On the 13th of January the Auditorium José Marques dos Santos hosted FEUP’s Day 2025, this year with a new format that included activities open to the entire community and a varied programme throughout the day.

Under the motto “A day by everyone, for everyone“, the event included scientific and social activities that strengthened the unity of the academic community and celebrated the achievements that consolidate the role of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto as a national and international reference.

In the afternoon, the most outstanding members of the community over the past year were honoured, with DEI standing out for the excellence of its teaching and the impact of its teachers, technicians and researchers.

The DEI honourees and award winners:

Teaching Excellence Award 2024

Luís Filipe Pinto de Almeida Teixeira

Pedagogical Recognition Award 2024

Ademar Manuel Teixeira de Aguiar

Alexandra Sofia Ferreira Mendes

Ana Cristina Ramada Paiva

André Monteiro de Oliveira Restivo

António Fernando Vasconcelos Cunha Castro Coelho

Bruno Miguel Carvalhido Lima

Filipa Marília Monteiro Ramos

Filipe Alexandre Pais de Figueiredo Correia

Gonçalo da Mota Laranjeira Torres Leão

João António Correia Lopes

João Carlos Viegas Martins Bispo

João Pedro Matos Teixeira Dias

Luís Filipe Pinto de Almeida Teixeira

Nuno Filipe Gomes Cardoso

Nuno Honório Rodrigues Flores

Rui Pedro Amaral Rodrigues

Sara Filipa Couto Fernandes

Teresa Carla de Canha e Matos

Tiago Boldt Pereira de Sousa

Mentions of Excellent Performance 

Catarina da Silva Teixeira e Castro

Retired Professors 

Maria Cristina de Carvalho Alves Ribeiro

Honouring 25 Years at the Service of FEUP 

João Pedro Carvalho Leal Mendes Moreira

Jorge Manuel Gomes Barbosa

On November 15, the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Beira Interior hosted the IEEE Engineering Day, an annual event organised by the Portuguese Section of the IEEE, which celebrates the achievements of engineering in Portugal. This year the focus under the theme “Shaping the Next Generation of Data Centers and Connectivity” brought to Covilhã a reflection on the vital role of engineering in defining the future of digital infrastructures and connectivity.

The event ended with the long-awaited announcement of the winners of the IEEE Portugal MSc Outstanding Awards, a prize that aims to recognise the most innovative and original master’s theses, which explore topics within the technical and scientific areas represented by IEEE, and which is now on its fifth edition.

Nuno Costa, a recent graduate of the Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering (M.EIC), was one of the winners of the award for his thesis entitled “Leveraging Physics-Informed Neural Architectures as Surrogate Models for Space Weather Forecasting”, which proposes models that represent a significant advance for real-time operational space weather forecasting, providing faster and more reliable forecasts, essential for mitigating the impact of space weather on modern technology.

In the realm of space weather forecasting, accurate modeling of solar wind profiles is crucial due to their significant influence on Earth’s magnetosphere and, consequently, on satellite operations, astronaut safety, and communication systems. This thesis addresses the limitations of current magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation tools, which, while effective, face challenges in computational efficiency and predictive accuracy. To overcome these limitations, this research explores the use of advanced machine learning techniques, specifically Physics-Informed Neural Architectures such as Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PiNNs) and Physics-Informed Neural Operators (PiNOs), for creating surrogate models that balance computational speed and physical accuracy.

This research project, which received a 20/20 classification, was supervised by Professor André Restivo (DEI) and co-supervised by doctoral student Filipa Barros (FCUP), about whom he says: “I’m very grateful to them for supporting me throughout this journey, we have demonstrated the prowess of this approach, with our substitute models already being used in operational environments!”.

Nuno was also awarded the Vestas Award 2024, presented at the New Masters Celebration on November 23.

On November 23^rd, as part of the New Masters 2024 Celebration, Nuno Ricardo Teixeira da Costa, a recent graduate of the Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering (M.EIC), took the stage to receive the *Vestas Award, a cash prize of 2,500 euros, which rewards the best dissertations according to criteria of innovation, applicability and positive cost-benefit ratio for Vestas, a world leader in the renewable energy sector for sustainable energy solutions.

Nuno developed the thesis entitled “Leveraging Physics-Informed Neural Architectures as Surrogate Models for Space Weather Forecasting”, which addresses the limitations of current magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation tools, which, while effective, face challenges in computational efficiency and predictive accuracy. To overcome these limitations, this research explores the use of advanced machine learning techniques, specifically Physics-Informed Neural Architectures such as Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PiNNs) and Physics-Informed Neural Operators (PiNOs), for creating surrogate models of the most advanced and expensive wind simulators, that balance computational speed and physical accuracy.

This research, which received a grade of 20/20, was supervised by Professor André Restivo (DEI) and co-supervised by the doctoral student Filipa Barros (FCUP), about whom he says: “I’m very grateful to them for supporting me throughout this journey; we’ve demonstrated the power of this approach, with our surrogate models already being used in operational environments!

Nuno ends his academic career at FEUP as he began it, with distinction, when at the end of his first year he was awarded the “Incentive Prize of the University of Porto”, given to students who finish their first year with the best marks.

But his career wasn’t all about studying. Nuno was an active member of the NIAEFEUP and JuniFEUP student groups, where he had the opportunity to develop extra-curricular activities that contributed to his development, and was a monitor in four curricular units over two years.

*The prize is awarded annually to a graduate of FEUP’s Masters in Electrical and Computing Engineering (M.EEC), Masters in Informatics and Computing Engineering (M.EIC) and Masters in Mechanical Engineering (M.EM), whose final course average and Master’s thesis classification are not lower than 16 and 18 points respectively for the M.EEC and M.EIC, and 15 and 18 points for the M.EM. + info

As part of the New Masters 2024 Celebration, which took place November 23^rd at the José Marques dos Santos Auditorium of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), the Prof. Doutor Raul Vidal/Deloitte Prize was awarded for the third time.

The jury awarded the prize to Gonçalo José Cerqueira Pascoal, a recent graduate of the Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering, who received a cash prize of 3 000 euros.

Gonçalo developed a Master’s thesis that proposes an innovative method, based on deep reinforcement learning, to compose quantum algorithms more efficiently for specific architectures, helping to mitigate the detrimental effects of noise on the reliability of the computations performed. “Noise-Adaptive Reinforcement Learning Strategies for Qubit Routing”, supervised by Professors João Paulo Fernandes and Rui Maranhão, was considered highly innovative, with an academic contribution and practical interest, leading to a subsequent scientific article.

During his four years at FEUP, he was a member of the Associação Tuna de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (TEUP), an academic group with over 35 years of history that aims to facilitate the integration of students into the university, preserve student traditions and promote the love for music. During this time, he has actively participated in the organisation of various events of a charitable and cultural nature.

On the day of the award ceremony, Gonçalo on this recognition: “(…) after completing my academic career at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, today I had the honour of being present at the New Masters 2024 Celebration and being honoured with the Prof. Dr. Raul Vidal Award, created by Deloitte. I would like to thank Prof Dr Raul Moreira Vidal, Deloitte, the members of the jury and all the teachers and colleagues who marked my time at FEUP. In future activities, I will strive to continue to apply the same level of dedication, perseverance and rigor that this award seeks to recognise’.

*This award is intended to recognise each year a recent graduate from one of the following FEUP courses, Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering (M.EIC) and Master in Software Engineering (MESW), who has excelled in curricular activities, for the quality and innovation of the work carried out in the field of Software Engineering, and for student support and social and solidarity activities.

On November 8^th, the José Marques dos Santos Auditorium hosted Company’s Day, an event that takes place annually as part of the FEUP Prime programme, of which Águas do Douro e Paiva (AdDP) is a partner since December 2020, and which aims to bring together the dynamics of business, science and academia, among others, in order to value the talent and knowledge produced.

Immediately after the panel “The Intelligent Future” with speeches by Liliana Ferreira (DEI/Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS) and Luis Paulo Reis (DEI/LIACC), the latter presented the “Pitch Challenge“, a challenge in which four PhD students took the stage and described their research work.

Gonçalo Leão, a PhD student of the Doctoral Program in Informatics Engineering, won the challenge with ‘Robotic Bin Picking of Flexible Entangled Tubes‘, a work that is part of a line of research on the robotic manipulation of flexible objects that tend to become entangled. The specific aim of this project is to teach a robotic arm equipped with a 3D vision sensor to remove an object from a disorderly pile of entangled hooks, tubes or cables, so that no more objects are attached to it (a problem known in the industry as ‘bin picking’). To do this, Gonçalo is investigating how we can use supervised learning and reinforcement learning to determine which object the robot should grab, which part of the object to grab, and what movement the arm should make after the grab (for example, to rotate the arm so that an over-grabbed object falls back into the container).

Commenting on the award, which was presented by the Vice President of AdDP, Gonçalo says that the recognition is very important to him because “it represents the valorisation of work that has been time-consuming and very demanding”. The award shows that there is a demand in society and industry for this type of robotic solutions, which are useful in various production systems, such as the manufacture and installation of cables and wires in vehicles and household appliances, and also in recycling systems, where his work can serve as the basis for a selective waste collection system. The winner is grateful for all the support from his supervising team, composed by Professors Armando Sousa, Germano Veiga and Bruno Siciliano, and also from CRIIS, the INESC-TEC centre where he carries out his research, which has provided him with all the resources and support he needs to carry out his work.

The Center for Responsible AI, led by Unbabel, held the Center for Responsible AI Forum ’24 on November 19 at the iconic Casa da Música in Porto. For the first time, the forum brought together AI startups, research centers, and industry leaders to showcase six innovative AI products and discuss the societal impact of artificial intelligence.

The event also saw the announcement of the winners of the first edition of the SPARK Awards, which recognise the best research in Responsible AI by Masters and PhD students. Among the highlights was Cátia Teixeira, the runner-up out of 16 entries with her presentation “Hubris Benchmarking with AmbiGANs”, developed as part of her Master’s thesis in Data Science and Engineering (MECD), in collaboration with Inês Gomes (student of the Doctoral Program in Informatics Engineering (ProDEI)) and Jan van Rijn (Professor at Leiden University).

One of the major limitations of R&D in ML/AI is proper evaluation of models and algorithms. These models are taking an increasingly important role in our society and economy but evaluation still focuses on predictive accuracy, which is well-known to be insufficient. Cátia proposed AmbiGANs, a methodology that generates datasets of ambiguous instances to estimate whether predictive models are overconfident.

The forum also featured presentations by other students from the Department of Informatics Engineering, who explored new methodologies to improve the evaluation of models and algorithms:

Ricardo Inácio (Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering (M.EIC), in progress) with Meta-learning and Data Augmentation for Stress Testing Forecasting Models, presented at Discovery Science;

Inês Gomes (ProDEI student, in progress) with Finding Patterns in Ambiguity: Interpretable Stress Testing in the Decision Boundary, presented at a CVPR workshop;

Luís Roque (ProDEI student, in progress) with RHiOTS: A Framework for Evaluating Hierarchical Time Series Forecasting Algorithms, presented at KDD.

The forum featured keynote speeches from notable figures such as Virginia Dignum (UN AI Advisory Body), Pedro Bizarro (Feedzai), Francisco Pereira (National Institute of Mental Health, USA), André Martins (Unbabel), and Pedro Saleiro (Opnova).

With panels like “AI Regulation – Time to (AI) Act,” the event emphasized the need for ethical and responsible AI usage, ensuring technological advances align with positive societal impact.