
ISTSAT-1: the first satellite fully developed in Portugal will be in space in 2022
ISTSAT-1 — the first nanosatellite to be fully developed, from scratch, in Portugal — is set to be launched from the Ariane 6 rocket later this year. ISTSAT-1 has been developed by researchers and students from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), including Moisés Piedade (retired full Professor at IST and INESC-ID Emeritus Researcher) and coordinated by Rui Rocha (Professor at IST).
The ISTSAT-1 nanosatellite began its development in 2017 and has its digital eyes set on the remote detection of airplanes from space. Mission control for ISTSAT-1 will be implemented at IST TagusPark, and so fully controlled from Portugal.
ISTSAT-1 has also been featured in IST’s 110 Histórias, 110 Objetos podcast.
Moisés Piedade was honoured last year by INESC-ID as Emeritus Researcher in recognition of his outstanding career in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of IST.
Upcoming Events
ESSIR 2022: 13th European Summer School in Information Retrieval

This year’s edition of ESSIR, a 5-day teaching event on Information Retrieval (IR) and related research topics, will take place between 18-23 July 2022. The event is organized by NOVA LINCS (FCT UNL), INESC ID and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid with the support of the CMU Portugal Program and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.
The event will also incorporate the new edition of the Symposium on Future Directions in Information Access (FDIA), which will provide a forum for early researchers to present their research in a friendly environment, while among senior researchers.
The summer school is addressed to students, Master’s students, Ph.D. Researchers, Industry and Academia practitioners. No deep previous knowledge of IR or ML is required, but the attendants are assumed to have some basic computer science and mathematics background.
The Summer School will be held at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences (FCSH) of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
The early registration deadline is June the 15th 2022, and the application form is available online.
EPIA’22: EPIA Conference on Artificial Intelligence

The EPIA Conference on Artificial Intelligence is a well-established European conference. The 21st edition of the EPIA conference will take place at Instituto Superior Técnico by 2022.
As in previous editions, this international conference is hosted with the patronage of the Portuguese Association for Artificial Intelligence (APPIA).
The purpose of this conference is to promote research in all areas of AI, covering both theoretical/foundational issues and applications, and the scientific exchange among researchers, engineers and practitioners in related disciplines.
For further details please visit the EPIA’22 website.