The 2026 edition of the PhD Open Days took place last week at the Técnico Innovation Centre, welcoming dozens of students over the course of two days. Organised by Instituto Superior Técnico’s Doctoral School, the event provided an opportunity for students to present their research, learn about the work of their peers, and attend sessions addressing a range of topics relevant to their PhD journey.

The first day included the Best PhD Thesis Award Ceremony, where the award in the scientific domain of Computer, Mathematical and Management Sciences and Engineering was presented to Catarina Botelho, who completed her PhD at INESC-ID under the supervision of Isabel Trancoso and the co-supervision of Alberto Abad, both researchers in Human Language Technologies.

The event also featured a poster exhibition, easily recognisable for the rows of yellow surrounding the stage, showcasing research conducted by Técnico’s PhD students. Among the participants were several INESC-ID students, including Dominika Długosz, João Veríssimo and Lucian Popescu, who presented their respective research projects.

The second day featured one of the highlights of the programme: the Pitch Competition. João Veríssimo, a PhD student in the Distributed, Parallel and Secure Systems area, presented his ongoing research, entitled “StageRun – An Execution-Centric Runtime for In-Network Security Applications”. João Marques, a PhD student in Information and Decision Support Systems, presented his work entitled “Towards Safe and Reliable Medical Artificial Intelligence Systems”.

The programme also included an invited talk entitled “The Role of Innovation in Building a More Sustainable Economy and Society in the 21st Century”, delivered by Leonel Sousa, Coordinator of Técnico’s Doctoral School and INESC-ID researcher in High-Performance Computer Architectures and Systems. Francisco C. Santos, an INESC-ID researcher in Artificial Intelligence for People and Society and Vice-Rector of the University of Lisbon, also participated in the event as a member of the Pitch Competition jury.

 

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