2nd Meeting of the Carnegie Mellon - Portugal Program Board of Directors

The Carnegie Mellon – Portugal Program was started on 27 October 2007 under the scope of the Knowledge Networks activity which forms part of the Commitment to Science for Portugal’s Future 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.

The various Postgraduate courses started in September 2007 and at this moment include 34 PhD students (23 in Portugal and 11 at Carnegie Mellon) and around 22 Professional Masters students in Portugal. These courses award degrees both from Carnegie Mellon and Portuguese Universities and this is the first time worldwide that Carnegie Mellon has awarded dual degrees within a partnership with another university.

The Carnegie Mellon-Portugal Program includes the following 4 Professional Masters, which have enabled Portugal to introduce and promote a strategy of advanced and specialised qualifications for technical staff in companies based on in-depth technical studies alongside the widening of business perspectives which have corresponded to providing engineering with content similar to that in the area of management on MBA courses:

• Master of Human Computer Interaction, organised by the Human Computer Interaction Institute and the School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon and by the University of Madeira.
• Master of Science in Information Networking, organised by the Information Networking Institute (INI) of Carnegie Mellon and by the University of Aveiro.
• Master of Science in Information Technology, organised by the Information Networking Institute (INI) of Carnegie Mellon and by the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon.
• Master of Software Engineering, organised by the International Software Research Institute (ISRI) and the SCS of Carnegie Mellon, and by the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra.

The Doctoral programs are based on emerging research themes, and carried out with R&D Laboratories and companies, and envisage one-year-residency stays at Carnegie Mellon. There are 6 Doctoral Programs underway:

• Doctoral Program in Computer Science, organized by the Computer Science Department of Carnegie Mellon and the Informatics Department of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (DI-FCUL), the Informatics Department of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the New University of Lisbon (DI-FCTUNL), the Informatics Department of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra (DI-FCTUC) and the joint MAP-i initiative involving the Universities of Minho, Aveiro and Porto in a Doctoral Program in Computer Science.
• Doctoral Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering, organized by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Carnegie Mellon and by the Department of Electrotechnical Engineering and Computers of IST (DEEC-IST), the DI-FCUL, the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications of the University of Aveiro, and the Department of Electrotechnical Engineering and Computers of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto.
• Doctoral Program in Engineering and Public Policy:Networked Systems, organised by the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon and by the IST’s Electronic Engineering and Computer Department (DEEC-IST), and with links to other public bodies such as ANACOM - National Communications Authority and The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC).
• Doctoral Program in Language Technology, organized by the Language Technology Institute (LTI) of Carnegie Mellon and by DEEC-IST.
• Doctoral Program in Mathematics, organized by the Department of Mathematics of Carnegie Mellon and by the consortium made up of the Departments of Mathematics of IST, of FCUL and of FCTUNL.
• Doctoral Program in Technological Change and Entrepreneurship, organized by the SeTChange Program – Program in Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Technological Change of Carnegie Mellon and by the Department of Engineering and Management of IST and the Department of Economics of the Catholic University of Portugal.

The Board of Directors analysed and approved the launch of a new Doctoral Program in the area of regulating Networked Industries, with an emphasis on telecommunications, and the awarding of a dual degree with Carnegie Mellon in Engineering and Public Policy to develop new skills in strategic areas for the growth of New Generation Networks (NGN - Next Generation Networks), particularly those based on fibre optic IP communication. Carnegie Mellon is the world leader in this area, and this will enable this new area of Postgraduate training and research to be introduced in Portugal, an area which has an increasingly important role in the modernisation of regulation processes.

Also underway are 7 Research Projects:

• Anti-Phishing Cooperative Research Project, involving researchers and PhD students from Carnegie Mellon and the company PT.COM/SAPO.
• Control and Interaction in Multi-Agent Decision Problems with Loose Coordination, involving researchers and PhD students from Carnegie Mellon and the Institute for Systems and Robotics-Lisbon.
• Making Protections Smarter to Increase Dispersed Generation and Intermittent Power Sources Penetration in Distributed Networks, involving researchers and PhD students from Carnegie Mellon and from INESC-Porto.
• Network-Wide Management: Monitoring, Configuration and Fault-Tolerant Operation, involving researchers and PhD students from Carnegie Mellon and the Portugal Telecom company.
• Prediction and Root Cause Analysis for Improved Dependability of Critical Information Infrastructures for Telecom Operators, involving researchers and PhD students from Carnegie Mellon and the Portugal Telecom company.
• Specification and Verification of Complex Distributed Systems, involving researchers and PhD students from Carnegie Mellon and the Informatics and Information Technology Centre of the New University of Lisbon.
• Verifiable Correct Concurrent Software with Transactional Memory, involving researchers and PhD students from Carnegie Mellon, from the Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra, and the company Critical Software, SA.

The meeting also analysed the launch of projects related to R&D in the strategic areas of Information and Communications Technologies, with the previous year having seen the start of various initiatives with Portugal Telecom, Nokia-Siemens and NOVABASE under the framework of the Industrial Partners Program.

Of note has been the involvement of 9 Portuguese universities in the program (the University of Aveiro, the Portuguese Catholic University, the University of Madeira, the University of Coimbra, the University of Lisbon, the University of Minho, the University of Porto, the New University of Lisbon, the Technical University of Lisbon) which have been called to work together in new areas of Postgraduate training and research.

For more information see: Carnegie Mellon University-Portugal Program Website.