Since it was founded 19 years ago as pioneering cooperation with Portuguese universities, research institutions and firms, the MIT-Portugal program (MPP) has achieved numerous successes from the enabling of 47 entrepreneurial finishes and the financing of 220 joint projects between MIT and Portugusian researchers to coach a generation of extraordinary researchers.
In March and the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) signed an agreement in March that officially launched the following chapter of this system. MPPS Phase 4 to 2030 will support the continued research of modern ideas and solutions in areas that range from artificial intelligence and nanotechnology to climate change – each on the with campus and with partners throughout Portugal.
“One of the benefits of having a program for therefore long is that we all know one another pretty much at this point. Over the years now we have learned the systems, strengths and weaknesses of the opposite, and now we have capable of create a synergy that may not exist if we had worked together for a short while,” says Douglas hard, Mit-machine construction professor and MPP-CO director.
Hart and John Hansman, the T. Wilson professor of aviation and astronautics on the Mit- and MPP-CO director, strive to take over the prevailing research projects of this system and at the identical time add recent focus areas that were identified by MIT and FCT. Known as Fundação Para, a Ciência e Tecnologia in Portugal, is the national public agency that supports research in science, technology and innovation under the Portugal Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation.
“In the past twenty years, the partnership has built up with a trust foundation that has promoted the cooperation between researchers and the event of projects with significant scientific effects and contributions to the Portuguese economy,” says Fernando Alexandre, Portuguese Minister of Education, Science and Innovation. “In this recent phase of the partnership, which takes place from 2025 to 2030, we expect even greater ambition and effects – Portuguese science and its ability to remodel the economy and to enhance our society to a fair higher level, and at the identical time the challenges that now we have in areas equivalent to climate change and oceans, digitization and space.”
“International collaborations equivalent to the MIT Portugal program are of crucial importance for the mission of research, education and repair. I’m enthusiastic that this system will enter into its next phase,” says co-president Sally Kornbluth. “MPP offers our schools and students the chance to work in unique research environments through which they not only create recent knowledge and learn recent methods, but additionally contribute to solving urgent local and global problems.
Kornbluth share the commitment of with for educational independence and excellence and adds: “The institutions and researchers with whom we work through MPP improve the flexibility to satisfy their mission, and enables us to pursue the demanding standards of mental and inventive distinction that crap the crap of the innovation and the world leader of the scientific discussion.”
The epitome of effective international cooperation, MPP, has remained true to his mission and continued to offer results here within the USA and Portugal for nearly twenty years. The multifaceted program includes an annual research conference and academic summit every June equivalent to an innovation workshop on and a Marine Robotics Summer School within the Azores in July in addition to student and college exchange that facilitate collaborative research. In the third phase of this system alone, 59 visited with students and 53 faculties and researchers Portugal, and with the host of 131 students and 49 faculties and researchers from Portuguese universities and other institutions.
In every roughly five-year phase, MPP researchers deal with a handful of core research areas. For phase 3, MPP expanded the most recent research in 4 strategic areas: climate science and climate change; Earth systems: oceans as much as the vicinity of space; Digital transformation in production; And sustainable cities. Within these wide areas, co-researchers and FCT researchers worked together on quite a few small projects and a number of other large “flagships”, including the event of the Cubesat satellite in Portugal, a cooperation between MPP and a number of other Portuguese universities and firms that marked the country's second satellite start in 30 years.
While the work within the fields of phase 3 in phase 4 will proceed, the researchers may also deal with 4 other areas: chips/nanotechnology, energy (an earlier focus in phase 2), artificial intelligence and space.
“We open the aperture for extra cooperation,” says Hansman.
In addition to concentration on different subject areas, each phase emphasized the various parts of the MPS mission of MPP to different degrees. While phase 3 accentuated collaborative research greater than an exchange of education and entrepreneurship, these two points are given more weight as a part of the phase 4 agreement, said Hart.
“We have approval in phase 4 to take over numerous Portuguese students, and our important researchers will profit from close cooperation with Portuguese researchers,” he says.
The longevity of MPP and the most recent introduction of phase 4 are proof of the worth of this system. The program has played a task in educational, technological and economic progress that Portugal has achieved previously twenty years.
“Today's Portugal is remarkably stronger than the Portugal of 20 years ago, and most of the places to which they’re stronger are affected by this system,” says Hansman and shows particularly in sustainable cities and “green” energy. “We cannot accept direct recognition, but we were a part of Portugal's journey forward.”
Since MPP has added hard: “Portugal has turn into more entrepreneurial. Many, many, many other start-up firms come from Portuguese universities than before.”
A Current evaluation MPP and the opposite US collaborations from FCT have highlighted numerous positive results. The report found that the cooperation with and other US universities improved the Portuguese research capacities and promoted organizational upgrades in national F&E ecosystem, while they made Portuguese universities and firms available with opportunities for introducing complex projects that had difficult to do.
In particular with regard to the report with regard to the report that the long -term cooperation between MPP produced the establishment of persistent doctoral programs and identified a major shift throughout the education ecosystem in Portugal towards globally oriented standards. MPP, reported, made the training of 198 Portuguese doctoral students easier.
Portugal's universities, students and firms don’t profit from research, networks and economic activity that MPP has produced. MPP also offers a singular value and for the broader US science and research community. Under the consistent topics of this system through the years, for instance, “common interest within the Atlantic”, says Hansman.
This summer Faial Island will organize the fifth annual Marine Robotics Summer School from MPP within the Azores, a two-week course that’s open to doctoral students of the Portuguese and in the primary 12 months and 12 co-students of the upper level and doctoral students and doctoral students. The course, which incorporates lectures by MIT and Portuguese faculties and other researchers, workshops, laboratories and practical experience, is “all the time my favorite,” said Hart.
“I work with a few of one of the best researchers on this planet and a few of one of the best students from the Oceanographic Institution, who gets from Woods with and Portugal”.
“So it was exciting to see how the expansion of scholars got here out of this program, definitely positive effects,” says Hart.
Due to the unique unique sea facilities available in Portugal, MPP offers unique opportunities for ocean research, including not only Ocean in front of the Azores, but additionally from Lisbon's low -water port and a Portuguese naval facility south of Lisbon, which is on the market for collaborative research. As with with, as with Portuguese universities are strongly invested in research in climate change – a study area that’s closely related to ocean systems.
“International cooperation has enabled us to check and further develop our research prototypes in various aquaculture environments in each the United States and Portugal, while on the unique specialist knowledge of our collaborative colleague in Portuguese faculties Dr. Human-Computer interaction group in computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory.
Mueller refers back to the work of the mechanical engineering student Charlene Xia, a summer student for sea robots, the research of which goals to develop an financial system to watch the microbiome of algae farms and to stop the spread of harmful bacteria in reference to the heating of the ocean. In addition to participating in the summertime school as a student, Xia returned to Azores as a teaching assistant two years after two years.
“The MIT Portugal program was an important a part of our research to watch the water microbiome for potential outbreaks of diseases,” says Mueller.
When MPP enters his next phase, hard and Hansman are optimistic whether this system of this system on each side of the Atlantic is sustained and picture expanding its effects in the longer term.
“I believe research goes thoroughly at this point and now we have plenty of connections. I believe it’s one in all our goals to not expand the science of this system, however the groups involved,” says Hart, stating that MPP could have a greater presence in technical areas equivalent to AI and Micro-Nano production in addition to in social sciences and within the social sciences and within the social sciences.
“We would love to incorporate many other people and recent people here with and in Portugal,” he says, “in order that we are able to reach a bigger piece of the population.”
