Last Thursday, May 19th, the councilor of the Municipality of Loures of the Departments of Planning and Urban Management, Management and Administrative Modernization, responsible for the Division of Urban Areas of Illegal Genesis and the Offices of Local Intervention and Urban Revitalization, Nuno Dias, made a visit to the Technological and Nuclear Campus of the Técnico (CTN), located in the municipality.
After the welcome session, led by the President of the Técnico, Professor Rogério Colaço who announced that “a presentation of the best of what is done in the CTN” will be made, José Marques, Vice President for Campus Management, made a historical framework of the now CTN, once planned (over 60 years ago) with the aim of bringing nuclear energy to the country, stating that the 3 pillars of the campus are and always have been teaching , services and research.
CTN currently has two research units: the Center for Nuclear Science and Technologies (C2TN) and the Institute of Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion (IPFN), based on the Alameda.
Isabel Dias, presented the Department of Engineering and Nuclear Sciences and talked about the creation of the two major scientific areas at the time of the creation of the department that “served not only, on the one hand, for the integration and management of the career within the scope of researchers, but also in the sense of contributing to the increase of the training and to propose new cycles of study.”
It followed an introduction by Carlos Silva, about the Institute of Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion, which is divided into three areas, the main being “nuclear fusion, which represents about half of the activity, the area of intense lasers and plasma technologies. In this institute is made the construction of systems and equipment” that are then used to study plasmas (one of the physical states of matter that is part of the processes related to stars and galaxies).
Susana Marta Almeida also presented the Center for Nuclear Sciences and Technologies and explained that this is “the center that brings together most of the researchers on campus” explaining that the goal is to apply the techniques to various areas of knowledge such as “earth beings, cultural heritage, materials sciences, life sciences and health sciences, environment and materials” saying that it’s a multidisciplinary center, with about 85 researchers.
The councilor Nuno Dias also made an intervention, indicating that the Municipality of Loures aims to strengthen ties with CTN to increase the number of partnerships with Técnico. He also said that although Loures does not have “a formal faculty, has facilities, has human resources and has the dimension to be able to have a quality service with regard to research” and made himself available to cooperate with “the development of the project that the CTN has for the location, develop urbanistally the space and give a greater dignity to everything that is developed” in a perspective of mutual support.
It should be noted that CTN has collaborated and currently collaborates in several projects in partnership with the Municipality, having contributed more recently to society in general with the production and sterilization of swabs for Covid-19 tests.
To finish, a visit to the campus infrastructures was followed to explain the activities carried out daily at each of the five research centers by resident investigators.
