Raul Vidal Professor is part of the Professores Emeritus restricted group, a title for jubilant or retired professors who stood out for their high services to the U.Porto and who, for this very part, will continue to collaborate with the University for the next five years.

ACM has appointed John L. Hennessy, former president of Stanford University, and David A. Patterson, a retired professor at California University, Berkeley, as beneficiaries of the 2017 ACM.M. Turing Award for pioneering a systematic and quantitative approach to the computer architectures design and evaluation with lasting impact on the microprocessor industry.

The Hennessy and Patterson work certainly exemplifies this pattern. His contributions to energy-efficient RISC-based processors helped in making mobile and IoT revolutions possible. At the same time, his seminal book has advanced the pace of innovation across the industry over the past 25 years, influencing generations of computer engineers and designers.

ACM initiated the Turing Award in 1966 to recognize contributions of great technical and lasting importance to the field of computing,” said ACM President Vicki L. Hanson.

ACM has named John L. Hennessy, former President of Stanford University, and David A. Patterson, retired Professor of the University of California, Berkeley, recipients of the 2017 ACM A.M. Turing Award for pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry.”
The work of Hennessy and Patterson certainly exemplifies this standard. Their contributions to energy-efficient RISC-based processors have helped make possible the mobile and IoT revolutions. At the same time, their seminal textbook has advanced the pace of innovation across the industry over the past 25 years by influencing generations of engineers and computer designers.
ACM initiated the Turing Award in 1966 to recognize contributions of lasting and major technical importance to the computing field,” said ACM President Vicki L. Hanson.

The Astellas Oncology C3 Prize, which had its second edition in 2017, is a challenge to inspire innovative ideas in improving cancer patient care.
They received more than 160 applications worldwide, from which they selected five finalists who presented their projects at the Union for International Cancer Control World Cancer Leaders’ Summit in Mexico City: Kevin Bambury of ONCOassist; Howard Isenstein of Care Progress; Cory Kidd of Catalina Health; MindBytes’ Charlotte Vander Stichele; and Hernâni Oliveira, from University of Porto, with the project HOPE that would win the Grand Prix. The winner received a $ 50,000 scholarship and the remaining finalists $ 12,500, all gaining access to MATTER, a health innovation community that will help implement the projects.
The HOPE application, from the student of the PhD Program in Digital Media of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto was born in 2013, when the UP researcher was developing his master’s thesis on Oncology at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences of Abel Salazar (ICBAS) and IPO. It aims to help children hospitalized in the pediatric ward of oncology and provide information on the process of treatment of the disease and seeks to address two main difficulties of hospitalized children: anxiety and sedentary lifestyle. It is currently an application also designed for parents, helping them to search for credible sources of information.

On January 30th and 31st, the “DSIE’18th 13th Doctoral Symposium in Informatics Engineering” was held at the Faculty of Engineering of U.Porto (FEUP). DSIE’18 provides PhD students with a platform to present their scientific papers, discuss their ideas, gather feedback and get opinions from experts, colleagues, faculty and experienced researchers.

 

The Astellas Oncology C3 Prize, which had its second edition in 2017, is a challenge designed to inspire innovative ideas in improving the care of cancer patients.

They received more than 160 applications worldwide, from which they selected the five finalists who presented their projects at the Union for International Cancer Control World Cancer Leaders ’Summit in Mexico City: Kevin Bambury, from ONCOassist; Howard Isenstein of Care Progress; Cory Kidd of Catalia Health; Charlotte Vander Stichele, MindBytes; and Hernâni Oliveira, University of Porto, with the HOPE project that ended up winning the Big Prize. The winner received a $ 50,000 grant and the remaining finalists $ 12,500, and all gained access to MATTER, a health innovation community that will help implement their projects.

The HOPE application, by the student of the Doctoral Program in Digital Media at the Engineering College of the University of Porto, was born in 2013, when the UP researcher was developing his master’s thesis in Oncology at the Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS) and in the IPO. It aims to help children hospitalized in the pediatric oncology ward and provide information on the disease treatment process, and seeks to address two main difficulties for hospitalized children: anxiety and physical inactivity. Currently, it is also an app designed for the parents, helping them in the search for credible sources of information.

The Informatics Engineering Department travelled to Tondela for two days, at the beginning of February, to take part in a workshop of department analysis and strategy definition for the coming years, and to be actively involved with the municipality, offering fire prevention measures and actions.

The first day started with the discussion on the DEI Strategic Plan for 2018-2021, discussed in 3 main areas: Education, Research and Extension. Professor João Paiva Cardoso presented DEI ‘s various ongoing activities, followed by a group dynamic, organized by Professor Ademar Aguiar. Problems were identified and resolution strategies were suggested in 7 strategic purposes- to increase DEI graduates’ capacity to transform the Society; optimize the offer of education and training; reinforce, enhance and capitalize Research and Development; promote external cooperation; promote knowledge transfer; optimize the management of human resources; reinforce internal and external communication – and from the 7 working groups, many ideas emerged as well as the certainty that the opportunities for improvement are also many. The following presentations were made by Professor Eugénio Oliveira, with “Progression in the university career: Reflection”, by Prof. Eugénio Oliveira; Professor Rosaldo Rossetti, who promoted a strategic intervention by each professor in interdisciplinary areas; and Raul Vidal, who spoke about DEI’s relation to companies, a topic addressed from the perspective of Alumni students. To conclude the session, the guest Cristina Videira Lopes, professor at the University of California, presented “A personal vision about Informatics Engineering: teaching, research and collaboration with industry”.

The day ended with a dinner at the restaurant “Os 3 Pipos”, where they were extremely well received by the owner Mr. João Cavaleiro, in the company of his guests, Prof. Cristina Videira Lopes, the President of the Tonda ‘s Parish Council, Carlos Coimbra, his treasurer, Sara Pereira, and secretary, Ventura Sousa.

Saturday, the second day of the workshop, was divided into two activities. A group of professors from the department met with representatives of the Tondela City Council and neighboring Municipalities, to discuss the use of Information and Communication Technologies as a way of preventing and responding to natural disasters. The intention of the DEI’s representatives was to contribute with effective solutions, within the Informatics Engineering, reinforcing the department’s involvement in social issues. The partnership, which started in February, has already started to bear fruit through an LGP project, and it is expected that it will only be the beginning of the execution of ICT projects for the prevention and response to forest fires.

The rest of the group was involved in a voluntary activity organized by Montis – Nature Conservation Association – on one of the lands burnt in the October fires, managed by the association, in Vermilhas, Vouzela. Led by the guides Luís Lopes and Carolina Barbosa, DEI had the opportunity to help plant cork oaks and clean the burnt terrain, opening pedestrian paths so that it becomes easier to give a new life to what was lost four months ago. The initiative, despite being filled with good spirits, allowed a reflection on everything that was lost and a better understanding of the pain of those who helplessly watched the siege by fire.

The Fraunhofer Portugal Challenge is a contest of ideas promoted by Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS with the aim of motivating and rewarding research of practical utility, and promotes new scientific knowledge through the awarding of prizes to students and researchers from Portuguese universities who present the best ideas, based on a completed thesis evaluated in the current or previous academic year.

The 2017 edition, 8th of the contest, featured presentations on several topics, from health literacy to the use of drones on car accident websites, with numerous innovative ideas displayed. At the Closing Event, the finalists were presented, followed by the evaluation of the jury and announcement of the winners.

Of the six finalists – 3 doctoral projects and 3 master’s projects – João Monteiro, Master in Computer Engineering and Computing, was awarded the second place in the master’s category by the HealthTalks app, which works as a management system of personal medical information and aims to improve communication between the doctor and the patient by providing information on medical terms.

The contest welcomes ideas from master’s or doctoral degrees, in the areas of Information and Communication Technology, Multimedia and other related sciences, having received 44 applications in this latest edition, from 21 universities, both on the continent and on the islands. The ideas presented were evaluated according to criteria such as innovation and originality, technical feasibility, practical applicability and market potential, by a judge composed of members of Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS, namely Liliana Ferreira (Director), Pedro Almeida (Member of the Executive Board) and Filipe Soares (Interim President of the Scientific Council), as well as a panel of invited Experts that included João José Pinto Ferreira (Director of the Master’s Course in Technological Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Engineering College, University of Porto), Clara Gonçalves (Executive Manager from UPTEC – Science and Technology Park of the University of Porto), Pedro Aguiar (CEO of Ah Business) and Nuno Carvalho (CEO of Healthcare City).

The first edition of the Gulbenkian New Talents in Artificial Intelligence Scholarship Program, which aims to distinguish university students who demonstrate high academic merit and encourage the development of their culture and skills in artificial intelligence, awarded two grants to André Cruz and Xavier Fontes, students of the Integrated Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto.

The two students, selected through a competition, will receive a ten-month training scholarship and join a training and advanced research program in Artificial Intelligence, supporting their work with renowned researchers in the field. The first workshop of this edition took place on November 17, 2017.

André Cruz’s project “consists of applying information obtained by computational semantics to a Coreference Resolution model, and seeking to improve the state of the art in this area. One purpose, among others, is to introduce the model generated in an argumentation mining framework currently under development at LIACC (ArgMine), and to evaluate the benefits of this addition for the argumentation mining task. ”. Xavier Fontes’ project focuses “on the development of a hybrid forecasting model, capable of using information from the temporal domain and at the same time sporadic stimuli to predict a given variable. This choice of a hybrid model comes from the curiosity to combine two different approaches in order to obtain better results than each of the individual parts. ”.

Regarding the importance of these scholarships, Xavier says that it is an excellent opportunity to develop skills in a field of studies where he has always wanted to work and hopes that it will be the beginning of a path with a positive impact in the field of Artificial Intelligence; André hopes that this program will allow him to focus more on this area, which has many applications, and where there is a strong research component.

Professor Eugénio Oliveira reinforces the honor for the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto to have two of his students among the elected, to whom the Scientific Committee has associated the respective tutors also from FEUP. The students of MIEIC, Xavier Reis Fontes and André Cruz are already being tutored in their work by DEI professors and members of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (LIACC), Daniel Castro Silva and Henrique Lopes Cardoso, respectively. In addition, the Program will be repeated next year, and expects the good participation of FEUP students to continue, motivated by the scientific area of ​​Artificial Intelligence.

Congratulations to André and Xavier, and best wishes for an excellent job throughout this program.