|
|
Editorial
Science funding is an important and often discussed topic yet the basic implementation facts are often neglected. For the sake of completeness let me just recall that funding of science includes human resources, infrastructures, equipment, maintenance, and consumables.
On human resources, funds for researchers and students (mainly at the Ph.D. level) are regularly available. However, this is not the case for technicians, indispensable to run and maintain experimental facilities.
Even if infrastructures and equipment may be considered a one-off expense, they soon become outdated and useless if regular funding for technicians, maintenance, and consumables is not available.
For applied sciences, funding to run laboratories may be obtained through projects, mostly short-term. However, one should keep in mind that applied sciences stem from basic sciences usually with no application in sight. Take optical fibers for instance. Who could think, 50 years ago, that they would be the major players in telecommunication networks?
Although it may appear to be less popular to use public money to fund basic sciences, this is certainly a high-risk high return policy that must be followed.
Carlos Salema
|
|
|
|
Our highlights this month
|
|
|
BITalino accomplishes ten years long
BITalino was born ten years ago at the Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT). BITalino is a low-cost and do-it-yourself technology that measures signals from the heart, muscles, nervous system, movement, and ambient light, with several applications.
The outreach of this technology is wide if we look at the indicators, almost 1000 citations on Google Scholar, about 98000 search hits on Google, and the BioSPPy toolbox components, according to the latest statistics, have about 6300 downloads per week. In addition to the almost viral growth, BITalino has already earned several distinctions, it is one of only 10 projects worldwide selected for the semi-final of Engadget Insert Coin 2013, highlighted by The New Zealand Herald as one of the favorite technologies of 2013, and voted in 2014 as one of the 14 bets and one of the top 10 innovations by Diário de Notícias and Expresso respectively.
The linked video shows a glimpse of those ten years. Below, in #spin-off stories, Hugo Plácido da Silva, the co-team leader of the project, explains the past and future of biomedical signals toolkits taking the example of BITalino.
|
|
|
On the spot IT's high-tech demonstrations at Aveiro Tech Week
The city of Aveiro hosted the initiative "Techdays 2021 – Building our Future", in the week of October 11-17, with several actions and events that fusion technology, art, and culture. Instituto de Telecomunicações was on the spot at Aveiro Tech Week with high-tech demonstrations for better living in the city. One of the initiatives, “Aveiro Tech City Living Lab”, planned in collaboration with partners of the European Project Aveiro STEAM City, was the first living lab created in Portugal, where innovative solutions in the areas of IoT and Smart Cities were tested and developed. Susana Sargento, IT researcher and leader of Aveiro STEAM City, highlighted the innovation of this lab: "everything is now tested in an experimental environment."
|
|
|
Rogério Nogueira, Nuno Borges de Carvalho and Susana Sargento participated in the “Air summit Portugal: Flying for a New Start", which took place in Ponte de Sôr this October. The IT researchers discussed, respectively, the Space Industry and Artificial Intelligence.
|
|
|
Two IT projects were present at the 1st Edition of FIC.A – International Science Festival, at the IST stand: PreEpiSeizures and ISTSAT-1. FIC.A took place on October 12th to 17th, 2021 at the Palace and Gardens of Marquês de Pombal, in Oeiras.
|
|
Veronica Orvalho is a finalist for the EU Women Innovators award 2021 alongside 21 outstanding female founders, selected from 264 applications, from 35 countries.
Veronica Orvalho is IT researcher, founder, and CEO of Didimo.
|
|
|
The student João Branquinho conducted, within the scope of his master's thesis, a solution to improve the perception of pedestrians in road crosswalks when close enough to approaching vehicles.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
MCThecs is a research and development (R&D) project currently running in the Optical Components and Sub-systems groups at Instituto de Telecomunicações, Aveiro, conducted by Ana Rocha and Gil Fernandes. The main goal of this project is the design and development of novel components, such as couplers and switches and SSMF to MCF couplers, which, in turn, will support component sharing and allow the development of efficient MCF-based sub-systems, including reconfigurable optical switching devices and inline optical amplifiers. MCThecs aims to contribute towards making the MCF transmissions system a commercially viable technology.
|
|
SPIN-OFF STORIES | BITalino
|
|
|
In this new segment, we track down the companies that today tell some of IT's biggest success stories, and we chat with the people behind them to learn more about the unique businesses that are born when research meets entrepreneurship.
|
|
|
After 10 years, it is time to catch up with BITalino's project past and future. We had a talk with Hugo Plácido da Silva, one of the research members, together with the core team Ana Fred (PI), Ana Alves, André Lourenço, Carlos Carreiras, José Guerreiro, Michel Cânovas, and Raúl Martins, to learn more about how BITalino become one of Portugal’s top spin-off projects in the biomedical signals technology field and what might be the next step...
|
|
|
Don't miss our upcoming events...
|
|
|
WINTER SCHOOL
23rd - 25th November 2021
IT’s Winter School on Radio Frequency Technologies for Future Wireless Communications
IT Aveiro is organizing, from the 23rd to the 25th of November, at Hotel Meliá Aveiro, a Winter School focused on Radio Frequency Technologies for Future Wireless Communications. This will be a unique opportunity to be in touch with some of the foremost experts on three different topics: device nonlinear modeling, power amplifier design, and Internet of Things.
|
|
Musa Gwani Samail
Internet of Things Hardware Platform Security Advisor: A Framework for Facilitating Secure Design and Development of IoT Systems
PhD in Computer Science and Engineering, by Universidade da Beira Interior, April 2021, supervised by Pedro Inácio (IT – UBI). His PhD thesis research explored the problem of developing devices and software for the Internet of Things (IoT) following principles of security-by-design. Major outcomes of this research included the mapping of security requirements with technology, namely lightweight cryptographic primitives, applicable to IoT resource-constrained devices. Currently, he is a member of the staff of the Centre for Geodesy and Geodynamics, National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), in Nigeria.
|
|
|
Luiz Antonio Zanlorensi Junior
Deep Representations for Iris and Periocular Biometric Systems
PhD in Computer Science by the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), April 2021, supervised by David Menotti, Alceu S. Britto Jr. and Hugo Proença. His thesis proposes new methods for iris recognition in unconstrained environments without preprocessing, iris and periocular cross-spectral recognition, periocular attribute normalization, and multi-task learning for periocular recognition using soft biometrics. Another significant contribution is releasing a new periocular database (UFPR-Periocular) captured by mobile devices in unconstrained environments (publicly available to the research community). Currently, Luiz is a Computer Vision Researcher and Data Scientist at Natosafe, Brazil.
|
|
|
Cátia Leitão
I’m Cátia, I’m a Biomedical Engineer and I started my research path within the scope of an FCT project, with a fellowship from i3N and Physics department of University of Aveiro (UA) and IT, in 2010. I went on to a doctorate at the same institutions, in the development of fibre optic sensors for the acquisition of the carotid pulse wave for the purpose of evaluating the arterial central pressure, under the supervision of Prof. João de Lemos Pinto, prof. Paulo André e prof. José Mesquita Bastos.
Currently, I’m a Junior Researcher at i3N and Physics department of UA, keeping my collaboration with IT. I am dedicated to developing optical solutions for a cardiovascular health evaluation, from biochemical to physical sensors, namely for the assessment of vital signs, heart failure biomarkers and arterial stiffness using different sensing platforms.
IT continues to play a key role in the development of my scientific career. I hope that this successful collaboration between the Nanophotonics and Optoelectronics (NO) group from I3N and the Optics and Photonics group from IT will continue for many years. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the people from IT who collaborated with me in the last 10 years. Thank you!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
