João Felício, researcher and PhD student at Técnico, was the winner of the most recent edition of ANACOM-URSI Portugal Award for his work Microwave Imaging for Breast Cancer Screening – Experimental Validation. This is the 11th edition of ANACOM-URSI (International Union of Radio Science) award, which aims to distinguish creativity and rigour on scientific research in Portugal.

“Although I do not work with the purpose of being awarded, I am very honoured to receive this distinction not only for the history but also for the reputation of this award in the area of radio electricity,” says the researcher João Felício.

The award-winning work is part of the researcher’s doctoral thesis project, which focuses on the possibility of using microwave imaging as an alternative to X-rays (mammography) for breast cancer screening. The developments that his work group has achieved, at both hardware and signal processing level in order to handle the existing and known challenges, are addressed in this distinguished work. “We have had promising results, which gives us confidence that microwaves can indeed be used for breast cancer screening”, says the IT researcher. According to the author, this distinction was due to the “importance of the topic” and the fact that it is based on “several areas of knowledge aiming to achieve a specific application” and also due to “a very strong experimental component”.

On this occasion, the Técnico student Vera Pedras won the 3rd place in the Best Paper Award for her work Development of QoE models (No Reference) for voice and Web Browsing based in 3G/4G radio measures, granted by the Portuguese Committee of URSI.