Inês Lynce, Técnico professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DEI) and president of INESC-ID, was appointed as co-director of the CMU Portugal Program by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), on January 27th. Professor Inês Lynce is the first woman to lead the CMU Portugal Program and assumes the national co-direction of the international partnership alongside Nuno Nunes, also Técnico professor at DEI and president of the Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI).
Together, the two Técnico professors will lead the international partnership established between FCT and Carnegie Mellon university until 2023.
“It is with great pleasure and some expectation that I assume this position”, says professor Inês Lynce. “I have been connected to the CMU Portugal Program for several years as a researcher, having already belonged to the team of several projects supported under the Program. Now the commitment will be entirely different and focused on helping the partnership to achieve its strategic goals by 2023. Personally, I am honoured to have been appointed to this position and join such a prestigious and dynamic team with remarkable results achieved in recent years”, she adds.
The Técnico professor will assume both positions: Co-director of CMU Portugal Programme and President of INESC-ID.
Graduated in Computer Science and Engineering from Técnico, Inês Lynce is highly recognized for her work in the field of Artificial Intelligence, namely in the area of problem solving with restrictions and optimization. Her main contributions refer to the development of algorithms and computational tools and their application to solve practical problems as diverse as developing timetables in universities, software package upgradability, the functioning of biological networks and the automatic creation of programming code from examples.
The Técnico professor is a recurring member of international conferences committees on Artificial Intelligence and she has been a member of the Editorial Board of the prestigious scientific magazine Journal of Artificial Intelligence since 2021. Inês Lynce is a Técnico professor for 16 years and she is often recognized for her excellence in teaching.
In 15 years of activity, CMU Portugal involved 11 departments at Carnegie Mellon University, mobilized more than 900 students, 400 researchers and professors from both sides of the Atlantic and almost 150 partner companies. It supported 74 collaborative research projects, attracted tens of millions of euros of private co-funding, accelerated projects of 17 Portuguese entrepreneurial teams in the United States, and boosted the creation of 12 startups, which have already attracted almost one hundred million dollars of venture capital investment, mostly international.
