The University of Minho’s School of Engineering, represented by its President, Professor Pedro Arezes, was awarded the Guimarães City Council Medal of Honour on 24 June for its exemplary work in training, research and the transfer of knowledge and technology to society.
Paulo Novais, full professor at the School of Engineering and coordinator of the largest national associated laboratory (LASI), received the Medal of Scientific Merit.
The moments were part of the solemn ceremony of the Day of the Municipality, which took place at 6.30pm in the S. Mamede field, with the presence of the Minister of Education, Science and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre. This solemn session thus marks Portugal’s Day One (896 years since the Battle of S. Mamede), when in 1128 the troops of Afonso Henriques defeated the supporters of his mother, D. Teresa, commanded by the Galician count Peres de Trava, achieving the independence of the County of Portucalense.
The municipality also awarded the Social Merit Medal to the Brotherhood of São Torcato and Roriz Mendes, the Cultural Merit Medal to Rodrigo Areias, the Sports Merit Medal to Dulce Félix, from athletics, and Rui Bragança, from taekwondo, and the Business Merit Medal to Cristina Vaz.
EEUM has been exemplary in training and in the transfer of knowledge and technology to society. It is UMinho’s largest school, with nine departments (Computer Science, Production and Systems, Industrial Electronics, Information Systems, Biological Engineering, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Polymer Engineering and Textile Engineering) and nine research centres (2C2T, Algoritmi, CEB, CMEMS, CTAC, IPC, ISISE, HASLab, METRICs). It has 263 career teachers, 132 PhD researchers and more than 100 technical staff. In the last academic year it had around 7,800 students, spread across 15 undergraduate degrees, 13 integrated master’s degrees, 36 master’s degrees and 20 doctoral programmes.
Paulo Novais was born 57 years ago in São Torcato, Guimarães. He has a PhD in Computer Science from UMinho, where he is a full professor in the Computer Science Department and leads the ISLab laboratory of the ALGORITMI research centre. He also runs LASI – Laboratório Associado de Sistemas Inteligentes, with more than 500 scientists from seven academies, and the general assembly of the Portuguese Association for Artificial Intelligence. He represents Portugal on the Artificial Intelligence committees of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), and is also a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). He has worked as an expert for the European Commission, won scientific prizes in several countries, coordinated and participated in various R&D projects, supervised more than a hundred theses and (co)authored more than 400 scientific publications.
Ceremony video (01h30): Facebook
