The five finalist teams of the 8th edition of the Lab2Market programme took the stage of the Técnico Congress Centre, at Alameda campus, on 5 June, to present the results of their work. After being assessed by the jury, the FreshIST team won the 2nd edition of the António Brandão Vasconcelos Award. The project involves a method that filters ethylene to prevent fruit and vegetables from ripening prematurely during transport and storage, thus combating food waste. The team is made up of Lívia Dias, Laura Esteves and Ricardo Ferreira, Técnico researchers working on projects at Centro de Química Estrutural (CQE).
In his opening remarks, Rogério Colaço, president of Técnico, thanked NTT Data and i-Deals, ‘two long-standing partners’, and stressed that the programme ‘aims to add value to the emerging ideas in the laboratory, within academic activity or in conversations between Técnico students’. He referred to Eduardo, a 12th-year student he had met minutes before the event and was now in the audience, and cited Lab2Market as one of the many activities the school offers its students to encourage them to develop projects of interest alongside their academic life. He also recalled the launch of IST-SAT 1, the first nanosatellite in the CubeSat format entirely developed in Portugal (and made by Técnico students), scheduled for 9 July.
The António Brandão Vasconcelos Award honours a Técnico alumnus and founder of NTT Data which, in collaboration with i-Deals, offered consultancy training to the finalists of this year’s Lab2Market. Lívia Dias, a researcher at CQE and a member of the winning team, thanked the programme mentors and professors who helped them throughout the project process. ‘This award is for the whole team’, she emphasised.
Tiago Barroso, CEO at NTT Data, recalled his academic experience at Técnico with ‘pride and enthusiasm’, and congratulated the team members praising their courage in pursuing scientific research. Cecília Rodrigues, vice-rector of Universidade de Lisboa, praised the participants and Técnico, an institution that ‘always wants to do more and better’, such as the Lab2Market initiative.
Finalist teams and projects
- Sympathia Sense
Afonso Ferreira e Patrícia Bota – Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores para os Microsistemas e Nanotecnologias (INESC MN) and Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT);
A groundbreaking deep tech initiative introducing a discreet and seamless solution for mental health monitoring – a smart sock that monitors the nervous system. The team emphasised the need for discretion in this type of equipment, in order to avoid stigmatising people who suffer from mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. As proof of this discretion, Afonso revealed at the end of his pitch that he had been wearing the smart sock the whole time, without the public noticing. It can also be used with an app and the team is considering producing other formats, such as one that can be used as a smartwatch.
- StrataFox
Luís Rosado, Pedro Faria and André Barrancos;
Real-time quality control in powder bed fusion additive manufacturing, leading to consistent and reliable 3D metal printed parts. This solution enables comprehensive verification verification, even for areas inaccessible after production, and facilitates early defect detection for timely corrections or discards.
- FreshIST
Lívia Dias, Laura Esteves, Ricardo Ferreira – Centro de Química Estrutural (CQE);
A device that aims to mitigate food waste resulting from the production chain, in particular that caused by ethylene (a plant hormone that induces the ripening process for many fruits) during the transport and storage of fruit and vegetables. The equipment filters the ethylene in the atmosphere, without direct contact with these goods, slowing down their ripening process.
- LampsY
Vicente Garção, Hugo Plácido da Silva, Mariana Abreu, Joana Pinto – Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT);
A video monitoring and epileptic seizure detection device, discreetly integrated into a lamp, offering remote monitoring capabilities, sending alerts to caregivers. It uses artificial intelligence to analyse the data collected, without the need to capture images, preserving the privacy of the occupant(s) in the area in which it is operating. It has been tested in a hospital environment, achieving an accuracy of over 99%.
- Valuebug
Ana Paula Ribeiro and Luísa Margarida Martins – Centro de Química Estrutural (CQE);
A technique for producing chitosan, a non-toxic biodegradable polymer with antimicrobial properties, from biomass discarded by insects. In this way, the seasonality associated with extracting chitosan from shellfish is avoided and a higher yield is obtained than that seen with extraction from mushrooms, another commonly used source.
The jury panel was composed of Pedro Fonseca, from NTT Data, Teresa Fiúza, from Portugal Ventures, and Luís Caldas de Oliveira, Deputy Director of the iSTartLab at Técnico.
