INESC TEC shows science and technology to the younger ones

Once again this year, INESC TEC showed its work to its younger public through the participation in three events especially targeted to students - the World Finals for the International Collegiate Programming Contest, SPE (Engineering Week) and the Mostra of the University of Porto.

World Finals on computer programming contest

The city of Porto hosted the 43rd 2019 World Final of the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), which was held between 31 March and 5 April at the Alfândega Porto Congress Center. The University of Porto, in collaboration with INESC TEC, were in charge of the organisation of this event.

The international contest gathered more than 1500 IT university students, who competed for the title of programming world champion. These participants were selected from over 400 knockout stages held all over the world, which had the total participation of 50 thousand IT students coming from more than 3 000 universities from 111 countries.

Credits photos: UPorto

In this event, INESC TEC’s exhibition area had technology demonstrations from the Centre for Biomedical Engineering Research (C-BER), namely the WeSENSS project, that consists in a technology that allows for an individual monitoring through a web interface, of an individual's condition, whether at a physiological level or of the surrounding environment, in a solution that is currently being applied in the monitoring of firefighters; and the NEUROQ project, a wearable device that assesses the rigidity of the wrist in patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease, reducing and helping the decision making time of neurosurgeons during interventions of deep brain stimulation. Besides C-BER’s technologies, there was also space to get to know video projects like the Augmented Video 360 (from the Centre for Information Systems and Computer Graphics - CSIG), an editing and visualisation tool for 360º videos with dynamic annotations to improve narratives; and BlueCom+, with tests being develop at Douro River, in a work that enables access to the internet from over 100 km from the coastline (from the Centre for Telecommunications and Multimedia - CTM).

SPE (Engineering Week)

Organised by the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), SPE 2019 (Engineering Week) is targeted to students of the 10th, 11th and 12th grades, and its main goal is to answer the questions about the professional career in the Engineering area. Similar to past years, INESC TEC was part of the event that was held on 1, 2 and 3 April. 

Besides the Engineering degrees available at FEUP, the programme of the initiative also included some cross-cutting activities that intended to answer the challenges that arise on an engineers’ daily routine, with the themes: “Salvo o Planeta” (in English: “I Save the Planet”), “Desenho o Novo Homem” (in English: “I Design the New Man”), “Crio a Sociedade do Futuro” (in English: “I Create the Society of the Future”), “Torno as Empresas Mais Competitvas” (in English: “I Make the Companies More Competitive”) and “Construo um Mundo Novo” (in English: “I Build a New World”).

In the path entitled “ I Create the Society of the Future”, INESC TEC organised three different sessions: “Como ensinar os computadores a ouvir música” (in English: “How to teach computers to listen to music”, being the responsibility of CTM), “Eficiência energética e veículos elétricos” (in English: “Energy efficiency and electric vehicles”, promoted by CPES - Centre for Power and Energy Systems) and “Beer Game - Gestão de Cadeias de Abastecimento” (in English: “Chain Supplies Management (organised by CEGI - Centre for Industrial Engineering and Management). These activities hosted a total of 92 participants.

“How to teach computers to listen to music” addressed the ability of the computers to efficiently “listen” and “understand” the lyrics of a music, through audio signals processing and machine learning techniques. In the exhibition “Energy efficiency and electric vehicles”, the efficient management of energy was the main theme, showing how it is possible to minimise the impact on the environment and costs. Finally, “Beer Game” was an educational game that intended to simulate a supply chain in which the players had to divide themselves in groups and make decisions in terms of orders and deliveries.

Mostra of the University of Porto

The Mostra of the University of Porto is an annual initiative that aims at informing the young people about the available choices in order for them to pursue their academic careers in the 14 faculties of the University of Porto. Besides the Faculties, the research centres integrated in the University of Porto, in which INESC TEC is included, were also represented. The 17th edition of the Mostra was held between 4 and 7 April, at Largo Amor de Perdição, in Porto.

At INESC TEC’s area, there were three demonstrators in exhibition. One from the project Conta-me Histórias, of the responsibility of the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support (LIAAD), an experimental interface to search past information that are temporally organised and in which the user can freely search about any theme. Another demonstrator was from project BEACONING, which was developed by the Centre for Information Systems and Computer Graphics (CSIG), and that showed a pervasive game transmitting educational content and instead of only entertainment. And finally, a wireless power transfer demonstrator, developed by CTM, in which the goal was to light up an incandescent lamp or a LED through the use of a wireless power transfer module.

Besides the demonstrators, the participants of the Mostra also had the opportunity to watch videos of some of the projects developed by INESC TEC, namely of project YAKE (also from LIAAD), which consists in a new keyword extraction method, and of project HYRAX (from the Centre for Research in Advanced Computing Systems - CRACS), which suggests a new type of cloud storage exclusively composed by a set of wireless mobile devices.

The Mostra of the University of Porto had the presence of more than 20 000 visitors, promoting organised visits in over 100 schools from the various part of the country, namely Porto, Paredes de Coura, Valongo, Chaves, Guimarães, Ponte da Barca, Melgaço, Penafiel, Santo Tirso, among others.