2022 @PT Call for Exploratory Proposals

Scientific Area: Digital Transformation in Manufacturing

Objectives: 

• Develop environmentally friendly cement-based materials that can satisfy the requirements for 3D printing;
• Pursue sustainability by partially replacing a significant fraction of the cement with locally available waste materials with no added value — namely glass powder, marble powder, and quartz powder, which already show promised results in previous works.

PT PI: Ana Mafalda Matos, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto

PT Co-PI: Mário Pimentel, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto

MIT Co-PI’s: Randolph Kirchain, MIT Materials Research Laboratory (MTL) and Director, MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub

Hassam Azarijafari, MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub

Scientific Area: Earth Systems Oceans to Near Space 

Objectives: 

– Miniaturize and develop a robotic system based on UX-1Neo for Space;

– Integrate sensors and give the ability to fly and navigate;

– Test space maneuvers in a microgravity environment.

PT PI: Ana Cristina Pires de Oliveira, INESC TEC – Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Tecnologia e Ciência

PT Co-PI: André Miguel Pinheiro Dias, INESC TEC – Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Tecnologia e Ciência

MIT Co-PI: Rohit Karnik, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE)

Scientific Area: Sustainable Cities 

Objectives: Create a modeling framework for cities that supports the maintenance of the buildings’ envelopes (roofs, façades, and window frames) to meet occupants’ needs while further ensuring that a city meets its building-related carbon emission reduction target for 2035 and beyond.

PT PI:  Ana Filipa Ferreira da Silva Cigarro Matos, Associação do Instituto Superior Técnico para a Investigação e o Desenvolvimento

PT Co-PI: José Dinis Silvestre, Associação do Instituto Superior Técnico para a Investigação e o Desenvolvimento

MIT Co-PI: Christoph Reinhart, MIT Department of Architecture

Scientific Area: Digital Transformation in Manufacturing 

Objectives: 

• Fill the knowledge gap on how to develop a human-robot collaboration (HRC) framework to assist both healthy and workers with musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs);

• Achieving truly adaptive HRC that autonomously adapts to different workers and tasks requires beyond state-of-the-art advances in perception and cognition, integrated with robot motion and control.

PT PI:  Cristina Manuela Peixoto dos Santos, Universidade do Minho

PT Co-PI: Alexandre Ferreira da Silva, Universidade do Minho

MIT Co-PI: Mercedes Balcells-Camps, MIT Institute of Medical Engineering and Science (IMES)

Scientific Area: Climate Science & Climate Change

Objectives: 

• Deploy a continuously operating dense GNSS network in a key climatic region, with a high frequency of storms, capable of near real-time atmospheric monitoring;
• Explore the advantages of tomographic data assimilation to improve the understanding of processes in developing storms, and the skill of weather forecasts.

PT PI: Pedro Mateus, FCiências.ID – Associação para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento de Ciências

PT Co-PI: Pedro Miranda, FCiências.ID – Associação para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento de Ciências 

MIT Co-PI: Dhiman Mondal, MIT Haystack Observatory

Scientific Area: Climate Science & Climate Change 

Objectives: 

• Improve knowledge about the distribution of peatlands and swobs in the IP and its accurate mapping; 
• Assess the ecological status of the ecosystems and the existing peat types;
• Develop a ground-truth peat-depth model across the peninsula; 
• Present a peatland classification that mirrors the real diversity and uniqueness of Iberian peatlands as a key nature-based solution to combat climate change.

PT PI: César Dinis Capinha, Instituto de Geografia e Ordenamento do Território da Universidade de Lisboa

PT Co-PI: Johannes Hendricus Josephus Joosten, Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology, University of Greifswald (Germany) 

 
MIT Co-PI: Charles Harvey, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)

Scientific Area: Digital Transformation in Manufacturing 

Objectives: Develop thin films of copper and chromium for the development of metallic surfaces on PLA and polycarbonate polymers, in a more sustainable and non-electrolytic way, through a good correlation between the experimental and machine learning outputs, using the magnetron sputtering (physical vapor deposition technique).

PT PI: Sandra Mariana da Silva, Marques Universidade do Minho

PT Co-PI: Maria José Bastos Pires de Lima, Universidade do Minho

MIT Co-PI’s: Rafael Gomez-Bombarelli, MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE)

Jeffrey Cheah, MIT School of Engineering

Scientific Area: Data Science

Objectives: 

• Develop technologies to facilitate the planning and operation of electric grids with high penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs), while ensuring consumer privacy, and addressing previously unexplored topics related to developing prediction algorithms based on federated learning (FL), such as solar production forecasting. 
• Tackle challenges related to uncertainty quantification, considering the calibration of epistemic and random uncertainty. 
• The models developed will then be integrated into planning and operation tools to be used by distribution system operators (DSO).

PT PI: Amâncio Lucas de Sousa Pereira, Associação do Instituto Superior Técnico para a Investigação e o Desenvolvimento

PT Co-PI: Hugo Gabriel Valente Morais, Universidade de Lisboa (UL) – Instituto Superior Técnico – Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores

MIT Co-PI: Anuradha Annaswamy, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE)