C-Tech MIT Portugal Summer School is officially started
The opening of the C- Tech MIT Portugal Summer School took place at Instituto Superior Técnico this past Monday, August 3rd. In attendance was the Minister of Science and Higher Education, Manuel Heitor; Zita Martins, National Co-Director of MIT Portugal; Marco Granja, representing NOS —the leading company of the project; and Paulo Ferrão, from Instituto Superior Técnico, one of the partnering research institutions of the C-Tech project.
Minister Heitor started his speech by reinforcing that despite the health crisis that the world is going through, we need to keep providing face-to-face education. “It’s a challenge, but we need to stimulate the education in person. We need to innovate with new learning methods and learning process, always combining presencial and virtual systems.”
For 12 weeks, and in a face-to-face system, 15 selected candidates will work on a digital platform for modeling urban systems as a planning tool for a smart and decarbonized city with the goal to co-design urban digital models with a pilot case study in Lisbon. Minister Heitor highlighted the importance of this topic and how this course can develop new ideas and solutions to more sustainable cities. “We need to keep investing in research and this summer course can show us new ideas to decrease the carbon footprint and to preserve our environmental conditions without decreasing the economic activity.”
Zita Martins, National Co-Director of MIT Portugal, said, “It’s a privilege for MIT Portugal to have a really good group of students with such great skills.” She added that in these next weeks she wants the students, “to learn [about and] to develop new collaborations and skills, working together with academia and companies in one of the strategic areas of the MIT Portugal Program.”
The training plan of this summer school is divided into two components: training and research. They will have classes during the first weeks of each month (Aug, Sept, Oct), and the following weeks of each month will correspond to field work, developed in groups, which will be supported by mentors in a meeting every week.
“C-Tech – Climate Driven Technologies for Low Carbon Cities,” is a MIT Portugal Program project, led by NOS, Técnico-Lisboa (IST), CEiiA, NOVA IMS, Lisboa eNOVA and MIT, and funded by ANI and FCT. This Summer School is financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology’s programme “Summer with Science.”
Welcome C-Techer´s!!
