Awards received in 2012 are proof of INESC TEC’s high level research

International recognition highlighted in 2012

All Units of the Associate Laboratory were acknowledged both nationally and internationally, but international awards came in higher numbers. Papers and posters awarded in conferences abroad are naturally highlighted as these constituted the majority of the prizes. However, important research projects have also been awarded and received public recognition, such as the GimmeDaBlues app, developed by the Telecommunications and Multimedia Unit (UTM) or the platform “Minha” developed by the High Assurance Software Laboratory (HASLab).

Awarded papers

Carlos Soares, a research at INESC TEC Manufacturing Systems Engineering Unit (UESP) received a Best Paper Award for two papers describing the application of metalearning techniques to two important tasks: prior selection of parameters for Support Vector Machines and selection of models for continuous data streams.

Furthermore, the dissertation proposal entitled “Object-Functional Patterns: Re-Thinking Development in a Post-Functional World” by Tiago Boldt Sousa, a researcher at the Information and Computer Graphics Systems Unit (USIG), received an award for best scientific paper during the 2012 Software Engineering Doctoral Symposium  (SEDES). Also, the paper "Reverse Engineering of Graphical User Interfaces", which was born as a result of a dissertation supervised by João Pascoal Faria, received the "ICSEA 2011: Best Paper Award".

The paper by researchers at the Power Systems Unit (USE) Joel Soares, Clara Gouveia, Pedro Barbeiro, Pedro Almeida, Carlos Moreira and João Peças Lopes, entitled “Smart Grids With Electric Vehicles: The Initial Findings of Project Reive”, received a Best Paper Award during the SmartGreens 2012. Joel Soares also received an Honourable Mention for his article “Impact of the Deployment of Electric Vehicles in Grid Operation and Expansion” during the annual conference of the MIT Portugal on the theme Engineering for Innovation in Global Markets. Also from USE, Diogo Varajão received a certificate for best presentation of the session "New Trends in Converter Topologies and Control Methods for Active Power Distribution Grids III" at the IECON 2012 conference.

At UTM, Cristina Oliveira was awarded for her poster presented at the pHealth conference, which took place between 26 and 28 June in Porto.

Miguel Matos and Rui Oliveira, researchers at HASLab, received a Best Paper Award for their paper “BRISA: Combining Efficiency and Reliability in Epidemic Data Dissemination”, presented at the IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS'12).

At the Centre for Research in Advanced Computing Systems (CRACS), Pedro Ribeiro and Fernando Silva also had a paper awarded as part of the DBSocial 2012 - ACM SIGMOD Workshop on Databases and Social Network. Also from CRACS, researchers José Paulo Leal, Vânia Rodrigues and Ricardo Queirós received a Best Paper Award at the 2012 SLATE Conference. At the same conference, the second place went to CRACS researchers Miguel Areias and Ricardo Rocha for their scientific paper "On Extending a Linear Tabling Framework to Support Batched Scheduling".

At the Research Centre in Real-Time and Embedded Computing Systems (CISTER), Gurulingesh Raravi received an award for his paper/poster entitled “A conjecture about task assignment on two-type heterogeneous multiprocessor” as part of the Junior Researcher Workshop on Real-Time Computing (JRWRTC'12). Eduardo Tovar, Nuno Pereira and Stefano Tennina, also from CISTER, received the Best Paper Award for their paper “Building a Microscope for the Data Center”. Lastly, a paper by Gurulingesh Raravi and Vincent Nélis was classified as “outstanding” during the 24^th edition of Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS12).

At the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support (LIAAD), Patrícia Alves received the award for second best paper at the conference PRO-VE’12, and Pedro Rodrigues received an Honourable at the Jornadas de Medicina Intensiva da Primavera 2012 for his poster poster “SAGi - Sistema de apoio à decisão clínica no controlo da glicemia em doentes críticos” (System to support clinical decisions on blood glucose control in critical patients).

Competitions guarantee most awards at ROBIS

The Robotics for Robotics and Intelligent Systems Unit (ROBIS), for instance, continues collecting awards in robotic competitions. In April of last year, ROBIS won first place in the competition robot@factory during the National Robotics Festival in Guimarães, Portugal. The sailboat FAST was also world champion in the 5th World Robotic Sailing Championship.

Bruno Ferreira, a researcher at ROBIS also won second place in the poster competition which took place at the 2012 Oceans MTS/IEEE conference.

The Board of INESC Porto also sets the example

João Peças Lopes, director of INESC Porto, received a Special Award from the Study Committee C6 of CIGRÉ (International Council on Large Electric Systems), as part of CIGRÉ’s biannual conference, which took place in Paris in the last week of August.

Joana Pena from the Department of Information and Logistics (DIL) won the "Luiz Chaves de Almeida" award, presented by the APOTEC – Associação Portuguesa de Técnicos de Contabilidade (Portuguese Accountants Association), for a paper published as part of her MSc dissertation.

Other distinctions

Armando Leite da Silva, a Fellow of INESC Porto, was nominated to receive the 2012 IEEE PES Roy Billinton Power System Reliability Award.

Cristina Oliveira and André Fernandes, researchers at UTM, were the great winners of the StudECE2012 – 1^st PhD Students Conference in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Abílio Pereira Pacheco, a researcher at INESC TEC’s Innovation and Technology Transfer Unit (UITT), won a merit scholarship from the Faculty of Engineering (FEUP) and another from the University of Porto for being the best student of the Master in Services Engineering and Management, which he concluded with an average mark of 19 on a scale of 0 to 20.

Javier Cruz from the Optoelectronics and Electronic Systems Unit (UOSE) received a diploma from the Cuban Academy of Science which emphasizes his fundamental role in the scientific research on “Propriedades de transporte en materiales electrocerámicos” (transport properties in electroceramic materials).

INESC TEC has also been playing an integral role in Brazil. The book Inteligência Artificial: Uma abordagem de aprendizado de máquina (Artificial Intelligence: A machine learning approach), written (in co-authorship) by João Gama from LIAAD won the 2012 Jabuti Award, in the Technology and IT category. Furthermore, Luís Matias e Petr Kosina, also from LIAAD, won 1^st place in the Data Mining competition at the Resource-aware Machine Learning – International Summer School 2012.

Luís Miguel Pinho, vice-director of CISTER received an “Outstanding Ada Community Contribution Award” as part of the ACM SIGAda High Integrity Language Technology Conference.

Acknowledged projects

As previously mentioned, the music app GimmeDaBlues, developed by a team of researchers from INESC TEC, won first place in the “Multimedia Contents and Applications” category of the 2011 ZON Award for Creativity in Multimedia.

Project "Minha” from HASLab, which focuses on developing software for cloud computing, received a  Google Research Award.

The app for mobile devices “Mobile Advertising for Restaurant Services”, developed by Leonel Dias, a researcher at USIG, won 3^rd place in the in the General Category of the Idea Contest “Mentes Brilhantes… na Restauração” (Brilliant Minds… in Restaurant Services), promoted by the Portuguese Association for Hospitality, Restaurants and Similar Services (AHRESP).

Research on breast cancer conducted by researchers at UTM was honoured by the Portuguese Society of Senology as part of the National Senology Congress. Projects such as the Semantic Pacs, the BCCT.core, MammoClass or PICTURE (initially PICASSO) are proof of the Unit’s commitment to the health area.

Creativesystems, the leader of the Shoe ID project, developed by a consortium which includes INESC TEC (more specifically UESP), received the Prémio Inovação Tecnológica Fileira do Calçado 2012 (technological innovation award for the footwear Industry). The company has used the technology in the value chain of the footwear production.

FEUP also awarded several InescTecquians. Ten INESC TEC researchers received awards for scientific and educational merit: Ana Camanho, Bernardo Almada-Lobo, João Claro, João Tomé Saraiva, Jorge Pinho de Sousa, José Oliveira, Luís Corte-Real, Manuel Ricardo, Manuel Matos and Vera Miguéis.

Photo of Luís Miguel Pinho - Credits: CloudViews.org