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Some thoughts: from the PhD to the Spin-off; from HASLab to INESC TEC
By Miguel Matos*
I was still reflecting on the conclusion of my PhD last October when I was surprised and pleased to receive the invitation to write an article for this section. I was surprised because it was unexpected, and pleased because here was a space to freely write my opinion and to describe my ‘Inesquian’ experience.
I will start from the beginning: my PhD focused on the problems of disseminating data in distributed high-scale systems. Very briefly, by addressing large IT systems – with thousands of machines running in a data centre or dozens or hundreds of thousands working in a P2P system –, the way to make these machines ‘talk’ with each other, and the features and guarantees that can be given about that communication, raise fundamental problems that limit the capacities of the IT systems that we want to build.
Even though the work conducted has a primarily academic focus where the idea is to respond to the problems of tomorrow, the techniques and underlying principles are now applied in countless commercial systems on the market. Curiously, the problems of managing large amounts of computational resources and volumes of data are at the foundation of the challenges faced today and in the context of several subjects, such as Cloud Computing, Big Data and SmartGrids.
Therefore, it is a privilege to be able to continue my relationship with INESC TEC as a post-doc at HASLab, not only because of the multidisciplinary nature of the INESC TEC universe, but also because it is known as a pipeline for technology transfer.
The combination of these skills with HASLab’s tripod, which focuses on Software Engineering, Distributed Systems and Cryptography and Information Security, opens promising perspectives, not only for purely theoretical research, but also for applied research with industry partners.
In terms of my professional development, my connection to INESC TEC has allowed me to benefit from a set of extremely interesting training activities/workshops on entrepreneurship, namely the SEEW 2012 – Science and Engineering Entrepreneurship, led by Prof. João Claro, and the 2013 Spin-Up, which is a cycle of workshops on the growth of academic-based start-ups and spin-offs, led by Prof. Manuel Oliveira. Both experiences have been extremely positive and so I am looking forward to other similar events.
It was because of the SEEW’12 in particular that I, together with a few other colleagues at HASLab, decided to participate in the 2013 COHiTEC, a training programme on technology commercialisation organised by COTEC.
During the programme we worked on the business aspects of a technology to replicate databases, born as result of previous experiences, which culminated in a public presentation at the Pavilhão do Conhecimento (Knowledge Pavilion) before a diversified audience. Parallel to the programme, we received the statute of spin-off from the University of Minho and right now we are trying to convert the existing prototype into a final product.
As a recent PhD holder and as a recent member of INESC TEC, I hope I can give a small contribution for the institution to maintain and perhaps expand its reputation of excellence.
* Collaborator at the High Assurance Software Laboratory (HASLab), an INESC TEC Unit located in the cluster of the University of Minho.
