Since its founding 19 years in the past as a pioneering collaboration with Portuguese universities, analysis establishments and companies, the MIT-Portugal Program (MPP) has achieved a slew of successes — from enabling 47 entrepreneurial spinoffs and funding over 220 joint initiatives between MIT and Portuguese researchers to coaching a technology of remarkable researchers on each side of the Atlantic.
In March, with practically 20 years of collaboration underneath their belts, MIT and the Portuguese Science and Expertise Basis (FCT) signed an settlement that formally launches this system’s subsequent chapter. Working by 2030, MPP’s Part 4 will assist continued exploration of modern concepts and options in fields starting from synthetic intelligence and nanotechnology to local weather change — each on the MIT campus and with companions all through Portugal.
“One of many benefits of getting a program that has gone on so lengthy is that we’re fairly nicely acquainted with one another at this level. Through the years, we’ve discovered one another’s methods, strengths and weaknesses and we’ve been in a position to create a synergy that may not have existed if we labored collectively for a brief time frame,” says Douglas Hart, MIT mechanical engineering professor and MPP co-director.
Hart and John Hansman, the T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and MPP co-director, are desirous to take this system’s current analysis initiatives additional, whereas including new areas of focus recognized by MIT and FCT. Generally known as the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia in Portugal, FCT is the nationwide public company supporting analysis in science, know-how and innovation underneath Portugal’s Ministry of Schooling, Science and Innovation.
“Over the previous 20 years, the partnership with MIT has constructed a basis of belief that has fostered collaboration amongst researchers and the event of initiatives with important scientific impression and contributions to the Portuguese economic system,” Fernando Alexandre, Portugal’s minister for training, science, and innovation, says. “On this new section of the partnership, operating from 2025 to 2030, we anticipate even higher ambition and impression — elevating Portuguese science and its capability to rework the economic system and enhance our society to even increased ranges, whereas serving to to deal with the challenges we face in areas resembling local weather change and the oceans, digitalization, and area.”
“Worldwide collaborations just like the MIT-Portugal Program are completely very important to MIT’s mission of analysis, training and repair. I’m thrilled to see this system transfer into its subsequent section,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “MPP gives our school and college students alternatives to work in distinctive analysis environments the place they not solely make new findings and be taught new strategies but additionally contribute to fixing pressing native and world issues. MPP’s work within the realm of ocean science and local weather is a primary instance of how worldwide partnerships like this can assist resolve necessary human issues.”
Sharing MIT’s dedication to tutorial independence and excellence, Kornbluth provides, “the establishments and researchers we accomplice with by MPP improve MIT’s skill to realize its mission, enabling us to pursue the exacting requirements of mental and artistic distinction that make MIT a cradle of innovation and world chief in scientific discovery.”
The epitome of an efficient worldwide collaboration, MPP has stayed true to its mission and continued to ship outcomes right here within the U.S. and in Portugal for practically 20 years — prevailing amid myriad shifts within the political, social, and financial panorama. The multifaceted program encompasses an annual analysis convention and academic summits resembling an Innovation Workshop at MIT every June and a Marine Robotics Summer time Faculty within the Azores in July, in addition to pupil and school exchanges that facilitate collaborative analysis. Through the third section of this system alone, 59 MIT college students and 53 school and researchers visited Portugal, and MIT hosted 131 college students and 49 school and researchers from Portuguese universities and different establishments.
In every roughly five-year section, MPP researchers deal with a handful of core analysis areas. For Part 3, MPP superior cutting-edge analysis in 4 strategic areas: local weather science and local weather change; Earth methods: oceans to close area; digital transformation in manufacturing; and sustainable cities. Inside these broad areas, MIT and FCT researchers labored collectively on quite a few small-scale initiatives and several other giant “flagship” ones, together with growth of Portugal’s CubeSat satellite tv for pc, a collaboration between MPP and several other Portuguese universities and corporations that marked the nation’s second satellite tv for pc launch and the primary in 30 years.
Whereas work within the Part 3 fields will proceed throughout Part 4, researchers may also flip their consideration to 4 extra areas: chips/nanotechnology, power (a earlier focus in Part 2), synthetic intelligence, and area.
“We’re opening up the aperture for added collaboration areas,” Hansman says.
Along with specializing in distinct topic areas, every section has emphasised the assorted elements of MPP’s mission to differing levels. Whereas Part 3 accentuated collaborative analysis greater than academic exchanges and entrepreneurship, these two features will probably be given extra weight underneath the Part 4 settlement, Hart mentioned.
“We now have approval in Part 4 to convey a variety of Portuguese college students over, and our principal investigators will profit from shut collaborations with Portuguese researchers,” he says.
The longevity of MPP and the current launch of Part 4 are proof of this system’s worth. This system has performed a job within the academic, technological and financial progress Portugal has achieved over the previous 20 years, as nicely.
“The Portugal of immediately is remarkably stronger than the Portugal of 20 years in the past, and most of the locations the place they’re stronger have been impacted by this system,” says Hansman, pointing to sustainable cities and “inexperienced” power, specifically. “We will’t take direct credit score, however we’ve been a part of Portugal’s journey ahead.”
Since MPP started, Hart provides, “Portugal has develop into way more entrepreneurial. Many, many, many extra start-up corporations are popping out of Portuguese universities than there was once.”
A current evaluation of MPP and FCT’s different U.S. collaborations highlighted a variety of optimistic outcomes. The report famous that collaborations with MIT and different US universities have enhanced Portuguese analysis capacities and promoted organizational upgrades within the nationwide R&D ecosystem, whereas offering Portuguese universities and corporations with alternatives to have interaction in complicated initiatives that may have been tough to undertake on their very own.
Concerning MIT specifically, the report discovered that MPP’s long-term collaboration has spawned the institution of sustained doctoral applications and pointed to a marked shift inside Portugal’s academic ecosystem towards globally aligned requirements. MPP, it reported, has facilitated the training of 198 Portuguese PhDs.
Portugal’s universities, college students and corporations usually are not alone in benefitting from the analysis, networks, and financial exercise MPP has spawned. MPP additionally delivers distinctive worth to MIT, in addition to to the broader US science and analysis group. Among the many program’s constant themes through the years, for instance, is “joint curiosity within the Atlantic,” Hansman says.
This summer time, Faial Island within the Azores will host MPP’s fifth annual Marine Robotics Summer time Faculty, a two-week course open to 12 Portuguese Grasp’s and first yr PhD college students and 12 MIT upper-level undergraduates and graduate college students. The course, which incorporates lectures by MIT and Portuguese school and different researchers, workshops, labs and hands-on experiences, “is at all times my favourite,” mentioned Hart.
“I get to work with a number of the finest researchers on the planet there, and a number of the high college students popping out of Woods Gap Oceanographic Establishment, MIT, and Portugal,” he says, including that a few of his earlier Marine Robotics Summer time Faculty college students have come to review at MIT after which gone on to develop into professors in ocean science.
“So, it’s been thrilling to see the expansion of scholars popping out of that program, definitely a optimistic impression,” Hart says.
MPP supplies one-of-a-kind alternatives for ocean analysis as a result of distinctive marine amenities accessible in Portugal, together with not solely open ocean off the Azores but additionally Lisbon’s deep-water port and a Portuguese Naval facility simply south of Lisbon that’s accessible for collaborative analysis by worldwide scientists. Like MIT, Portuguese universities are additionally strongly invested in local weather change analysis — a area of research keenly associated to ocean methods.
“The worldwide collaboration has allowed us to check and additional develop our analysis prototypes in several aquaculture environments each within the US and in Portugal, whereas constructing on the distinctive experience of our Portuguese school collaborator Dr. Ricardo Calado from the College of Aveiro and our trade collaborators,” says Stefanie Mueller, the TIBCO Profession Growth Affiliate Professor in MIT’s departments of Electrical Engineering and Pc Science and Mechanical Engineering and chief of the Human-Pc Interplay Group on the MIT Pc Science and Synthetic Intelligence Lab.
Mueller factors to the work of MIT mechanical engineering PhD pupil Charlene Xia, a Marine Robotics Summer time Faculty participant, whose analysis is geared toward creating a cheap system to observe the microbiome of seaweed farms and halt the unfold of dangerous micro organism related to ocean warming. Along with collaborating in the summertime college as a pupil, Xia returned to the Azores for 2 subsequent years as a educating assistant.
“The MIT-Portugal Program has been a key enabler of our analysis on monitoring the aquatic microbiome for potential illness outbreaks,” Mueller says.
As MPP enters its subsequent section, Hart and Hansman are optimistic about this system’s persevering with success on each side of the Atlantic and envision broadening its impression going ahead.
“I believe, at this level, the analysis goes rather well, and we’ve received plenty of connections. I believe certainly one of our objectives is to increase not the science of this system essentially, however the teams concerned,” Hart says, noting that MPP may have a much bigger presence in technical fields resembling AI and micro-nano manufacturing, in addition to in social sciences and humanities.
“We’d wish to contain many extra individuals and new individuals right here at MIT, in addition to in Portugal,” he says, “in order that we are able to attain a bigger slice of the inhabitants.”
