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IEEE recently elevated José Teixeira de Sousa to Senior Member of the organization, an honor bestowed only to those who have made significant contributions to the profession.

IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.

“Being elevated to Senior Member means recognition for more than 30 years dedicated to Electrical and Computer Engineering. During this long period of time, I have done quite a few things. Still, I highlight my early contributions to Integrated Circuit Yield Theory (fraction of chips fabricated without defects). Later, my work on reconfigurable hardware (making circuits by electrically programming them) gave rise to 4 international patents and 3 startup companies. I am thankful to many people, but especially to João Paulo Teixeira, who introduced me to Electronics, to Thomas Williams (IBM) and Vishwani Agrawal (Bell Labs) for joint work on Defect Level modelling, to Miron Abramovici (Bell Labs) for being my scientific mentor and dear friend, and finally to my co-worker Horácio Neto (INESC-ID) who is a Chess and Life Grandmaster.”, mentioned the researcher.

José Teixeira de Sousa is a researcher at the  High Performance Computing Architectures and Systems (HPCAS) at INESC-ID and Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Instituto Superior Técnico.

According to IEEE – Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, “Senior Membership is an honor bestowed only to those who have made significant contributions to the profession”.

“It’s an honor for me to receive such a recognition from IEEE. The area of human language technologies and speech processing, in which I have been involved for more than 15 years, presents very interesting challenges and applications. I hope this recognition can contribute to promote this area among students, among the local scientific community and also to promote the work we do in INESC-ID and Técnico. I’m very happy to be able to continue contributing every day”, mentioned Alberto Abad.

A recognition to the researcher of his peers for technical and professional excellence.

Alberto Abad is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DEI) of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and researcher at INESC-ID. He is the coordinator of the Human Language Technologies laboratory at INESC-ID and the executive coordinator of the scientific area of Programming Methodology and Technology at DEI. He is also an ISCA member and he has been recently elevated to the grade of IEEE Senior member in recognition for his significant contributions.

Alberto Abad has developed his research career in the area of human language technologies for more than 15 years. His research interests include robust speech recognition, speaker and language characterization, applied machine learning, health-care applications, and privacy-preserving speech processing and machine learning.

During these years, Alberto Abad has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications in top-tier conferences and scientific journals of the field. He has been Principal Investigator of FCT funded project VITHEA and INESC-ID representative in the DIRHA European project, Biovisualspeech CMU-Portugal project, and TAPAS ITN. He has also been team member in various Spanish and Portuguese national and international projects, and team leader in international technological evaluation challenges achieving excellent results. He has supervised and co-supervised more than 20 MSc thesis and 1 PhD thesis and lectured in courses at both Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and IST on a variety of topics, including signal processing, machine learning, programming principles, object oriented programming and compilers. Alberto Abad has been actively involved in research community activities, including conference organization, and closely collaborated with local industry and start-up companies.

The 2021 Sasada Prize has been awarded to the INESC-ID researcher António Menezes Leitão. António is a senior researcher of the Graphics and Interaction Group at INESC-ID and Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico.

“I had very good teachers but one of them changed my life: Prof. João Pavão Martins became my mentor and he inspired me to follow his example. Just like he did to me, I have challenged my students to become members of my research group and I have tried to be a good mentor. This prize, honoring Prof. Tsuyoshi Sasada, is thus very meaningful to me, as it tells me that I succeeded in that mission. Obviously, the merit also goes to my students. Through their dedication and friendship, they made it very easy to be a mentor”, mentioned António Menezes Leitão about this recognition.

From 2019, the Sasada Prize follows the discontinued Sasada Award (awarded from 2007 until 2016), which was instituted in the memory of Prof. Tsuyoshi Sasada (1941-2005), former Professor of Osaka University, co-founder and Fellow of CAADRIA, a prolific researcher and teacher from whose lab over 200 students have graduated, and better known as “Tee” in the community.

The recipient of this prize is recognized for his sustained record of contributions and their mentoring of others in the research community, demonstrating a significant and lasting impact on computer aided design research. Nominations are called from across the world and this year a rich set was received.

In making its award, the committee was impressed by the focus of António’s research, the quality of his contributions and, in particular, with the significant number of his research students whom he has supported to attend research conferences widely as they establish themselves in the research community. The committee members can recall the high quality of papers and presentations in these sessions over the years.

“My work is focused on the development of theories, techniques, and tools that support architects and engineers in the exploration of algorithmic approaches. These approaches can considerably improve the design process and promote the search for better-performing design solutions but require a significant shift in the way we think about design problems. Throughout the years, I have invited students of architecture, engineering, and computer science to help me advance these ideas and, together, we have been producing a lot of interesting research. The Sasada Prize is the recognition, from the CAADRIA community, that this collaboration has been successful and that my students are now part of a new generation of researchers”, add the INESC-ID Researcher.

The committee has heard from a number of these students who consistently report that he is a committed teacher that is highly sought after and that he is a valued mentor. He has established the research group Algorithm Design for Architecture that welcomes participation from students and young researchers that has developed a strong community committed to design and computation research.

The awarding committee was composed by Atsuko Kaga (Osaka University), Candy Herr (CAADRIA President) and Tom Kvan (CAADRIA Fellow).

“Predictive Control for Spacecraft Rendezvous” is based on the master’s thesis of Afonso Botelho, winner of the Luis Vidigal Prize, which was guided jointly by João Miranda Lemos, researcher at INESC-ID and professor at IST, and by Baltazar Parreira and Paulo Rosa of DEIMOS Engenharia. More details can be seen on the Springer page indicated above.

This scientific monograph addresses the design of model predictive control algorithms for performing space rendezvous manoeuvres. It consolidates developments within guidance and control algorithms, with the aim of improving the efficiency, safety, and autonomy of these manoeuvres.

The brief presents several applications of model predictive control to rendezvous manoeuvres, including Ankersen zero-order-hold particular solution1, which provides a realistic thrust profile. It offers new approaches for rendezvous manoeuvres in elliptical orbits, formulating obstacle avoidance constraints, passive safety constraints, and robustness techniques. It also compares finite-horizon and variable-horizon formulations for model predictive control in the context of performance and computational complexity.

Predictive Control for Spacecraft Rendezvous is accessible to academics and students new to the topics of orbital rendezvous and model predictive control, but also presents compelling subject matter for researchers and professionals in the aerospace industry.

More info at https://www.springer.com/in/book/9783030756956

CERIS leads the C+D project and participates in the CirMat project. The CircularEcoBIM project also involves CERIS researchers, as well as IN+ and INESC-ID researchers.

Several Técnico researchers are involved in three projects aimed at promoting circular economy in the construction sector, selected by the Ministry of the Environment within the scope of the EEA Grants Environment programme. CERIS – Civil Engineering Research and Innovation for Sustainability leads the C+D project and participates in the CirMat project. The CircularEcoBIM project involves a research team from the Center for Studies in Innovation, Technology and Development Policies (IN +), the Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Research and Development (INESC-ID) and also from CERIS. The three projects will receive more than 1M€ in funding.

José Dinis Silvestre, professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Geo-Resources (DECivil) and researcher at CERIS, leads the C+D project – “Close the loop by Disclosing the benefits of buildings’ deconstruction and materials re-use”, which received 49 thousand euros. The project includes a partnership with NORSUS (Norwegian Institute for Sustainability Research), and aims to create a web-based platform to calculate the economic and environmental benefits associated to the processes of deconstruction of buildings and of reuse of construction and demolition wastes. The Técnico team also involves the CERIS researchers Manuel Duarte Pinheiro, Vera Durão and Imtiaz Ahmed.

Professor José Dinis Silvestre also leads the CERIS ‘participation in the CirMat project – “CIRcular aggregates for sustainable road and building MATerials”. The CERIS team also includes the researchers Jorge de Brito, Vera Durão and Bruno Nunes. The CirMat project aims to develop the industrial sector and to promote multiple products / materials with a high degree of incorporation of waste from the construction and steel industry sectors. The project is coordinated by the construction company dst s.a, and includes a partnership with University of Minho and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The CirMat project received 499 thousand euros.

The Circular EcoBIM project aims to create a BIM standard type Product Data template, i.e., a data structure for BIM objects, and a set of applications that allow the calculation of building and component circularity passports, integration and development of product EPD and the calculation of LEVEL(S) system indicators for buildings from building models, thus contributing to the implementation of circularity practices in construction. The project is coordinated by 3drivers, and involves the participation of Instituto Superior Técnico, CentralBIM, Atelier dos Remédios, PotentialSketch, VIC Properties group, and NTNU. António Aguiar Costa, professor at DECivil and researcher at CERIS, leads the Técnico’s participation in this project. The Técnico professors Amílcar Arantes, José Dinis Silvestre and Teresa Ferreira (CERIS), Paulo Ferrão (IN +) and Paulo Carreira ( INESC-ID) are also part of the team.

Through the EEA Grants, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway established the objective of reducing social and economic disparities in Europe by strengthening bilateral relations with the Beneficiary States. Portugal will benefit from an amount of 102,7M€. This amount will support five programmes: Blue Growth; Environment; Conciliation and Gender Equality; Culture; Active Citizens. In addition to these five programmes, it also exists the Fund for Bilateral Relations. This fund supports initiatives aimed at strengthening the relations between Portugal and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

Source: Técnico