Blog

The European EIT Health program selected HeartGenetics as one of its most successful startups.

This Success Story has now been published on the EIT Health webpage https://www.eithealth.eu/-/heartgenetics.

Ana Teresa Freitas, Researcher at INESC-ID and CEO of Heartgenetics, explains why this merit award is so important for the startup:

“For Heartgenetics, being selected to participate in EIT Health GoEurope 2016, meant that we were awarded with a €50k grant that allowed us to fund a market study for evaluating the cardiovascular genetics market in Europe, which in turn enabled us to realign our strategy for European markets. The programme also gave us access to a greater network of Portuguese start-ups and entrepreneurs and access to EIT Health partners across Europe”.

EIT Health promotes healthy living, active ageing and improvements in healthcare by leveraging big data and new technologies, identifying and removing barriers to innovation, and building on education and talent creation.

Every year, IAPMEI, Agência para a Competitividade e Inovação,  distinguish SMEs with a recognition of its merit and contribution to the results of the economy. This award distinguishes companies relating to their surroundings – suppliers, customers,  financial system, national and regional authorities – on a basis of trust that uplevel the development of their business. The “PME Excelência” status is particularly relevant, being a guarantee of the solidity and sustainability of the companies with a quality stamp recognizing the merit and excellence of its financial performance.

Among other companies, Silicongate, was nominated for the PME Excelência, in a special ceremony.

  Silicongate is an integrated circuit design company specialized in analog and mixed-signal IP, and its an INESC-ID startup since 2008.

The paper “Engineering Pro-sociality with Autonomous Agents” (co-authored by Ana Paiva with  Fernando Santos and Francisco C. Santos), presented at  AAAI’18 this year, won the first prize of the Blue Sky Awards sponsored by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) at the AAAI-18 Senior Member Presentation Track. The goal of this track was to present ideas and visions that can stimulate the research community to pursue new directions, such as new problems, new application domains, or new methodologies.

The purpose of this conference was to promote research in artificial intelligence (AI) and scientific exchange among AI researchers, practitioners, scientists, and engineers in affiliated disciplines.

For more information visit the Computing Community Consortium web page:

Luís Correia, researcher at INESC ID, talks about the IRACON project, a European Commission Cost Action. Reducing the communication delay between devices and preparing telecommunication networks for the arrival of 5G is the main objective of this project.

“90 segundos de Ciência” is a Antena 1 daily broadcast that gives a voice to Portuguese researchers and explore the latest scientific news.

http://www.90segundosdeciencia.pt/episodes/ep-325-luis-correia/

TEDxIST, held every year at the Taguspark Campus, will be on March 3rd.

TEDxIST is an event independently organized by a group of students from Instituto Superior Técnico, with support from LAGE2, for the whole IST community.The goal of this event is to transmit the TED spirit to the university’s community and, at the same time, attract members from the outside that want to share their unique experience. TEDxIST is completely in sync with TED’s own mission, “sharing ideas worth spreading”.

Two  speakers from INESC-ID are confirmed, Ana Teresa Freitas and Ana Paiva will share with the audience their experiences and journeys, beside many speakers. Announced is  Teresa Barata, one of the first Health Coaches in Portugal, José Gonilha, Professor and winner of the Young Engineer Innovation Award in 2016 and Miguel Ricou psychologist, teacher and researcher. More names will be announced soon.

Due to TED’s rules, there is a limited audience so fill in this form as soon as you can: https://tinyurl.com/ycvnyyjx !

LxMLS 2018 will take place June 14th-21th at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), a leading Engineering and Science school in Portugal. It is organized jointly by IST, the Instituto de Telecomunicações, the Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa (INESC-ID), Unbabel, and Priberam Labs.

The application period will be from January 21th to March 16th. You can apply through this online form

On January 18th, INESC-ID welcomed Dra. Leonor Beleza (Champalimaud Foundation President), Dr. João Silveira Botelho, (Champalimaud Foundation Vice – President), Dr. Nickolas Papanikolaou ( Head of the Computational Clinical Imaging Group at the Champalimaud Foundation), Dr. José Cruz (Digital Projects Coordinator) and Dr. Pedro Garcia da Silva (Scientific Coordinator) The Champalimaud Foundation is a private biomedical research foundation, particularly in the areas of cancer and neurosciences.

During the exploratory visit, researchers from the Visualization and Intelligent MultiModal Interfaces (VIMMI) group showcased several prototypes related to 3D medical image interaction. The exploratory visit started with a presentation of the institution made by Jorge Fernandes, Director of INESC-ID, followed by a networking meeting for members of both institutions to get acquainted and familiar with ongoing projects related to immersive radiodiagnostics and surgical navigation. Finally, the visit concluded with live demonstrations introduced by Professor Joaquim Jorge and conducted by VIMMI researchers.

Members from the Champalimaud Foundation had the opportunity to try-out contactless interfaces, interactive surfaces, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality prototypes for interacting with 3D medical content. Besides learning more about the work developed at VIMMI, members of the Champalimaud Foundation considered that such prototypes are relevant and spotted clinical potential for different radiologic and surgical scenarios.

On January 15th, INESC-ID signed a protocol with Paris Descartes University under UNESCO Chair to promote cooperation in digital anatomy.

The protocol, valid for the next five years was signed at Egas Moniz – Cooperativa de Ensino Superior at Monte da Caparica, by the President of INESC ID, Leonel Sousa and Prof. Dr. Jean-François Uhl from URDIA Research unit – Anatomy – L’University Paris Descartes and Research director of the chair of Digital Anatomy (Unesco).

The aim of this collaboration is to modernize the teaching of anatomy, namely by introducing new low-cost interactive technologies in classrooms and anatomical theaters.

Improving engagement of students in software engineering courses is the goal of this new European Erasmus+ project. The researching team will tackle the problem by introducing gaming elements into software engineering training materials. A series of gamified reusable, and freely accessible multiplayer quizzes will be developed. These quizzes will be used live by the students in the classroom. Additionally, two interactive educational games will be developed covering practical aspects of formal specification and software quality assurance. The commitment of students is expected to increase due to the gamification techniques used in the approach. This effect will be assessed in a longitudinal study supported by learning analytics involving several pilots in courses of the associated universities in 4 different countries.

All gamified interactive content produced by IMPRESS will be provided as free, open and public assets.

This project is represented by the Intelligent Agents and Synthetic Characters Group at INESC-ID.

More information about the IMPRESS project can be found on the website www.impress-project.eu.