CMU Portugal partnership reinforcement

The Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Manuel Heitor, visited on February 1st Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) on an official visit, along with a Portuguese delegation of 15 people, which included the President of Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), Paulo Ferrão; Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program National Co-Director, Nuno Nunes; representatives of Industry, including REN and Altice; and faculty members of several Portuguese universities and research centers.

The visit was focused on strengthening the cooperation in ICT between the Portuguese Government and CMU through the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program (CMU Portugal), by promoting strategic networking meetings among the Portuguese delegation and research groups, faculty, and leaders of CMU. The visit was hosted by the Director at CMU of the CMU | Portugal Program José Moura and included discussions with James Garrett, CMU’s Provost, and Farnam Jahanian, CMU’s President.

On January 31, the Portugal delegation had a chance to discuss their research on one-to-one meetings with CMU researchers to identify synergies and break new ground for future collaborations.

On February 1st the agenda was more inclusive and provided an overall approach to CMU research and education initiatives. The Portuguese delegation had a warm welcome from CMU Provost James H. Garrett during a working lunch where the Portuguese Minister presented the national strategy for Artificial Intelligence “AI Portugal 2030.”

CMU Portugal Directors, Nuno Nunes and José M. F. Moura, presented a program overview (presentation) and announced some of the future initiatives such as the launch of new Executive Training Programs, the takeoff of both Faculty and Student exchange programs between Carnegie Mellon and Portuguese universities, and a call for large research projects that will launch soon. This call for projects will be the first launched in Phase III of the CMU|Portugal Program under the Global Science and Technology Partnerships (GoPortugal) initiative. The planned global budget is 18 M€ and will fund collaborative R&D projects between companies, non-corporate entities of the R&D system under the scope of the Portuguese international partnerships, which includes the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Portugal partnership. For this call, CMU Portugal projects will focus on the broad ICT area with a focus in Data Science and Engineering; Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning; Autonomy and Mobility; Cloud Computing; Design in a Variety of Societal Settings and Applications. The expected opening date for the call is February and more information will soon be available at our website and social media pages.

Link to presentation (full video)

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