Isabel Neto and Francisco Calisto are PhD students at Instituto Superior Técnico. Filipa Rocha is an alumna, researcher and teaching assistant at Técnico. On 16th November, the three stood out at the “Born from Knowledge Ideas” competition promoted by the National Innovation Agency, which recognises projects developed by students and researchers based on business ideas, “born from scientific and/or technological knowledge”.
Filipa Rocha and Isabel Neto were the winners in the ‘Digital Transition’ category and Francisco Calisto ranked 2nd in the ‘Health, Biotechnology and Food’ category.
The “Block-Based Accessible Tangible Programming System (BATS)” project, carried out by Filipa Rocha and Isabel Neto, aims to develop an educational tool for visually impaired children. BATS uses a programming language based on blocks with three-dimensional icons. These icons represent directional movement or speaking functions used to command a robot’s behaviour. Using these blocks, children with visual impairment can control the robot, as if they were playing a drag-and-drop computer game. The prototype of this project has already been tested remotely with five families of visually impaired children aged between 6 and 12.
Francisco Calisto presented the “BreastScreening-AI” project, which aims to improve the effectiveness of breast cancer screening by using artificial intelligence (AI) for more accurate detection at more treatable and earlier stages. The project aims to address these challenges by providing accurate and reliable diagnostic assistance to health professionals such as radiologists, emphasising the importance of AI on health and biotechnology.
The three students develop these projects at various research units affiliated with Técnico. Filipa Rocha develops her project at the Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI) and she is a PhD student at the Faculty of Sciences of Universidade de Lisboa. Isabel Neto is doing her PhD at ITI and INESC ID’s Group of AI for People and Society (GAIPS). Francisco Calisto is doing his PhD at the Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR) and ITI.
