to participate in mentoring and internship programmes, can be found here.

“Toponymy is not a simple detail or arbitrary process: it is made of political and ideological choices that reinforce hegemonic narratives. It is necessary to reflect on them.” – this is the sentence that closes the description of the project Ruas do Género (Streets of Gender), a visual essay on the representation of gender in the toponymy of the city of Porto, developed by two alumni of the Integrated Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering of FEUP, João Bernardo Narciso and Cláudio Lemos, and that can, and deserves, to be explored: Ruas do Género (ruasdogenero.pt).

This project clearly shows us the overwhelming difference in gender representations in the streets of Porto where 44% are named after men and only 4% are named after women! But not only the number of streets named after women is 11 times smaller than those named after men, but the importance and extension of these streets is also reduced. After organizing them by gender, the researchers come to the conclusion that “not only are women under-represented, but those who name almost all the most prominent streets are saints. Removing the religious and dynastic figures, there remains a minority of streets named after women of letters, artists, teachers, an engineer and a scientist.”

With this work, which shows us the reality not only through numbers but also through visual representation, they hope that future decision making will be facilitated, allowing a greater gender and social representation of the various generations as well as valuing legacies that do not deserve to be forgotten.

“When representation is so unequal and we continue to have streets that pay homage to heroes of the fascist regime or heroes of colonialism instead of representing today’s society, we are choosing badly,” João and Cláudio conclude in a recent interview given to Público.

The project received an honorable mention in The Pudding Cup -The best visual and data-driven stories of 2022 and promises to give more to talk about.

Photo: Adriano Miranda, Jornal Público

Luis Paulo Reis, DEI’s Associate Professor with Aggregation, was unanimously reelected last January 3rd as Director of LIACC – Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science at the University of Porto.

Beside him will be Henrique Lopes Cardoso (FEUP), Mário Florido (FCUP), Brígida Mónica Faria (IPP) and José Cascalho (UAc), the new Board of Directors of this research laboratory based at FEUP, resulting from elections held on 19 and 20 December.

It is with enthusiasm and optimism that the new team faces the challenges that are expected to be many in the triennium 2023-25, at a time when the discussion about the impacts of Artificial Intelligence in the economy and society runs at the pace of its rapid development.

Luis Paulo Reis, who is also president of APPIA – Portuguese Association for Artificial Intelligence, has no doubts that with the increasingly widespread use of AI in various sectors of society, “we are taking a step as relevant as the industrial revolution”, something that may be similar to the transport revolution that began with the invention of the steam locomotive, “not in a literal sense, but in the impact it may cause in society”. In a recent interview for jornal i on the “Artificial Intelligence Revolution”, he shares his vision on the inevitability of the disappearance of certain types of jobs and believes that with “artificial intelligence it will be possible to reduce in a generalized way most of the State’s costs”, foreseeing “a reduction in the number of civil servants and a reduction in public spending, which could contemplate all types of sectors, from transport to health and the administrative area”, which will be ensured by a partially automated State body. He anticipates that “allocating surplus capital to improve State infrastructures, creating new support and monetary incentives for citizens, investing in areas of interest, such as culture, and ultimately, enabling each citizen to perform tasks of their interest, which will boost creativity and imagination” will increase citizens’ quality of life across the board.

And it is with this ultimate purpose that LIAAC R&D intends to continue investing in the areas of Health and Well-being, Smart Cities and Mobility, Innovative and Sustainable Industry/Services, Public Administration and Governance, Infrastructures and Highly Connected Society and Entertainment/Games.

Being now part of LASI – Intelligent Systems Associate Laboratory, the largest Associated Laboratory in Portugal that includes 13 R&D institutions and more than 500 researchers with PhD, will allow LIACC to increase its critical mass, funding and internationalization, and continue to develop one of its main goals, the creation of sustainable and inclusive innovation for society, improving applications, materials and products and using advanced technologies of intelligent systems, providing high levels of accuracy, performance and adaptation over time.