Last Thursday, December 9, FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, announced the results of the Call for Exploratory Research Projects (ERPs) under the MIT Portugal Program 2021 and CMU Portugal Program 2021. Técnico leads 3 ERPs approved for funding and participates in another 3.

The ERPs under the MIT Portugal Program – 2021 are intended to support teams of researchers from the National Science and Technology System (SCTN) entities, public and private partners, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

8 projects under the MIT Portugal Program – 2021 were approved for funding, among 22 eligible applications. The total investment to develop these projects is € 386.795. One of the projects approved was “Reciclagem do CO2 com plasmas: da Terra a Marte”, led by Vasco Guerra, Técnico professor and researcher at the Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion (IPFN).

The ERPs under the CMU Portugal Program have a maximum duration of 12 months and are designed to assist teams of researchers from Portuguese institutions, Carnegie Mellon University and industry partners, to bootstrap high-impact potential research activities of strategic relevance for the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program.

6 projects under the CMU Portugal Program were approved for funding, among 33 eligible applications. The total investment to develop these projects is € 390.580. Two of the approved projects are led by Técnico researchers and three involve Técnico participation.

ERP “made in Técnico” approved under the MIT Portugal Program – 2021:

“Reciclagem do CO2 com plasmas: da Terra a Marte”, led by Vasco Guerra, professor at the IST Department of Physics and researcher at IPFN
Proponent entity: Instituto Superior Técnico
Funding: 49 854,40 euros

ERPs approved under the CMU Portugal Program – 2021, involving Técnico participation:

• “Trustworthy data science for improving healthcare efficiency: the case of the medical referral process”
Proponent entity: NOVA.ID.FCT
Instituto Superior Técnico is one of the participant institutions
Funding: 69 046,70 euros

• “Prometheus – PocketQube Framework Designed for Research and Educational access to Space”
Proponent entity: Universidade do Minho
Instituto Superior Técnico is the only participant institution
Funding: 70 000,00 euros

• “Exploring the Transfer of Agency to Older Adults in HRI”

Co-researcher: Alexandre Bernardino, professor at DEEC and researcher at ISR-Lisboa
Proponent entity: FCiências.ID – Associação para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento de Ciências (Fciências.ID)
Instituto Superior Técnico is one of the participant institutions
Funding: 62 514,30 euros

• “Supervised Deanonymization of Dark Web Traffic for Cybercrime Investigation”
Principal investigator in Portugal: Nuno Santos, Professor at the IST Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DEI), researcher at INESC-ID.
Proponent entities: INESC-ID/INESC/IST/Universidade de Lisboa
Funding: 69 078,00 euros

• “DIVINA: Detecting Injection Vulnerabilities in Node.js Applications

Principal investigator in Portugal: José Faustino dos Santos, Professor at DEI and researcher at INESC-ID
Proponent entities: INESC-ID/INESC/IST/ULisboa
Funding: 69 941,66 euros