INESC TEC researchers are finalists in the “Fraunhofer Portugal Challenge 2014”
In his PhD thesis, titled earGram: Composing Music by Selection, Gilberto Bernardes presents a descriptive method to represent sound objects, which provides relevant information to the composer, as well as suitable descriptions to automatically model the time evolution of the musical structure. As a result, a software has been developed – the earGram – that helps musicians manipulate audio signals in creative contexts. The PhD in Digital Media (Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP)/ UT Austin | Portugal Programme), was supervised by Carlos Guedes, also researcher at CTM, and co-supervised by Bruce Pennycook at UT Austin.
Pydi Ganga’s dissertation, titled Transparent and/or flexible low-cost electronics with a-GIZO TFTs, proposes a platform to develop integrated circuits with a-GIZO TFT technology. Developed as part of FEUP’s Doctoral Programme in Electrical and Computer Engineering, the work presented demonstrates that the potential of electronic circuits using a-GIZO TFT technology goes beyond the display market. In fact, these circuits can be easily integrated in the human body in order to monitor and process biological signals (e.g. EEG, ECG and body temperature). The exceptional increase in performance/stability achieved with a-GIZO TFTs also enables complex functions and increasing life cycles. Furthermore, the oxides can also be processed as electricity conductive thin films, which makes it possible to create fully transparent devices (invisible). The PhD was supervised by Vítor Grade Tavares, researcher at CTM, Pedro Guedes de Oliveira (senior consultant to the Board of INESC TEC) and Pedro Barquinha (Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Lisbon).
This is not the first time that INESC TEC’s researchers are awarded as part of the “Fraunhofer Portugal Challenge”. Last year, Ricardo Campos, a researcher at INESC TEC’s Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support (LIAAD), won first place in the PhD category for his research Disambiguating Implicit Temporal Queries for Temporal Information Retrieval Applications.
The “Fraunhofer Portugal Challenge 2014” is promoted by the Fraunhofer AICOS and awards the best ideas in the fields of Information and Communication Technologies, Multimedia and other related areas of knowledge. The competition, which is now on its 5th edition, aims at promoting and rewarding practical, market-oriented scientific research that takes into consideration the applicability of ideas and their results in industry or in people’s daily lives.
The INESC TEC researchers mentioned in this article are associated with the following partner institutions: FEUP.
INESC TEC, October 2014
