Alexandre Ferreira da Silva, Assistant Professor and Researcher at the CMEMS (Center for MicroElectroMechanics Systems) of the School of Engineering leads one of the six projects approved in the call for Exploratory Projects of the CMU Portugal Program. The “PROMETHEUS” project aims to provide a low cost platform for a small satellite, which will revolutionize teaching and research in space.
The CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) Portugal Program call, with 33 eligible applications, ended with 6 projects proposed for funding, in a total investment of 390,580 euros.
The “PROMETHEUS – PocketQube Framework Designed for Research and Educational access to Space” seeks to provide a platform for a small cubic satellite with 5 cm sides (called PocketQube), ideal for research and teaching. Currently, there are no low-cost solutions that allow easy access to Space and enable an aerospace experience, through learning and assembling a simple satellite. This barrier is critical and limits the opportunities for research and teaching, due to the lack of experience in this environment.
The Exploratory Research projects of the CMU Portugal 2021 Program are intended to support teams of researchers from Portuguese institutions, from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and from business partners, to initiate research activities with high potential impact and strategic relevance to the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program (CMU Portugal). The projects will develop research in subjects as diversified as: data science applied to health care, creation of satellites (PocketQube), human-robot interaction, traffic supervision for Cybercrime Investigation, artificial intelligence applied to the design of customizable robotic exoskins, and detection of injection vulnerabilities in node applications.
The MIT Portugal and CMU Portugal programs are part of a network of international cooperation programs of Portugal with institutions from several countries under the goPORTUGAL – Global Partnerships in Science and Technology initiative, promoted by FCT.
