Contributing to the creation of knowledge and supporting the training of national talent have been two central goals of Sonae MC. In order to fulfil these goals, Sonae MC and Instituto Superior Técnico celebrated a partnership that aims to support the renovation of one of DEI’s RNL laboratories.

The signing ceremony took place on 19th November and brought together Bruno Mourão, Head of IT Transformation and IT Strategy & Experimentation at Sonae MC | BIT and Técnico alumnus, Helena Pinto, HR Manager at Sonae MC | BIT , professor Pedro Amaral, Vice-president of Técnico for Operations and Enterprise Relationships, professor José Carlos Monteiro, president of DEI, and Carla Patrocínio, coordinator of the Technology Transfer Office (TT @ Técnico).

“Although Sonae MC is mainly known for the impact it has on retail and distribution, it has huge potential in technology, management and engineering, so I think this partnership will allow to create a lot of synergies”, said professor Pedro Amaral.

According to engineer Bruno Mourão, “this partnership aims to contribute to the improvement and development of the academic community. We believe that there are many points of synergy, and it is now up to us to promote this development, including more areas, both from Instituto Superior Técnico and Sonae. I am sure that before the end of this 3-year partnership, we will strengthen it with additional synergy lines”.

“It is very important to attract young talent to BIT, and that’s why we partner with universities. It wouldn’t make sense not to partner with Técnico”, said Helena Pinto. “We are looking for young people, with good ideas – this is also how companies evolve and rejuvenate. The students from different engineering schools we work with help us to follow this path”, she said.

Professor José Carlos Monteiro thanked Sonae MC for this partnership and recalled that this renovation was a need identified for many years. “This support from Sonae MC allowed us to close the funding for the set of laboratories that we are renovating”, said professor José Carlos Monteiro.

Despite the importance of this partnership and all the impact it may have on the development of the relationship between the two entities, the coordinator of TT @ Técnico recalled “the most important moment of this partnership is yet to come. The inauguration of the RNL laboratories will be the most important moment”. The inauguration is scheduled to take place on September 2021.