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The future of INESC Porto within the University of Porto

*By Ricardo Morla

Since its inception as a tool for more agile research and knowledge transfer to the industry when compared to what could be done with the University structure at the time, INESC Porto has grown. It has stabilized its financial situation, gained recognition and funding from its LA status, spawned numerous successful spin-offs, drawn in research groups with complementary expertise, expanded internationally, and improved its scientific track record with a science management model that, for example, assigns monetary rewards to researchers that publish in internationally recognized journals. The University of Porto, on the other hand, is now a public foundation that abides to private law and that is able to manage its resources on a multi-year basis. This means the University has now the tools to create an agile structure for both education and research which were not available when INESC Porto was created.

Given the University of Porto’s new status, that it holds 62% of INESC Porto, that a large number of researchers at INESC Porto are also faculty or students of the University of Porto, and that one of INESC Porto’s global objectives in its 2009 plan was to keep up with the transition of the University status anticipating the possibility of becoming an organic unit of the University, it is of the upmost importance to ponder on which synergistic opportunities for both INESC Porto and the University of Porto may exist in this defining moment in the University’s history. There are many levels of synergy – for example in the ICT infrastructure, and in accounting, legal, communication, and human resources services which may or may not make sense and deserve to be pondered and discussed individually. The synergies that I believe must be foremost discussed are related to scientific strategy:

One view of the current research in Portugal is that fierce international competition can only be overcome by using our scarce resources in extremely focused research areas. The rationale behind this view is that undisputed scientific leadership in a few areas will spill over to businesses and society in general as well as to other scientific areas. So what synergies can we establish between INESC Porto and the University of Porto to leverage this view? The following are given as examples for jumpstarting the discussion within INESC Porto and the University of Porto on this extremely important subject. (*) Focused and coordinated researchers/faculty hiring policies. (*) Focused joint international marketing missions targeting students, faculty, and industry. (*) Shared research infrastructure and simplified inter-institute research collaboration. (*) Coordinated major scientific talk series such as the ECE Department’s Back to Basics Colloquium. (*)  Shared human and infrastructure resources for highly focused teaching programs such as the University’s Doctoral School. (*)

The clock is ticking and others in the world are not only ahead of us but moving faster. This is an opportunity that INESC Porto and the University of Porto should not miss if they want to be on the map.

* Collaborator at the Telecommunications and Multimedia Unit (UTM)