Seismic oceanography has proven its value to imaging the ocean in high-resolution using conventional multichannel reflection seismic data (MCS). The recorded acoustic responses depend on contrasts in ocean temperature and salinity. The processed data enable tracking interfaces between thermohaline layers and the study of fine-scale processes spatially. However, their interpretation has been focused on qualitative methods, and integration with dynamic ocean models is still unexplored. In this PhD, I will develop and implement methods to predict spatially ocean temperature and salinity through the integration of MCS data with direct observations (e.g., CTD, ARGO) in a spatial data science framework. These methods will be applied to existing data from Gulf of Cadiz. As a complementary and exploratory approach, and since MCS data acquisition is complex and expensive, I will look at using high-resolution echosounders mounted in autonomous underwater vehicles to model in real-time the ocean.

The use of ‘Big’ unstructured data to assess and monitor the distribution of the world’s species (i.e., ‘iBiogeography’) is in its infancy. Here I aim to expand this field of research to improve existing knowledge about the geographical patterns and trends of the ‘Culicidae’ family (i.e., mosquitoes), a taxonomic group of particular concern for disease transmission. To assess this, I will firstly work on the development of a ‘deep learning’ algorithm that will allow classifying and process (check)lists of species, that are published in high numbers by the scientific literature, each year. Secondly, I will develop and test a Web content mining approach to recurrently searching information items (e.g., images; social media content) evidencing range shifts of problematic species. Finally, I will use the biogeographical knowledge to gather through the two previous tasks, and test how the distribution of culicids has already reshaped their distributions in response to global climate change.

Worldwide, climate change is critically affecting marine environments, particularly estuaries, through ocean warming, sea level rise, extreme events and acidification. Despite the global evidence, regional studies focused on this subject are still in need, especially on the Western Iberian Coast, as there is a lack of long-term temporal and spatial analysis assessing the evidence of climate change effects in an integrated study of this region. The main aim of this project is, therefore, to search for regional evidence of climate change considering estuaries and adjacent coastal ocean, using in situ observations and satellite imagery. Future scenarios will be assessed for different estuarine systems through the application of a numerical model, that will allow understanding the regional and local impacts of climate change in the Western Iberian Coast.

The increasing dispersion of microplastics in the aquatic environment has been the subject of concern for the consequences of their inclusion in ecosystems and public health.
Currently, the main alternatives for identifying microplastics, are the Raman and FTIR. These are very reliable methods for laboratory analysis of microplastics, however, they involve expensive and massive equipment that requires sample collection and pre-processing.
This work aims to revolutionize the microplastic analysis paradigm by proposing a sensor for in-situ analysis, using previously developed lab-on-a-chip (LoC) devices and develop on it photoacoustic and infrared detection techniques, to achieve an accurate, autonomous, low-cost, and easy to operate microplastics sensor. This will allow the construction of a multisensor platform for massive placement in an underwater environment. Massive monitoring for big data analysis will allow a significant advance in the control of pollution of marine ecosystems.

Coastal areas are complex environments which face extreme challenges regarding their resilience. Over the years, eroding coastlines have mostly been protected by hard engineering structures (groynes, jetties, breakwaters). These, however, lead to sedimentary imbalance, hence the growing popularity of combining them with Nature-based Solutions – such as saltmarshes, mangroves, bivalve reefs, and coral reefs -, which enhance ecosystem services. My researcg work will analyse the possible implementation of oyster reefs in Ria Formosa, which improve water quality, while also dissipating wave energy and protecting the coast. To assess this possibility, it is first important to monitor the erosion problem in the area, through remote sensing techniques (drone and satellite imagery). Addiionally, the different existing protection strategies in Ria Formosa will be compared, regarding the opinion of regional stakeholders on their benefits and cost-effectiveness, using a multicriteria analysis (Analytic Hierarchy Process). The results will be fundamental for the application of a Cost-Benefit Analysis to determine the most cost-efficient and sutainable coastal protection alternative.

Solar thermal energy systems have been considered a promising solution to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Concentrated solar thermal (CST) technologies collect and concentrate solar radiation to transform it into high-temperature thermal applications, such as process heat or electricity production. However, it is necessary to enhance the efficiency of CST technologies and use low-cost manufacturing processes to make them attractive to the international energy sector. Concentration Solar Power (CSP) is recognized as a renewable energy technology that can make a sounder contribution to the transformation of the energy sector since it captures and stores the sun’s radiation in the form of heat, using stable materials. From the different CSP technologies, the parabolic dish solar concentrator (PDSC) is considered one of the most promising solutions since it can be applied in several applications from the electricity production to the cooking, desalination, and irrigation. This versatility makes PDSC suitable to be implemented in regions in which the access to electricity is very scarce, improving the quality of life of rural population. This system composed of a solar concentrator, solar receiver, heat exchange fluid, and the solar tracking system, ensures high concentration ratio being appropriate for high temperature applications. Power generation through the solar thermal route relies on an efficient solar receiver that uses the incoming energy to produce electricity or thermal energy by heating a fluid. However, other components directly influence the efficiency of the system, the solar collector collects solar radiation and reflects it to the solar receiver, the material, size, angle of inclination, and distance from the receiver influence the efficiency of the system. The working fluid exchanges heat with the receiver, playing an important role on the heat transfer performance of the system. The solar tracker automatically follows the movement of the sun, ensuring that the solar collector always receives the highest intensity of solar radiation. Due to the complexity of this PDSC, the costs of materials and manufacturing technology are huge, making this technology expensive. To make this technology more effective and attractive to the market, there is a need to increase its efficiency and invest in new materials and manufacturing technologies at affordable costs. In this context, to provide an innovative solution that contributes to the clean transformation of the energy sector, this thesis proposal aims to develop an efficient PDSC technology using multiple impact jets and porous media to increase solar receiver efficiency, apply advanced manufacturing technologies, and materials sustainable to obtain an economical and reliable system. To conduct the project, experimental and numerical methods will be applied. This work presents the motivation and the literature review that supports the objectives and the research opportunity of this proposal. The methodologies and the different tasks that are expected to be conducted to achieve the project goals will be presented in this work plan.

An ever-increasing number of satellites is being deployed each year, which negatively impacts the lifetime of satellites, as more debris is created and collisions occur, rendering the systems inoperative and further worsening the problem. On-Orbit Servicing (OOS) is the key to solving this issue and enabling a sustainable growth in the number of satellites. This work aims to explore hybrid and distributed approaches to allocation, guidance, and control of satellites for cooperative OOS missions. We will investigate how innovative sensors can help in estimating the motion of inoperative satellites, study formation planning strategies for multi-agent systems of satellites and develop hybrid model-based control techniques to achieve the OOS mission objectives.

The decline of water quality in coastal and transitional waters has become a worldwide concern. The increasing anthropogenic pressure on such important ecosystems highlights the importance of a continuous water quality assessment. Ocean colour remote sensing techniques are becoming widely used for synoptic monitoring of the water surface, mainly due to its low-cost and capability to provide data over extensive temporal and spatial scales. In this work it is aimed to develop improved satellite products to monitor water quality changes in transitional waters by using an innovative approach based on optical water classes, in which each pixel is classified and the most appropriate bio-optical algorithm is applied. The core of this research will be the identification of the water quality features associated with the different optical conditions and the analysis of their variability through space and time. The use of this methodology for water management applications will also be discussed.

High performance heat transfer is one of the most important needs and challenges in the aerospace industry. For example, during the last few years, the need for microelectronic cooling systems used in aerospace applications has increased enormously and efficient systems are needed. Furthermore, when it comes to space, not only is great heat removal capacity required, but also thermal insulation of components may be required at times of increased radiation exposure. In recent decades, advances in nanotechnology have led to the development of nanofluids (NFs), which are basically common fluids in which nanoparticles are added that have improved their heat transfer performance and, as a result, have become the subject of many research works. Despite the advantages, only a few nanofluids have been implemented due to the high costs to generate nanoparticles, instability and controversial thermal conductivity. The main objective of my work is to solve these challenges, reducing production costs and improving the stability of invoices. In the present project it is foreseen the development of an efficient nanothermofluid to be implemented in a refrigeration system with a minimum of mechanical components to be used in space missions.

This project explores one of the most prolific sources of natural products of our planet, the microbiomes of corals, to harvest novel chemical structures with potent bioactivities of promising use in biomedicine and biotechnology. The research addresses the current realization that marine host-associated bacteria produce many of the active compounds found in their host. It aims to uncover antibacterial and antifungal activities against notorious human- and aquaculture pathogens from a unique collection of symbiotic bacteria of octocorals from Portugal. Chemical extraction protocols will be optimized, and active metabolite extracts subjected to state-of-the-art LC-MS metabolomic profiling and analytical chemistry assessments. As such, this PhD proposal will develop minimally intrusive, sustainable methodology fostering bioactive secondary metabolites discovery from the seas to meet the global demand for novel therapeutics targeting multidrug resistant pathogens.

Despite the importance of Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) maps to promote sustainability and good resource management, their production continues to be a challenging task. There are various factors that contribute towards the difficulty of generating accurate timely updated LULC maps, both via automatic or photo-interpreted LULC mapping. Data preprocessing, although being a crucial step for any Machine Learning task, is particularly important in the remote sensing domain due to the overwhelming amount of untreated data continuously gathered from multiple remote sensing missions. My PhD project focuses on the challenges found in automatic LULC classification tasks, specifically in data preprocessing tasks: imbalanced learning and anomaly detection problems are addressed as primary aims. Feature extraction and parameter tuning techniques are addressed as secondary/contingency aims.

Development of acoustic transducers for underwater application. The main goal is to enable wireless communications underwater, with high data rates at close distances and lower data rates at longer distances. The transducers may also be used to monitor the soundscape of the underwater environment. The main challenge of this project is to evaluate and optimize the transducer’s efficiency in deep waters, at least 1 km.

CO2 is the most concentrated greenhouse gas (GHG) in the atmosphere and, for this reason, it is the basis of climate policies, leaving other GHGs, such as CH4, in the background. CH4 is the second most prevalent GHG emitted by human activities; although its lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter than CO2, CH4 is more efficient on trapping radiation than CO2, presenting a global warming potential 84-87 times greater over 20 years. Additionally, the methodologies currently employed for CH4 emissions mitigation, typically physicochemical-based procedures, comprise high-energy requirements and the production/release of CO2 to the atmosphere. Therefore, this project aims at evaluating the ability of microalgae and cyanobacteria (monocultures and cocultures) to fixate CH4 (and the resulting CO2), in order to convert it into biomass and high-value biocompounds for different biotechnological fields.

The conservation of coral reefs is under unparalleled pressure due to climate change. Coral-microbiome interactions play key roles in coral health in climate change scenarios, but our ability to benefit from such interactions to conserve the reefs’ ecological balance is unexplored. This project addresses this pressing demand using unprecedent microbiome manipulation of foundational octocoral species of the genus Eunicella. It aims to develop multi-species inoculants of octocoral-associated bacteria and test their effectiveness in boosting coral resilience towards temperature and pathogen pressures. This will be achieved via 1) phenotypic and genotypic screening of octocoral bacterial symbionts for host-beneficial properties; 2) development of multi species inoculants and in-vivo evaluation of successful host colonization in microcosm experiments; 3) in-vivo determination of the effect of microbiome therapy on host resilience using a high-end mesocosm facility. This project will increase our knowledge of coral-microbiome functioning, while delivering custom methodology useful for future coral reef restoration practices.

Marine spatial planning (MSP) has become the prime focus for many policy-makers, being
considered an important tool for promoting a better management of the oceans, through spatial and temporal planning of different maritime activities. Among the many threats faced in MSP development, climate change is considered to be one of the biggest. The intensification of climate-related impacts will continue to cause numerous problems to marine ecosystem services and depending human activities, thus affecting the development of a sustainable blue economy. Developing climate-smart marine spatial plans that properly integrate knowledge on climate risks and opportunities is fundamental. Hence, the main objective of the present proposal is to support such integration of knowledge by exploring the Portuguese case study to assess the vulnerability of national MSP initiatives and the blue economy to climate change.

Peatlands are unique ecosystems providing key contributions to carbon storage and climate regulation. However, human impacts are increasingly degrading these ecosystems, converting them from sinks to sources of atmospheric carbon. To mitigate and prevent further degradation and help accomplish the Paris Agreement, it is needed to assess the current status of these ecosystems and anticipate the impacts caused by the distinct drivers of degradation. Over the last decades, multiple factors have accelerated peatland degradation in the region, including changes in climate, colonization by invasive plant species and human-driven changes in land-use and land-cover. This project will focus on the peatlands and organic soils of the Iberian Peninsula and The effect of these processes over them and the services they provide remain poorly known.

Earth is mostly composed of oceans, which are the least explored resources on our planet. The European Council predicts that in 2050, 50% of electricity needs will come from marine renewable energy systems. In Portugal, the production of marine renewable wind energy started in 2011, with the installation of a 2MW floating wind turbine platform. Recently, in 2020, the first offshore renewable wind farm, Windfloat Atlantic, with a capacity of 25MW, was inaugurated. In this sense, this Ph.D. research project intends to develop an integrated fatigue methodology applied to support structures for wind towers in an offshore environment, more specifically the fatigue damage assessment based on multi-scale modelling and in full-range fatigue models. The benefits to the environment are obvious, since the proposed methodology will allow the optimization of design fatigue criteria, contributing to a more responsible renewable energy structural systems generation.

The motivation for the present research plan is to assess the feasibility of a deepwater expansion solution at the port of Leixões, resulting in the first deepwater port terminal in the Portuguese Northwest coast. Regarding the reorganization recently verified in the waterborne freight transport, there is the corresponding need for adapting sea ports existing infrastructures to later receive larger-sized cargo vessels. This proposal thereby addresses Portugal’s competitiveness through its national port system and intends to establish a key tool in defining intervention priorities, pondering the costs, benefits and impacts of such construction work. The port of Leixões was chosen for the case study as it represents a relevant trade share in the Northwest coast of Portugal and Spain and has potential to broaden its hinterland through the increased capacity of handling containerized cargo.

The project main goal is to enhance the understanding and information retrieval of the seasonal formation of melt ponds on the Arctic Sea ice. Melt ponds have a great importance in the context of climate change and Arctic energy budget. They lower sea ice albedo (fraction of incident radiation that is reflected by the surface) contributing to further ice melt. However, information on these features is currently very scarce. To tackle this issue, this research aims at using a combination of differente types of satellite sensors (namely Synthetic Aperture Radar and optical) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods, to help generate new, timely and more accurate information on these Arctic sea ice features.