Knowledge Networks News 4th Meeting of the Governing Committee of the CMU – Portugal Program 4th Meeting of the Governing Committee of the CMU – Portugal Program
The CMU – Portugal Programme Governing Committee met for the 4th time on 6 and 7 November 2008, at FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, to learn about the report from the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), consider the report from the Programme Directors and approve resolutions regarding the functioning of the Programme.
This Governing Committee is chaired by the President of FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, IP, João Sentieiro, and also includes the Provost of CMU, Jared Cohon, the Dean of the School of Engineering of CMU, Pradeep Koshla, the President of Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), Luis Magalhães, Alfredo Baptista from Portugal Telecom and the Programme directors at CMU and in Portugal.
Two PhD Programmes are being run under the scope of Programme 7 (Electrical Engineering and Computers, Engineering and Public Policies in Network Industries, Technological Change and Entrepreneurship, Mathematics, Language Technology, Computer Science, Software Engineering) within which students obtain their doctorate both from a Portuguese university and from CMU.
The educational component of the CMU - Portugal Programme also includes 4 Professional Masters (Human-Computer Interaction, Information Technology: Information Security Software Engineering, Information Networks). The Professional Masters are not 2nd cycle Programmes within the sense of the Bologna Process, but advanced 3rd cycle Programmes, entry to which is dependent on students previously having obtained a Masters Degree or an Honours Degree plus at least two or three years of suitable professional experience. They are equivalent in the technological and engineering area to the MBA in the management area.
The Professional Masters and PhD Programmes involve 9 university institutions in Portugal: the University of Aveiro, University of Coimbra, University of Madeira, University of Minho, Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences of the Portuguese Catholic University, Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the New University of Lisbon, Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, and the Instituto Superior Técnico.
To reinforce the research component of the Programme, which is linked to the research work of the PhD students and their relation with their supervisors in Portugal and at CMU, a public competition was opened from 30 July to 7 October 2008 for research projects in the following areas: Trustworthy New Generation Networks and Telecommunications Policies, Cyber-Physical Systems and Supervision and Control and Data Acquisition for Network Industries, Software Engineering for High Performance Systems and Innovative Systems and Adaptive Systems, Human-Machine Interaction, Human Capital and the Entrepreneurial Dynamic in High Technology Industries. The announcement of the competition emphasised the large and extensive projects involving at least two universities and/or research institutions in Portugal, a CMU team and an enterprise. Twenty one entries were received, in which more than thirty companies were involved.
The CMU-Portugal Programme now has 100 students, 30 of whom are foreigners (from 13 countries). In the current academic year 72 students were admitted out of the 226 applications which were received. Within the scope of the Programme 32 doctorate Professors and 13 Assistants were recruited. The Programme has 10 companies financing students and 3 companies financing the Programme itself, which altogether provide financial support for 85 students.
The CMU – Portugal Programme was started on 27 October 2007 under the scope of the Partnerships for the Future activity which forms part of the Commitment to Science for the Future of Portugal (text in Portuguese) initiative. The main areas of its teaching and research activities are: processing and information networks, including software engineering, information networks, information security and computational processing of language, sensor networks and technologies, public policies and technological innovation, and mathematics.
More information can be obtained from: Carnegie Mellon – Portugal Program.