Not many lectures at Instituto Superior Técnico begin with an introduction by the school’s president. This one, held on 11 December, was no ordinary lecture. Rogério Colaço set the tone for the lecture led by Miguel Pinto Luz, Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, within the Engineering, Decision and Public Policy curricular unit, who returned to where he was once a student, researcher and invited professor.
The minister centred his presentation on analysing the evolution from a ‘bipolar world’ (USA and Russia) to a ‘tripolar world’ (with China’s economic growth) and reflecting on ‘what we need to do as engineers to make Europe competitive again’.
Miguel Pinto Luz compared Europe and the United States in terms of the way they invest their budgets. ‘The European logic is to divide and share investment, without scale or impact,’ he argued, in contrast to the American approach of investing much larger sums in single companies, with a greater return.
When comparing the two societies, he emphasised that ‘a welfare state has to exist to guarantee social mobility, quality public schools, quality healthcare, quality transport…’. However, compared to other macroeconomic actors, ‘Europe has lost the ability to make quick decisions’. It has become interstitial and ‘the solution is to turn to the last thing we don’t sell – our talent’, said the former researcher at the Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores – Investigação e Desenvolvimento (INESC ID).
The Electrical and Computer Engineering alumnus, Miguel Pinto Luz also recalled his time as a Técnico student. He praised the school and emphasised the importance of engineering in public policy – “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”.
The Engineering, Decision and Public Policy curricular unit is part of the ‘Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences’, and aims to develop students’ critical thinking about how engineering and decision-support systems—including risk assessment, data analysis, decision analysis, statistical analysis, optimisation, participatory modelling, communication, and scenario planning—can improve political analysis and decision-making in a real context.
The previous lectures held in this context at Técnico involved the participation of Pedro Magalhães, researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, Inês Drumond, vice-president of the Portuguese Securities Market Commission (CMVM), Ana Fontoura Gouveia, former secretary of State for Energy and Climate, Adalberto Campos Fernandes, former minister of Health and António Leitão Amaro, Minister of the Presidency, and Alexandra Leitão, former Minister for Modernisation of the State and Public Administration.
