Faculty staff and DEI´s Subdirector Ana Cristina Ramada Paiva was recently appointed to integrate the Board of Informatics Europe for a three-year mandate (2025-2027).

The nominating committee of this organisation, whose origins date back to 2005, was unanimous in proposing the name of the DEI’s lecturer for a position on the board, recognizing the importance of her research work in Software Engineering and her willingness to offer her services to the community.

Ana Paiva on her new challenge tells us “ Being part of the IE board means being able to give Portugal a voice in the European context and contribute to the IE mission, that is, to empower and unite the Informatics community in Europe and contribute to the development of Informatics policies for education, research and social impact.”

The origins of Informatics Europe can be traced back to the first European Computer Science Summit (ECSS) held at ETH Zurich in 2005 (later renamed the European Computer Leaders Summit in 2024), which for the first time brought together heads of computer science and informatics departments from all over Europe. Apart from the lectures, panels and workshops, the most important outcome of the summit was the unanimous opinion that European computer scientists urgently needed an organisation with objectives and scope similar to those of the CRA (Computer Research Association) in the USA, extended – in view of the situation in Europe,  to cover both teaching and research. Consequently, the “European University and Research Organisation for Information Technology and Computer Science (EuroTICS)” was created with the aim of becoming the recognised voice of the European computing community, including universities and research centres. The name of the organisation was later changed to ‘Informatics Europe’.

The organisation represents the academic and research community in Informatics (or Computer Science) in Europe. Bringing together university departments, research laboratories and industry, the EI has around 200 member institutions in more than 30 countries, linking more than 50,000 computer science researchers in Europe and beyond. The EI creates a strong voice to promote concerted positions, acting on shared priorities in education, research, knowledge transfer and the social impact of Computer Science.

In Portugal it has the following member institutions: Universidade do Porto (DEI/FEUP), Universidade Nova de Lisboa (NOVA LINCS) and Instituto Politécnico de Leiria (ESTG).

+ info on its projects and services.

The 100 students selected for the Gulbenkian New Talent Scholarship programme are now known. The aim of the programme is to distinguish and support the talent of students with exceptional academic performance and to encourage them to begin research in the areas of basic science: biology, physics, mathematics and chemistry, as well as in any area of the humanities, arts and social sciences.

Among the 100 scholarship holders selected are 18 students from the University of Porto, linked to the areas of Biology, Social Sciences, Physics, Humanities, Mathematics and Chemistry. We find Luís Wolffrom Barbosa on this shortlist, a second year L.EIC student who finished the first year with an average of 19.35 marks.

Luís tells us that what led him to apply was ‘the desire to explore the link between Mathematics and Informatics and to learn more about some of the branches I could choose in the future.’ He was also motivated by the activities and events on offer throughout the programme and the chance to make contact with the other scholarship holders. ‘It’s an honour to be a Gulbenkian scholarship holder and I hope I’m up to the challenge!’ acknowledges the student, who still doesn’t know what path he will follow after finishing his degree but knows that he wants to continue learning and deepening his knowledge and, most importantly, doing what he loves!

The Gulbenkian New Talent Scholarships are aimed at students attending the 2nd, 3rd or 4th year of undergraduate or integrated master’s programmes, or the 1st year of master’s programmes, at Portuguese HEIs, with an average of 16.5 or above at the time of application.

With a value of up to 3,500 euros, the scholarship includes support – totalling 1,000 euros – to ensure that the scholarship holders can continue their studies, namely for the payment of tuition fees and to stimulate research.

The remaining amount – 1,500 euros – is earmarked for ‘talent enrichment activities’, namely: advanced training courses; participation in conferences and summer schools; internships, language courses, the purchase of books and laboratory equipment, among others.

Candidates whose household has an annual per capita income of less than 12,000 euros will also be entitled to complementary social support worth 1,000 euros.

The scholarships also include an immersive talent enrichment programme. The fellows are supported by tutors and a scientific committee, both professors of recognised merit, who, through permanent dialogue, accompany the fellows throughout their research work, developing excellence through contact with excellence.

More than just a grant, the New Talents programme includes scientific retreats, a unique experience that combines scientific activities with cultural and social activities in the special setting of the Gulbenkian Foundation.

Last Saturday, 26th October, the Águeda School of Technology and Management (ESTGA-UA) hosted another edition of MIUP – Inter-University Programming Marathon, an annual event organised by various Portuguese universities for more than two decades.

For 5 hours, several teams with a maximum of 3 members competed in the programming competition, where students had to solve between 9 and 11 different problems using the C, C++, Java and Python 3 programming languages.

The University of Porto participated with 3 teams:

– “TSP – Tiny Silly Problem”, with 1 element from M.EIC (Marco Filipe Gonçalves Vilas Boas), 1 from M.IA (Félix Marcial Alves Martins) and 1 from M:CC, which came 2nd and won the silver medal;

– “Long long main”, with 3 members of L.EIC (Luis Wolffrom Barbosa, Luís Miguel Costa Gonçalves and Sofia Rebelo Sá e Sousa), who came 4th and won the bronze medal;

– “Tasca Debuggers”, with 1 member from PDCC (ex. MEIC), 1 from M:SI and 1 from M:CC, who came 11th.

André Restivo, faculty member at DEI/FEUP, and Pedro Ribeiro, a faculty member at DCC/FCUP, both members of MIUP’s Scientific Committee, trained the 3 teams (the first two with Pedro Ribeiro as co-coach and the third with André Restivo as co-coach).

It was another marathon that, in addition to the competition, was marked by the socialising and exchange of experiences between students and teachers, something that has characterised this event since 2001.

These 3 teams from the University of Porto will represent the institution at the Southwestern Europe Regional Contest (SWERC), which will be held this year from 29 November to 1 December at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon.

On October 26 and 27, BEST Porto held another edition of SciTeCh, this year hosted by the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto.

The science and technology competition, which aims to challenge FEUP and FCUP students by stimulating their critical spirit and creative thinking, took place over two days in two different categories: Team Design and Hackathon.

In the former, the participants have to design and build a functional device as a solution to a problem, in a limited time and with limited materials, that adequately responds to the requirements and tests of a given problem. In the hackathon category, the proposed challenges may include optimising algorithms to improve efficiency, creating user interfaces or applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyse data and automate processes.

In the latter, we found the “Kebab” team, formed by L.EIC students, who came 1^st in a challenge to develop an intelligent algorithm for stock management, focusing on efficiency and optimisation. From the creation of automated order forms to the careful analysis of the data provided, each team had the opportunity to solve this complex challenge in a real-life context.

The other two teams in this category were ‘Infinity’ (made up of students from FEUP and FCUP) and “Marretas” (composed by students from L.EEC (FEUP), L.EIC and M.IA (both FEUP and FCUP)). In the Team Design category, we’d also like to highlight the 2nd place of the “AMTI” team, also made up of L.EIC students.

Congratulations to all!

All the students who took part in the competition will receive 1.5 ECTS credits towards their course, in addition to the prizes and the knowledge acquired during the week prior to the event in pitch, electronics, tools and IT training.

On the 5th and 6th of October, the Cosmic Pathways’ team, composed by Filipe Gaio, Henrique Fernandes, Miguel Cabral and Rodrigo Silva, all L.EIC students, were the big winners of the Nasa Space Apps Challenge – the world’s biggest hackathon, at one of the local events that this year focused on the Sun’s influence on the Earth as its motto.

The competition challenges participants to collaboratively develop solutions to current issues related to Earth and space using open NASA data.

The two-day event was held both as a global online competition and at local face-to-face events around the world. In Portugal, one of the local events took place in Lisbon, organised by the Atlântica – Instituto Universitário, in partnership with Oeiras Valley, Unicorn Factory Lisboa, Active Space Technologies, CEIIA, Ordem dos Engenheiros, AMSAT-CT, where the L.EIC team won 1st place.

Encouraging new audiences to develop a passion for astronomy and the universe was the mission of “Cosmic Pathways”, which developed the project “Symphony of the Stars: Harmonising the James Webb Space Telescope in Music and Images”. The mission focused on creating a website with a 3D model of the universe, using a representation of the solar system as a reference. In this model, they were able to find different points that were highlighted from the rest to represent images taken by the JWST. Throughout the experience, the user is surrounded by original music, and clicking on each of these images would play a sound effect/musical excerpt generated from the image itself.

Although they explored a number of image-to-audio conversion techniques, they ultimately decided to create their own music, inspired by 3 images they found particularly compelling that were captured by the JWST.

The team received a scholarship for Atlântica’s training offer, with 80% of the amount covered by the institution; from Active Space Technologies, support for the development of the Cosmic Pathways project, mentoring in the development of an end of course project, a summer internship at the company and a visit to the facilities in Coimbra; and from the Municipality of Oeiras, participation in the next Science Fair. Group members will also have the opportunity to participate in the Science Hub podcast, be interviewed about the project – which will be published on the NASA Space Apps page – and compete for the Global Award with mentoring from NASA Space.

Read the testimonies of our winners:

“There are very few opportunities where I can combine two of my passions, making music and programming, and as soon as I saw this opportunity I didn’t want to let it go! After building a team and putting our ideas into action, despite the 3 hours of sleep during the hackathon, we all left with the feeling that we had done our duty and with our hearts full, not only because we had won the hackathon, but also because we were proud of the ‘end product’ we had created. It was undoubtedly an enriching experience to take part in a hackathon that stimulated our creative side and gave us the freedom to design our project from scratch.” – Filipe Gaio

“It was the first time I participated in a hackathon and it was an excellent experience. Although it was a very intense weekend, with very little time to sleep, it was worth it because not only did we learn new technologies to build the project, but we also attended lectures on space exploration, presentation techniques and business models given by experts in the field.”- Henrique Fernandes

“For as long as I can remember I’ve had a huge interest in the universe, and with this incredible competition I had the chance to bring together two things that can sometimes seem so different. The activity was very well organised, always trying to bring the participants closer to each other, as well as enriching educational talks. In short, a well-developed project that allows participants to work and develop something they can be proud of and where creativity can be unleashed.” – Miguel Cabral

‘” It was an incredible experience. I’d never taken part in a competition like this before and I really enjoyed it. It was two days of great fun but also a lot of work to complete as much of the project as possible. In the end, I was proud of the final product and the team’s performance and, of course, very happy that the effort paid off and we won first place.” – Rodrigo Coelho

Hugo Penedones, the Portuguese who was involved in a project that ended up being awarded a Nobel Prize and who has been talked about a lot, is not an unknown Portuguese to us.

Born in Chaves and a graduate of Dr Júlio Martins Secondary School, Hugo spent five years (2000-2005) at LEIC – Bachelor in Informatics and Computing Engineering (recently celebrated 30 years since its creation), where he graduated as the best student in his year.

Before embarking on this adventure, the LEIC graduate spent four years at Google DeepMind (London, UK), during which time he was part of the Alphafold project’s initial team, contributing to the first artificial intelligence model to predict the structure of proteins, which led to the article “Improved protein structure prediction using potentials from deep learning“, published in Nature in January 2020, co-authored with the now Nobel Prize-winning chemists John M. Jumper and Demis Hassabis (among others).

The Alphafold model has been developed over the past few years ‘and has been able to predict the structure of virtually all of the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified. Since its discovery, it has been used by more than two million people in 190 countries. Among its many scientific applications, researchers can now better understand antibiotic resistance and create images of enzymes that can break down plastic. Without proteins, life could not exist. The fact that we can now predict protein structures and design our own proteins is of the greatest benefit to mankind,’ can be read at the Nobel Prize press release.

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on 9 October to David Baker for the near-impossible feat of building entirely new types of proteins, and to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper jointly for developing an AI model to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting the complex structures of proteins.

In the speeches of Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, transcribed below in this order, it is clear that this achievement is due to all the team members, past and present, whose exceptional work has made this result possible. The enthusiasm and curiosity of Hugo Penedones, recalled here in his talk at Commit 2018 (an annual event organised by AlumniEI), is proof that this recognition is also his.

“Receiving the Nobel Prize is the honour of a lifetime. Thank you to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, to John Jumper and the AlphaFold team, the wider DeepMind and Google teams, and to all my colleagues past and present that made this moment possible. I’ve dedicated my career to advancing AI because of its unparalleled potential to improve the lives of billions of people. AlphaFold has already been used by more than two million researchers to advance critical work, from enzyme design to drug discovery. I hope we’ll look back on AlphaFold as the first proof point of AI’s incredible potential to accelerate scientific discovery.”

“Thank you to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for this extraordinary honor. We are so honored to be recognized for delivering on the long promise of computational biology to help us understand the protein world and to inform the incredible work of experimental biologists. It is a key demonstration that AI will make science faster and ultimately help to understand disease and develop therapeutics. This is the work of an exceptional team at Google DeepMind and this award recognizes their amazing work.

Computational biology has long held tremendous promise for creating practical insights that could be put to use in real-world experiments. AlphaFold delivered on this promise. Ahead of us are a universe of new insights and scientific discoveries made possible by the use of AI as a scientific tool. Thank you to my colleagues over the years, for making possible this moment of recognition, as well as the many moments of discovery that lie ahead.”

Hugo Penedones is currently the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Inductiva.AI, a Portuguese start-up that provides an application development interface (API) that allows research labs and companies to use the start-up’s AI algorithms to run simulations. The applications for Inductiva’s technology are myriad, ranging from drug design to aerospace parts, mechanical engineering, route optimisation and more. At the end of last year, the startup – which, in addition to Hugo Penedones, has the other two co-founders on its board of directors, Luís Sarmento (ProDEI alumnus) as CEO, and Clara Gonçalves as COO – received an investment of 2.25 million euros, which has allowed it to invest in new technology and expand its customer base.

The latest data of the “World’s Top 2% Scientists list“, which annually ranks the world’s most cited scientists according to SCOPUS, the world’s largest database of abstracts and citations of scientific publications, is now available.

U.Porto has 182 researchers on this list, including two DEI faculty, João Cardoso and Rui Maranhão (publishes as Rui Abreu).

The full article is available at Notícias U.Porto.

In 2024 we celebrate 30 years since the creation of LEIC – the Bachelor’s Degree in Informatics and Computing Engineering at FEUP, a course that began as a pre-Bologna 5-year Bachelor’s Degree (LEIC) in 1994/95, went on to become a 5-year Integrated Master’s Degree (MIEIC) from 2006/07 and separate 3-year Bachelor’s Degree (L.EIC – joint course with FCUP) and 2-year Master’s Degree (M.EIC) courses from 2021/22, a format that continues today.

This is a good time to recall the innovative characteristics of LEIC when it was launched in 1994, namely that it was the first interdepartmental and interdisciplinary degree course at FEUP, with specific management bodies composed of teachers from various departments, a requirement presented in the creation proposal as essential and decisive by its creators.

The proposal was born in 1993, following a weekend of reflection at the Hotel Boega, Vila Nova de Cerveira, at the beginning of January, attended by Ademar Aguiar, João Falcão e Cunha, João Pascoal Faria, João Vasco Ranito, José Correia, José Manuel Moreira and Raul Moreira Vidal, at the time researchers at INESC Porto. The proposal to create LEIC, signed by Professors João Falcão e Cunha and Raul Moreira Vidal, was presented to the then Director of FEUP, Prof. José Marques dos Santos, and received his full support, namely the assumption of the position of LEIC’s Director between 1994 to 2001.

These have been years of hard work, disruption and winning bets, as evidenced by the evaluation of the External Commission appointed by the Foundation of Portuguese Universities (FUP), which in 2001 ranked LEIC 1st among all similar courses in Portugal, in what was the first evaluation of the course. The report of this evaluation states that “… it should be clarified that the teaching of Informatics in Portugal is in good health and that this health has improved even more since the 1st cycle of evaluations was carried out”, which leads us to conclude that LEIC has made a very significant contribution to the teaching of Informatics and Computing Engineering in our country.

And it is this quality of teaching that has always distinguished the course over the last 30 years, providing students not only with an excellent technical training, but also with transversal training that is highly valued by employers, who have always recognised the quality stamp of FEUP’s EIC graduates. Raul Moreira Vidal, co-founder of LEIC and its director from 2001 to 2008, the year in which he became director of the Department of Informatics Engineering (DEI), created in 2008, is certain that “some of the main reasons for the great successes recorded in the evolution of the course are essentially due to the quality and care taken in the supervision of the course, the quality of the direction/coordination of the course and the quality of the teaching staff and secretariat“.

Looking to the future and all the challenges associated with rapid technological evolution, João Paiva Cardoso, the current director of DEI, says: “30 years strengthens our commitment and increases our responsibility. It’s a time to celebrate and also to wish that we continue to improve our capacity to provide a unique and complete EIC education, which will allow us to continue to train the Informatics engineers of the future.”

The celebration

After 30 years and more than 2600 graduates, it’s time to celebrate the many achievements and look to the future with optimism.

And it was in a festive atmosphere that this milestone of 30 years of EIC was celebrated on the 27th and 28th September at the José Marques dos Santos Auditorium (streamed online), bringing together the large EIC family – alumni, teachers, staff, current students, industrial partners and other institutions, in a total of more than 300 participants, in an event co-organised with AlumniEI (FEUP’s Informatics Engineering Alumni Association, officially created in 2005). 

The programme was opened by Renato Natal Jorge (Deputy Director of FEUP) and João Paiva Cardoso (Director of DEI), followed by a presentation of the programme by the President of the Organising Committee, João Pascoal Faria, a presentation on the evolution and current situation of the course by Rosaldo Rossetti, Co-Director of L.EIC, and a presentation on the alumni community around the world by the President of AlumniEI, José Coutinho.

At this point in the programme, the two projects developed as part of this celebration were presented. The ‘EIC Timeline‘ project, developed by the LGP ‘OpenTabs’ team, where we can explore the historical moments that have shaped Informatics Engineering at the University of Porto, and the ‘AlumniEI World‘ project, a joint DEI-FEUP/AlumniEI initiative, developed by Jénifer Constantino (MESW 2024) and José Coutinho and Rui Neves as consultants, a tool based on LinkedIn data that allows us to find the current location/company of EIC alumni and search by country, course and year of graduation. It’s an ongoing project that aims to involve more and more former students and that will continue with two master’s theses.

Throughout the day, there were two round tables of alumni testimonials, where we were able to witness the diversity of paths and options for those who start from the same point.

Frederico Câmara (Alts Digital), Felipe Ávila da Costa (Infraspeak), Tiago Azevedo (University of Cambridge), Margarida Silva (AWS), Sofia Sá (Alumna L.EIC), Tiago Fernandes (Coverflex), Pedro Côrte-Real (MC Sonae), Sónia Liquito (Spotify), Rui Gonçalves (Meta) and Mariana Salvaterra (Zühlke Group) took to the stage to share their experiences, their individual stories, their difficulties and their successes in two panels moderated by Rui Rodrigues (Director of M. EIC) in the morning and Carla Teixeira Lopes (Director of MCI and one of the first LEIC graduates) in the afternoon.

Later in the afternoon, Clara Gonçalves (Inductiva.AI) brought together Inês Lynce (IST/UL & INESC-ID), José Nuno Oliveira (UMinho & ENSICO), João Ranito (Hands-on Investor) and Gonçalo Quadros (Critical Software) for a round table discussion on what the “next 30 years of EIC” might look like.

Two musical moments livened up the programme and delighted the audience. Sofia Sá, who took part in the first panel of the day with her testimony, included in the repertoire she brought to the auditorium a song of her own, composed especially for this celebration. “Engenharia Informática” is the result of three years of meaningful experiences that, according to Sofia, ‘will last a lifetime’. TUNAFE closed the programme with a joyful performance, something that they have accustomed us to over the years. There were many Informatics familiar faces, who, in addition to their computers, carry their love for music and TUNAFE with them on a daily basis.

The closing speech was given by Raul Moreira Vidal, Emeritus Professor of DEI/FEUP, and Alberto Silva, Secretary of State for Modernisation and Digitalisation.

From the auditorium to the lawn (where the tree planted to celebrate the EIC’s 20th anniversary has been growing for 10 years), the participants ended the evening in the best possible way, with an informal dinner party where conversations and memories brought smiles and promised new reunions.

This was accompanied by a performance by the band Júpiter, with disco funk in the style of Porto, and TECHUMAN, an audiovisual installation designed by Openfield Creative Lab that explores the symbiotic and ever-changing relationship between technology and humanity.

And of course there was plenty of birthday cake, sparkling wine and toasts to the long life of FEUP’s Informatics and Computing Engineering programme.

The party continued on Saturday 28th with a ‘Meet&Grill’ event organized by the AlumniEI Board, with the aim of bringing together former students from the various Informatics and Computing Engineering courses for a time of activity and socializing between several generations of EIC, an opportunity to catch up, meet new people and make plans for the future.

And speaking of the future, we invite you to read ‘Clarke’s Lunette‘, a text written by Fátima Vieira, Vice-Rector of Culture and Museums at the University of Porto, as part of this celebration.

This event was sponsored and supported by various partners listed on the event’s webpage.

The full recording of the event is available here.