5th Meeting of the Board of Directors of the CMU-Portugal Program

This meeting of the Board of Directors of the CMU-Portugal Program was chaired by the President of The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), Luis Magalhães, substituting the President of the Science and Technology Foundation (FCT), João Sentieiro, and also involved the participation of the President of CMU, Jared Cohon, the Dean of the School of Engineering of CMU, Pradeep Koshla, Manuel Garcia from Portugal Telecom, substituting Alfredo Baptista, and the directors of the program at CMU and in Portugal.

Following the request by the former Program Director in Portugal, Victor Barroso, to resign his post due to his duties as Director of the ISR-Lisbon Associated Laboratory, the structure of the Portuguese element of the Board of Directors was substantially altered in March 2009 with new Directors taking office. The Director of the Program in Portugal became João Barros, Professor at the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Porto and researcher at the Institute of Telecommunications and two more members joined the Portuguese group on the Board: Diogo Gomes, Professor at IST (Instituto Superior Técnico) and researcher at the Centre for Mathematical Analysis, Geometry and Dynamic Systems, and Nuno Nunes (text in Portuguese), Professor at the University of Madeira and researcher at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences.

The CMU – Portugal Program has 7 Dual Doctoral Programs in operation (Electrotechnical Engineering and Computers, Engineering and Public Policies in Network Industries, Technological Change and Entrepreneurship, Mathematics, Language Technology, Computer Science, Software Engineering) under the scope of which students receive their doctorate both from a Portuguese University and from CMU.

The educational component of the CMU – Portugal Program also includes 4 Professional Masters (Human-Machine Interaction, Information Technology, Information Security Software Engineering, Information Networks). The Professional Masters courses are not 2nd cycle programs in line with the Bologna Process, but advanced 3rd Cycle programs which required candidates to have previously obtained a Master's or Honours Degree and have 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 Doctoral and Professional Masters programs are carried out in 9 Portuguese universities: 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, IST-Lisbon (Instituto Superior Técnico).

The CMU – Portugal Program currently has 101 students, 30 of which are foreign students (from 13 countries). In the current academic year 72 students were admitted out of a total of 226 applications. The Program recruited 32 Professors at the Doctoral level and 13 Junior Lecturers. The program has 10 companies financing students and 3 companies financing the Program itself, which altogether provide financial support for 85 students.

At the 2nd Meeting of the External Review Committee of the CMU-Portugal Program held on3-6 November 2008, in Lisbon, a recommendation was approved to carry out an external evaluation of the Professional Masters Courses. This evaluation was carried out on 4-8 May 2009 by a committee made up of Tariq Durrani (President), Michael Souryal, James Michael, Judith Stafford, and Gregory Abowd, which presented a detailed and in-depth report on the four Professional Masters Courses, describing their situation, identifying their contributions and also recommending improvements.

To reinforce the research component of the CMU – Portugal Program, linked to the research assignments which the PhD students carry out along with their supervisors in Portugal and at CMU, a public tender for research projects was opened between 30 July and 7 October 2008 for research projects in the following areas: New Reliable Generation Networks, Telecommunications Policies, Cyber-Physical Systems and Control, Monitoring and Obtaining Intelligent Data for Network Industries, Software Engineering for High Performance Systems and Innovation Systems and Adaptive Services, Human-Machine Interaction, Human Capital and Entrepreneurial Dynamics in High Technology Industries. The call to tender emphasised wide-ranging projects involving at least two universities and/or research institutions in Portugal, a CMU team and an enterprise. Altogether 21 applications were received, involving more than 30 enterprises, and 8 research projects were approved and are now underway.

The CMU – Portugal 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.

More information: CMU – Portugal Program, Information and Communication Technologies Institute, ICTI, 4th Meeting of the Board of Directors of the CMU – Portugal Program– 07/11/2008, 3rd Meeting of the Board of Directors of the CMU – Portugal Program - 21/07/2008, 2nd Meeting of the Board of Directors of the CMU – Portugal Program - 28/02/2008.