In a session co-organised by FCT’s international partnerships at Ciência 2024– CMU Portugal, MIT Portugal and UT Austin Portugal – participants discussed how collaboration with North American universities (over almost two decades) has contributed to the development of talent and to the promotion of scientific and technological innovation and entrepreneurship. With an agenda that brought together the teams of the three Programs and representatives of academia and industry – some of which participated in mobility activities promoted by the partnerships -, the session focused on sharing stories and experiences, namely on the impact of said initiatives on careers and business development.
José Manuel Mendonça, National Director of the UT Austin Portugal Program and former Chairman of the Board of Directors of INESC TEC – the entity that has hosted the coordination of the UT Austin Portugal Program since 2018 – started the session by recalling the inception of the International Partnerships. Going back to 2006, José Manuel Mendonça mentioned that the beginning of these collaboration actions with North American universities, in specific scientific areas, came from a political decision. In addition, he emphasised the position that MIT, CMU, and UT Austin hold in the 2023 Times Higher Education World University ranking – 5th, 28th, and 50th positions, respectively – to explain the opportunity that the Portuguese scientific community has found, through these Programs, to work with high-level experts in areas in which North American partners are world leaders.
“Although with distinct tools and settings, these partnerships have a significant impact on three key areas – education, research, and innovation. Portugal had the opportunity to learn from three different science and technology ecosystems“, said José Manuel Mendonça. Among the various examples of the results of this collaboration and learning process, the National Director of the UT Austin Portugal Program identified the creation and growth of science and tech-based companies – some of which are now part of the unicorn group, such as Feedzai, valued at €2.4B – or the path towards the development of supercomputing in Portugal. “If it weren’t for the Bob supercomputer, we would not be able to have the Deucalion supercomputer; similarly, if it weren’t for the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), we wouldn’t have had access to Bob“, he mentioned.
Before moving on to the two panels of the session, José Manuel Mendonça left a message concerning the future, calling for decisions on the evolution of International Partnerships, not only in line with national strategies, but also considering European goals and commitments currently under discussion in the preparation of Framework Programme 10.
The first panel, moderated by Inês Lynce, National Co-Director of the CMU Portugal Program, explored the role of the partnerships in talent development. The session featured Lia Patrício, member of the Board of Directors at INESC TEC and Scientific Director of the area of Engineering and Public Policy of the CMU Portugal Program CMU Portugal Program, Nelson Costa, professor at the University of Minho, and visiting scholar at MIT AGELAB, and Mariana Miranda, researcher at INESC TEC, and visiting researcher at TACC (UT Austin). They offered their experience of participating in mobility initiatives promoted by the partnerships and how the knowledge they acquired about the North American ecosystem influenced their careers.
Lia Patrício highlighted the role of Partnerships in the promotion of PhD programmes, e.g., the creation of a new dual Doctoral Programme in Engineering and Public Policies, at the Faculty of Engineering of Porto and the Instituto Superior Técnico – in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, within the scope of the CMU Portugal Program. In addition to training people, Lia Patrício also recalled the Program’s role in research and innovation, talking about the development of the Patient Innovation platform, and the creation, around this collaboration, of a “unique ecosystem”. “From my experience at CMU, I would like to highlight the culture, dynamism, dedication and power they have to make things happen,” she said.
According to Nelson Costa, “the biggest challenge” from his six-month stay at MIT was being able to nurture critical mass to design and improve projects withing the industry sector. Certain opportunities occur just because we’re ‘actually’ there; there are always initiatives going on, like workshops or lectures with relevant people in certain areas”, explained the MIT AGELAB participant.
After a short scientific internship in 2022, Mariana Miranda shared that she still collaborates with TACC researchers. “TACC allowed me to have access to an infrastructure that, at the time, did not exist in Portugal“, she mentioned – reinforcing that this experience proved to be crucial, not only from the point of view of her scientific work, but also in terms of her personal evolution.
In the second panel, Pedro Arezes, National Director of the MIT Portugal Program, moderated a session with Pedro Oliveira, Dean of Nova SBE and Leader of the Patient Innovation Project, Simão Soares, CEO of SilicoLife (a spin-off of the MIT Portugal Program), and Rosa Romero, CEO of Sphere Ultrafast Photonics (a company that participated in the Global Startup Program and in UTEN), and Coordinator of the ExtreMed Strategic Project of the UT Austin Portugal Program. The theme? The contribution of international partnerships to Science and Technology-Based Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Five thousand solutions and more than 600 commercial products – these were some numbers advanced by Pedro Oliveira, referring to the Patient Innovation platform. Established in 2014 because of CMU Portugal’s TEIPL project, this platform brings together solutions designed and submitted by people facing health problems. The Dean of Nova SBE recalled that this platform also led to the creation of a bootcamp, carried out in partnership with CMU Portugal, and that the creators of the solutions chosen for an acceleration phase will be able to develop their businesses at CMU (U.S.A.).
Simão Soares talked about how Silico-life, a spin-off of the MIT Portugal Program, has evolved and how it has benefited from the relationship with the MIT ecosystem. “The connection was very useful,” he said, recalling how the business evolved from a purely computational approach to the current business model. “The core of these Programs conveys a sense of ambition. There is a culture that shows us that we can achieve our objectives”, he added.
“UTEN was the perfect platform to enter the North American market“, recalled Rosa Romero, explaining that this Program allowed her and her team to understand how the US market works, considering customer acquisition strategies or how to establish a company in that country. As Coordinator of the ExtreMed Strategic Project of the UT Austin Portugal Program, she recognised that, through this partnership, it was also possible to collaborate with North American and national teams. Rosa Romero also mentioned that ExtreMed – which involved two UT Austin research groups, Sphere Ultrafast Photonics, the University of Porto, and INL – led to systems that are already available for commercialisation. Said systems use ultra-fast lasers to reach the tissues and obtain either an image of them or carry out treatments, e.g., cancer-related. “We have also developed a system that allows us to have brain images via ultra-fast lasers. And it’s now available to the market”, she concluded.
