Afonso Botelho and Simão Sarmento, recently graduated in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Técnico, were the winners of Luís Vidigal Award. The MSc dissertations were selected by the jury, chaired by professor Carlos Salema, “taking into account their scientific merit and high level of innovation”. In total, 17 dissertations “of exceptional quality” from other IST MSc programes applied for this award.

“Design and Application of Thrust Manoeuvres in a Constrained Spacecraft Rendezvous Context Using Optimal Control Techniques” is the title of Afonso Botelho’s work. “I feel truly honoured that the jury considered my work worthy of recognition”. “I am also very grateful to my master’s thesis advisors, professor João Miranda Lemos and engineer Baltazar Parreira, for their support”, says Afonso Botelho.

Afonso Botelho addresses “the orbital rendezvous problem, which is a maneuver during which two spacecraft arrive at the same orbit and approach to a very close distance, generally in order to allow the spacecraft docking”, explains the Técnico alumnus. In the thesis, the author explores this problem through a Model predictive control (MPC) algorithm.

“It was concluded that the application of the MPC to this problem has numerous advantages when compared with the usual approaches, thus allowing more efficient, precise, and robust maneuvers”, says Afonso Botelho.

Afonso Botelho believes that the fact of his work was developed in a business environment, and “in close contact with those who deal, in practice, with the real problem”, has “significantly contributed to the scientific quality of my work”, as well as “the very strong guidance of my master’s thesis supervisors”. Space exploration “has recently gained general public’s attention”, which may also have contributed to the distinction of this work.

“Enhancing a Pairs Trading strategy with the application of Machine Learning” is the title of Simão Sarmento’s work, which addresses two problems: (i) how to find profitable pairs while constraining the search space and (ii) how to avoid long decline periods due to prolonged divergent pairs. “We propose the integration of an Unsupervised Learning algorithm to handle problem (i) and we introduced a forecasting-based trading model, capable of reducing the periods of portfolio decline to deal with problem (ii)”, says Simão Sarmento.

According to Simão Sarmento, the fact that his work includes “a very detailed analysis of the different methodologies applied to solve the problem under analysis” and the results achieved, “which proved to be very satisfactory” were decisive factors to win this award.

This disserattion was published in the SpringerBriefs as a book, and was submitted for publication in the Expert Systems with Applications international journal. “Although the article has not yet been published, it was well accepted by the review team, which confirms the quality of my work”, says the alumnus.

“This award influenced my decision to pursue a PhD. My thesis topic is important both for the business and the academic community”, says Afonso Botelho, who is currently working at Elecnor Deimos. “In parallel, I have also been disseminating the results of my thesis. I was invited to speak at the 11th International ESA Conference on Guidance, Navigation & Control Systems”, he shares.

Simão Sarmento is currently working in Private Equity. The alumnus admits he already misses Técnico. “We are constantly being challenged, and the problem solving skills we learnt at Técnico is something that has stayed with me ever since”.

Luís Vidigal Award is delivered annually and aims to recognise a master’s dissertation “which brings together science, innovation and quality”. The award honours professor Luís Vidigal, a great scientist, pedagogue and researcher.