Category: Awards and Recognitions

Former INESC-ID PhD student and researcher in Human Language Technologies (HLT), Catarina Botelho, was awarded first place in the category “Health Systems / Entrepreneurship / Digital Transition” of the ULisboa RedeSAÚDE awards 2025.

The goal of the Awards is to motivate the interest of PhD and master’s students, from the University of Lisbon, in the health sector. Additionally it seeks to promote innovative research, best practices and knowledge sharing that could contribute to the development of the area. The ceremony took place on November 26 during the 9th Annual Conference of redeSAÚDE, under the theme “People and Planet: How the Environment Shapes Human Health”. 

The work which earned Catarina this prize was developed while conducting her PhD, “Leveraging Large Language Models to Support Alzheimer’s Disease Detection”. It was advised by INESC-ID HLT researchers Isabel Trancoso and Alberto Abad, and Tanja Schultz from Bremen  University, and it explored the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) in analysing speech transcriptions and recognise certain features (e.g. text coherence and lexical diversity) that could indicate a possibility of Alzheimer’s Disease in a patient.

© 2025 INESC-ID

Maria Ponte, INESC-ID master’s student was distinguished with an Honorable Mention of the SPARK Award on November 25, during the 2025 edition of the Center for Responsible AI Forum 2025 (CRAI 2025), in Lisbon.

The awards were supported by Feedzai and aimed to recognise impactful and innovative work, by master’s and PhD students, aligned with responsible AI principles. Maria is advised by Human Language Technologies researcher, Isabel Trancoso, who hosted the ceremony, and her work is focused on “Verbal Fluency Tasks as Diagnostic tools for Speech-Affecting Disorders”. 

Know more about CRAI here.

© 2025 INESC-ID

Lucian Popescu, PhD student in High-Performance Computing Architectures and Systems (HPCAS), and advised by Nuno Lopes, researcher in the same area, received the “La Caixa” Foundation Doctoral INPhINIT fellowship.

The exclusive fellowship is attributed to international students who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Portugal or Spain and is the first “La Caixa” fellowship to be secured by an INESC-ID student. “Typically only one or two of these fellowships are awarded per year to computer science (30 in total), which shows the degree of competitiveness.” highlights Nuno Lopes. “We were very surprised and happy with this Christmas gift! Thank you to La Caixa for funding national research.”

Lucian concluded his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, in Romania, and is now starting his PhD in IST/INESC-ID. During his master’s he published an article “Exploiting Undefined Behavior in C/C++ Programs for Optimization: A Study on the Performance Impact” in the Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI) 2025, the most relevant annual conference in the sector.

INESC-ID researcher, Rubén Solera-Ureña, from the Human Language Technologies scientific area, has recently been elected Outstanding Program Committee (PC) Member for the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) 2025.

This election recognises his vital contributions to the reviewing process, contributing to the research community and ensuring the quality and integrity of the conference program.

ECAI is a leading conference in the field of Artificial Intelligence in Europe, and this year took place in Bologna from October 25 to 30.

More about ECAI 2025 here

The paper “The Thin Line Between Conspiracy Theories and Opinion: Why Humans and AI Struggle to Differentiate Them”, developed by INESC-ID, has recently won the “Best Portuguese Internet Research” Award of the Internet Society. The paper is authored by Paula Carvalho, now at Universidade de Aveiro, Danielle Caled, who completed her PhD at INESC-ID, and Mário Silva, researcher in INESC-ID’s Information and Decision Support Systems scientific area.

The study gathered articles from the Portuguese blogosphere and analysed them by both humans and automated systems. It aimed to highlight the difficulty of telling conspiracy from opinion pieces and to deepen the understanding of credibility perception. Furthermore, it provides valuable insights for developing tools to distinguish the two categories and critically assess conspiracy theories.

The “Best Portuguese Internet Research” of the Internet Society 2025 Award is an initiative of the Portugal Chapter of the Internet Society (isoc.pt). It aims to promote and reward the best results of research, carried out in Portugal, with relevance and potential future impact on the evolution of the Internet, in line with the goals of the Internet Society.

Stanford has released the Stanford/Elsevier Top 2% Scientists List 2025, which feature 20 INESC-ID researchers, among the most cited scientists in the world.

This annual recognition comprises two lists naming top scientists, doctors, engineers, and mathematicians, among 200 thousand people, one referring to the 2024 most influential scientists and the other focusing on a career-long impact. The lists are compiled by Stanford University (USA) and published by Elsevier. Eligible individuals are classified in 22 scientific fields and 174 subfields, based on data from Scopus.

INESC-ID’s most influential scientists in 2024 (12):

• Francisco Santos (AIPS)
• Jorge Pacheco (AIPS)
• Rui Castro (SPS)
• Ana Paiva (AIPS)
• Arlindo Oliveira (IDSS)
• Miguel Pupo Correia (DPSS)
• Mário Véstias (HPCAS)
• Hugo Morais (SPS)
• José Fernando Silva (GESC)
• Armando Cordeiro (GESC)
• Victor Pires (GESC)
• Joaquim Jorge (GI)

INESC-ID scientists included in the career-long database (16):

• Arlindo Oliveira (IDSS)
• Leonel Sousa (HPCAS)
• Ana Paiva (AIPS)
• Francisco Santos (AIPS)
• Susana Vinga (IDSS)
• João Paulo Carvalho (HLT)
• Luís Ferreira (SPS)
• Luís Caires (IDSS)
• Rui Castro (SPS)
• Miguel Pupo Correia (DPSS)
• Alberto Rodrigues da Silva (IDSS)
• Hugo Morais (SPS)
• Bruno Martins (HLT)
• José Tribolet (IDSS)
• José Fernando Silva (GESC)
• Joaquim Jorge (GI)

More about last year INESC ID awardees list.

INESC-ID researcher Joaquim Jorge, from the Graphics and Interaction scientific area, has been elected President of the IEEE Computer Society for 2027, after serving on the Society’s Board of Governors and leading multiple initiatives in the field of computing.

A long-time contributor to the IEEE community, he was previously named an IEEE Distinguished Visitor, received the Golden Core Recognition in 2024, and was inducted into the IEEE VR Academy. He currently serves on the Society’s Publications Board.

The IEEE Computer Society is the world’s largest organisation of computing professionals, supporting over 375,000 members worldwide.

Isabel Trancoso, senior researcher at INESC-ID, founder of the Human Language Technologies area, and full professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, has been elected a corresponding member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. She will join the Science Class, 8th Section – Information Sciences and Technologies. The official swearing-in ceremony will take place on July 3, ahead of the Academy’s annual celebrations on July 4.

Founded in 1779, the Lisbon Academy of Sciences is one of Portugal’s oldest scientific institutions. It promotes interdisciplinary research, cultural heritage, public education, and civic discourse, and serves as an official advisory body to the Portuguese state in matters of language and scientific policy. Members are elected from among Portuguese citizens with a significant body of scientific or literary work, and are expected to contribute to the Academy’s intellectual and institutional activities, including plenary sessions and the work of their respective sections.

Her election follows recent appointments of other INESC-ID researchers, including Arlindo Oliveira (2024) and José Borbinha (2023), highlighting the institute’s continued presence and influence within national science policy and academic leadership.