Limelight
Every month, this section will honour a collaborator for an exceptional contribution in his/her area of activity. BIP’s Editors will have the final choice. However, the cooperation of every Unit Coordinator is precious since they will be the ones suggesting which collaborator should be distinguished.
November – José Carlos Alves (ROBIS)
The Managers of the Robotics and Intelligent Systems Unit (ROBIS) stated – We would like to nominate Professor José Carlos Alves for his successful participation in the 5th World Robotic Sailing Championship/5th International Robotic Sailing Conference, which took place between 17 and 21 September 2012, in Cardiff, UK. The INESC TEC/FEUP team participated with the FASt autonomous sailboat. The team was set up by four students of the Master’s Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering (MIEEC), Nuno Cruz and José Carlos Alves. Competing with a total of nine boats, INESC TEC/FEUP team secured the 1st place in all races.
December – Clara Gouveia (USE)
The Manager of the Power Systems Unit (USE) stated – Clara Gouveia is a PhD student and she has been working on Electric Vehicle integration as part of project Microgrids+EV. Recently, she was also involved in the implementation of the laboratory infrastructure built as part of project REIVE, where she actively helped define and implement the acquisition, supervision and control system for the Laboratory of Microgrids and Electric Vehicles. This task culminated in a demonstration of the results for November, where she played a relevant role. Clara was always very committed in a task that was very demanding, and she dedicated many work hours to this project, obtaining high quality results. Of course other people have been involved in this project, but Clara’s contribution is especially worthy of note.
January – João Gama (LIAAD) and João Falcão e Cunha (UGEI)
The Manager of the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support (LIAAD) stated: “Other than his outstanding scientific production and dynamics at LIAAD, João Gama has recently won the Jabuti literary award in Brazil, in the Technology and Informatics category. The Jabuti award, which he received on 28 November 2012, is the most important literary award in Brazil and it is promoted by the Câmara Brasileira do Livro. It encompasses several categories, from novels to educational and technical books.
João Gama won this award after publishing the book Artificial Intelligence: An approach to machine learning, which he wrote together with other researchers. The Portuguese version of the book, Extração de Conhecimento de Dados (Extracting Data from Knowledge), was recently published in Portugal by Sílabo.”
The Manager of the Industrial Engineering and Service Management (UGEI) stated – Professor João Falcão e Cunha was the main person behind the Master in Services Engineering and Management (MESG) of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, which at the time was pioneering in Europe. This Professor has been the director of this master’s degree since it was launched.
In 2009 he received the Faculty Award from IBM for his educational and research contributions to the area of SSME – Service Science, Management and Engineering. He has recently received the same award, this time due to his fundamental role in launching and managing the only IBM advanced training centre in Portugal (IBM-CAS), which focuses on SSME and Smart Cities. UGEI and its researchers have been benefitting (immensely) from his proactiveness in several fronts.
