Category: News

Environmental requirements and regulations have been increasing in an effort to address the climate crisis, one of society’s main concerns in recent years. These goals, however urgent, can be challenging to meet.

In a partnership with INESC-ID, Nova SBE and the Municipality of Fundão, tech company Celfocus has launched a pilot project to support companies in improving their sustainability strategies. It consists of a single digital tool that enables companies to measure, reduce and compensate their carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, with full security and transparency, thanks to the use of blockchain technology.

In addition to measuring their carbon footprint, the platform allows companies to manage how it will be reduced, based on their own sustainability strategies, a process fully accessible within the platform. Sustainable project promoters can submit initiatives eligible for carbon credits, which in turn can be used in an integrated Marketplace to be sold, purchased or used to compensate emissions.

Tests have been conducted in the municipality of Fundão, with local entities like Alambique Hotel Resort & Spa, the Agrupamento de Escolas do Fundão, the Santa Casa da Misericórdia and the Departamento de Inovação da Autarquia. With the pilot phase completed, and the captured interest of large international companies, Celfocus is now preparing for the commercial distribution of the platform.

The initiative is part of the Blockchain.PT Mobilising Agenda, funded by Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) and integrated with international frameworks like the Climate Action Data Trust (CADT), ensuring alignment with the global standards of the climate report.

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© 2025 INESC-ID

Image: Matthias Heyde | Unsplash

From unlocking our phones with facial recognition to self-driving cars, AI-based computer vision is increasingly part of the technologies we use. Yet there is still much to learn from how we see the world.

To address this gap, researchers from INESC-ID, Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), and the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) have developed EVNets – Early Vision Networks, an AI model inspired by the primate visual system to improve robustness in image analysis.

The research, developed by Lucas Piper and Arlindo Oliveira (INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Técnico), together with Tiago Marques (Champalimaud Foundation), was recently presented by Lucas at NeurIPS 2025 in San Diego, one of the most prestigious international conferences in Machine Learning and AI.

EVNets build on earlier research into how primates process visual information, integrating biological principles to enhance performance in computer vision tasks. The model is particularly effective when dealing with distortions such as brightness or contrast variation, situations that human vision handles naturally but that remain challenging for many traditional AI systems.

This biologically inspired approach also supports more interpretable and transparent algorithms. “We want to develop models that we can comprehend and explain,” said Lucas. “If these algorithms are aligned with how the human brain works, they are already more inherently understandable.”

At the Breast Cancer Research Program at the Champalimaud Foundation, EVNets are already being tested to determine whether the model can analyse medical imaging scans from different manufacturers more reliably than current AI methods. If the improvements in robustness translate to clinical data, EVNets could contribute to more consistent diagnostics and support patient care.

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© 2025 INESC-ID
Image: Tiago Marques / Champalimaud Foundation