Softinsa, an IBM group company, announces opening of applications for the 2017 IBM Scientific Award until September 15. Young Portuguese researchers or foreigners living in Portugal for at least 3 years and less than 36 years old are eligible to apply. The works must be submitted individually, in Portuguese or English. The works will be evaluated by a jury composed of internationally renowned Portuguese scientists and by a representative of IBM Portugal.
For over three decades, the award-winners have occupied a prominent place among the international scientific community, such as Alexandra Silva, who won the 2010 IBM Scientific Award. After this distinction, Alexandra held a position as assistant professor at Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands). In 2015 she joined the University College London (UK) as associate professor and was promoted in 2017 as full professor. In recent years, she has received several grants and distinctions, including an ERC Starting Grant, the Philip Leverhulme Award for internationally recognised researchers and the Presburger award for young scientists with key contributions in computer science. She is part of ACM SIGLOG executive committee and she is often a scientific journal editor.
Another example of success is Luís Oliveira e Silva, the 2003 IBM scientific award winner. “Receiving the IBM award was very important because it brought visibility to my work and helped me to take my career forward. On the other hand, the award was crucial to disseminate my work at international level and to attract highly qualified students to my team”. “IBM is internationally recognised as a prestigious company, so this award allowed a wide dissemination of my work”, adds the researcher. This distinction also “inspired PhD and post-doc students who worked with me to apply for this award. One of them, Samuel Martins, was also a winner. IBM provides an outstanding service to our country through the promotion of scientific merit and career opportunities”, said Luís Oliveira e Silva.
“The IBM scientific award provides Portuguese young researchers the rare opportunity of gaining recognition and credibility outside the academic world. When I received the award I was finishing my PhD and I was taking the first steps to become an entrepreneur and a professional. The award helped me a lot at that time”, stressed João Maciel, winner of the 2001 IBM scientific award, who is now working at Boston Consulting Group, in the United States.
According to Mário Figueiredo, the 1995 IBM scientific award winner, “the award had a huge impact at the beginning of my academic and scientific career. A prestigious jury composed of Portuguese researchers recognised the quality of my work on image restoration and I felt very proud and also very confident to keep exploring and expanding this line of research, which ended up to be one of the most successful lines of research of my career”.
The IBM scientific award aims to reward high merit works in the field of Computer Science, encouraging young Portuguese researchers to disseminate their work. 30 researchers have already received the IBM scientific award for their leading role in Portuguese research and for implementing innovative solutions that are already responding to the challenges of our society, thus contributing to a better world.
