Program
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Driving Innovation Through Global Collaboration
Mission
To promote and enable the engagement of Portuguese scientists and companies with the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas System at large in multidisciplinary research, technology transfer and commercialization activities.
Vision
To contribute to a knowledge-based society and foster science and innovation-based companies, enabling Portugal to better face the challenges of the future.
A long-term partnership evolving with science, society, and global challenges
Since its creation in 2007, the UT Austin Portugal Program has been a long-term strategic partnership between Portugal and The University of Texas at Austin. Over successive phases, the Program has evolved in scope, ambition, and structure – responding to national priorities, global scientific challenges, and the maturity of the Portuguese research and innovation ecosystem.
Across nearly two decades, the Program has combined research excellence, advanced education, and innovation-driven collaboration, building enduring institutional ties and fostering a generation of researchers, educators, and innovators connected across the Atlantic.
Program
The UT Austin Portugal Program advances knowledge in emerging scientific and technological fields through high-level education, collaborative research, innovation, and commercialization activities.
Established in 2007, the Program is a Science and Technology partnership between the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). It is supported by the Portuguese Government and developed in close collaboration with the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities (CRUP).
Over the years, the partnership has built a collaborative transatlantic ecosystem connecting Portuguese universities, research institutions, laboratories, technology transfer offices, and companies with counterparts in Austin.
Its activities have included collaborative research and education through the Collaboratory for Emerging Technologies (CoLab), as well as entrepreneurship, technology transfer, and new technology-based business initiatives developed through the University-Technology-Enterprise Network (UTEN).
Following a decade of joint projects and institutional capacity building, the Program entered a new phase in 2018, with a renewed commitment extending toward 2030.
This stage reflects a more mature partnership, capable of developing new collaborative models, supporting ideas from research to market, and addressing emerging areas of knowledge with scientific, societal, and economic relevance.
Knowledge Areas
After a decade of a structured UT Austin Portugal joint venture, it was time to deepen this partnership but in a totally innovative way in order to develop a sound and scientifically relevant research-based agenda at the international level, while contributing towards reinforcing Portugal’s S&T capabilities in applications domains where the country is capable of becoming a key science-based knowledge and innovation provider in the international landscape.
For this new funding cycle, the Program elected five key areas of knowledge to deliver real impact on the ground and in the years to come. Some of these areas are new ventures (Space-Earth Interactions and Medical Physics) while others were already covered in the previous editions of the Program (Advanced Computing, Nanotechnologies and Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship, through UTEN – University – Enterprise Network).
Through the several instruments offered by the Program, which ensure a consistent approach to the knowledge-to-value chain, researchers in Portugal and at UT Austin will come together to tap into scientific topics with social and economic relevance at a global level, from space and science technology to medical physics and nuclear medicine, nano-science and technologies, high-performance computing (including data analytics, visualization and artificial intelligence), to list a few.