He took his chance at the Integrated Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering and Computers, from Técnico, and the reward came very soon. Miguel Loff Barreto is considered one of the best authors of the best master’s theses in the Information Technologies area. Last Thursday, May 12th, he was distinguished during the 31st Digital Business Congress of the Portuguese Association for the Development of Communications (APDC) with the “Best Thesis Award.”
Miguel Loff Barreto does not cease to express his thanks and recognize that “this award, presented by APDC with the sponsorship of Axians, obviously had a great meaning, because it is a recognition and a moment of validation of all the work I had to get here. It was a feeling of achievement over all the moments of greatest challenge and difficulty and an excellent opportunity to reflect on my journey in recent years”, he says.
It was in the area of telecommunications that he gained interest and to the topic of 5G and virtual reality he wanted to “join in a proof of concept of a streaming solution of this type of content that is guaranteed to be a reality in the near future”, he assures. Miguel Loff Barreto also recognizes the benefits he has collected for being part of the Association of Students of the Instituto Superior Técnico (AEIST) for a period of four years. “It was thanks to this experience that I developed deeply both personally and professionally. This helped me to gain communication, teamwork and leadership skills that have certainly contributed to this success and are essential to the cross-cutting training of any engineer.”
During his time at AEIST he realized that he wanted to “pursue a consulting career, joining technology and digital transformation to the business vision, something that also influenced the choice of his thesis theme” and it was together with Professor António Rodrigues, Professor Paula Queluz and Professor Ivo Sousa of the Telecommunications Institute (IT), that he gained even more motivation for his thesis, within the framework of IT internal project PROVEN – Optimizing 360º Video Streaming over Wireless Networks.
The now master and former student of Técnico refers that “the development of the thesis was a challenge of a “white sheet”, in which it was necessary to deconstruct all the topics involved to its most basic elements and understand them in depth, and then re-build them in a way that made sense.” To this end, it had the unconditional support of its professors, who made themselves available to gather the necessary time to achieve the objective to which he had been proposed. After 4 or 5 months of research, Miguel Loff Barreto realized how all the pieces of a long investment of his thesis fit together.
The goal of the “Best Thesis Award” is to distinguish the best master’s dissertations in the areas of Information Technology, Teelecommunications and Media. And each of the winners was awarded a prize in an amount of 1,500 euros.
