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 Five young group leaders in Portugal have just joined the prestigious network of recipients of the European Research Council Starting Grants, in what is the largest yield to date for Portuguese researchers in this prestigious and highly competitive funding programme. Each researcher thus ensures funding on the order of 1-1.5 million euro, for a period of five years, which will allow them to further unravel processes and molecules underlying the division, movement and ageing of cells, inflammatory responses to disease and adaptation of bacteria to the environment.

Isabel Gordo, Mónica Bettencourt-Dias and Teresa Teixeira are group leaders at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, just outside Lisbon. Helder Maiato is at the Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, in Porto, and Bruno Santos Silva is based at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular, in Lisbon. They are all in their 30s, set up their own research groups in Portugal within the last 4-6 years, and except for Teresa Teixeira, are all alumni of the Gulbenkian PhD Programme in Biology and Medicine.

Mónica Bettencourt-Dias, Helder Maiato and Teresa Teixeira are interested in different aspects of the process whereby cells divide. Their findings could have implications for understanding the causes of cancer, age-related syndromes and infertility.

Bettencourt-Dias will be investigating further how the number and architecture of structures called centrioles are regulated in different cells. Centrioles are essential during cell division for the proper separation of chromosomes, and also in motile cells (such as sperm and certain parasites).

Maiato will build on techniques and results already accumulated by his young research group to dissect out the function of yet another crucial keg in the cell division machinery – the kinetochore, which attaches the chromosomes to the protein tracks (microtubules) along which they migrate to the poles of the cell, just before it divides to give two daughter cells.

Teixeira, on the other hand, will be looking into the cellular clock that counts the number of generations. Telomeres are stretches of DNA found at the ends of chromosomes in eukaryotic cells (such as human cells), that shorten with each cell division. With this funding, Teixeira will be able to study individual telomeres, to investigate the impact of structural changes on the capacity of cells to proliferate.

Bruno Silva Santos is an immunologist, and this ERC Grant will be used to identify the molecules and processes underlying the inflammatory responses mediated by T cells of the immune system in response to an infection (by the malaria parasite Plasmodium, for example). His findings may impact on the development of new or more efficient vaccines for chronic infections, such as malaria and tuberculosis.

Isabel Gordo’s winning proposal is to provide insight into a pivotal question for evolutionary biologists – the process of adaptation, on which natural selection, and evolution, rest. Gordo will work with populations of the bacteria Escherichia coli, to better understand the biology of bacteria, their diversity, how they evolve and adapt to new environments, namely the selective pressure put on them by the immune system.

The ERC Starting Grants aim to support early career independent researchers (with two to ten years’ research experience since completion of their PhD), with a promising scientific track record and proposing to carry out an ambitious and ground-breaking research proposal. The main selection criteria for these, and other, ERC awards is scientific excellence, and all areas of research are covered in the funding scheme. In the previous two rounds, researchers in Portugal secured four Starting grants in the Life Sciences: two in 2008, by researchers at the IMM, and two in 2009, by researchers at the IGC.

 About the new grantholders:

Mónica Bettencourt-Dias, age 37, heads the Cell Cycle Regulation laboratory at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), just outside Lisbon. Educated at the University of Lisbon, with a degree in Biochemistry, she received her PhD in cardiac regeneration from University College London (UK). After post-doctoral research at Cambridge University, she moved to the IGC, in 2006, to set up her own research group. She has a post-graduate diploma in Science Communication from Birkbeck College (UK). Her group has published several important papers in the field of cell division and motility, and she has received several prizes and grants, including the Eppendorf Prize, the Pfizer Award, an EMBO Installation Grant, the EMBO Young Investigator Award and, most recently, a grant of the Harvard Medical School-Portugal Programme.

Hélder Maiato, age 34, is the head of the Chromosome Instability and Dynamics laboratory at the Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular (IBMC) and a faculty member of the Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto (Porto). Maiato has a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Porto and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the same university, having done most of his doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh (UK). He was a post-doctoral researcher at the Wadsworth Center, Divison of Molecular Medicine, New York State Department of Health (USA) where he applied laser microsurgery techniques to investigate the cell division process. Maiato has over 25 publications in leading scientific journals such as Cell, Nature Cell Biology and The Journal of Cell Biology, has and received several awards and grants, including a Human Frontier Young Investigator Grant.

Teresa Teixeira, 38 years old, was an undergraduate and doctoral student in Paris, France. After receiving her PhD in nuclear organisation and functional genome analysis of Saccharomyces cerevisiae from the Pasteur Institute, she moved to the Institut Suisse de Recherche Expérimentale sur le Cancer, in Lausanne. In 2005 she joined the CNRS in Lyon, with a permanent position. She is setting up her own research group at the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, in Paris, having initially applied for ERC funding through the IGC where Teixeira initially planned to establish herself as an independent group leader.

Bruno Silva-Santos, age 36, is head of the Immunology Unit at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular and a faculty member of the Faculdade de Medicina de Lisboa. He is also an External Researcher of the IGC. Silva-Santos has a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Lisbon, and a PhD in Immunology from University College London (UK). He was a post-doctoral researcher at King’s College London (UK), before returning to Portugal, in 2005. He has published in leading scientific journals, such as Nature Immunology, Nature and Science, and received several prizes and grants, including the King’s College London Young Researcher of the Year Award, an EMBO Installation Grant, the Pfizer Award for Clinical Research and the International Cytokine Society prize for young researcher.

Isabel Gordo, 37 years old, has a degree in Physics from the Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisbon), a PhD in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Edinburgh (UK). Since 2004 she has been head of the Evolutionary Biology group at the IGC. She has over 25 publications in leading scientific journals, has supervised several PhD students and collaborates with several research groups in Portugal and abroad.

WORKSHOP AGENDA:

Day 1:

Morning- Brett introduced the “why do we exist and what are we trying to accomplish” discussion. Partici­pants were challenged to consider goals, impact, and role within the university ecosystem.

Afternoon- Brett introduced the key concepts of the pre-reading materials regarding OTC best practices, and began to describe his vision for “taking your OTC from an appendix to the heart of the university”. Par­ticipants were challenged to consider what role they currently play, where they would like to go as an office, and how they might get there.

Day 2:

Morning- Brett Described the A&M philosophy, model, and matrix for technology classification, which links di­rectly to the A&M methodology for making informed de­cisions regarding path-to-market, venture vs. licensing focus, resource allocation, etc.

Afternoon- Eli introduced the topic of business intelli­gence/competitive intelligence as a tool for decision-making and support using the A&M model and meth­odology as an effective example, then presented, compared, and contrasted three tools used in IC2 and partner OTC’s:

1. The UT OTC Methodology

2. The Quicklook Methodology

3. The Rapid Screen Methodology

Participants were challenged to consider ways their of­fices could formalize decision-making processes, and to form teams and map technologies using Brett’s matrix and approach.

Day 3:

Morning- Eli introduced his methodology and approach to creating a data grid for team intelligence gather­ing. Participants were challenged to consider ways to incorporate some form of data mapping into their pro­cesses, and to map technologies on Brett’s matrix based on their evaluations.

Afternoon- Participants shared presentations and con­clusions from the A&M approach, and the context with­in their ecosystems. Brett and the UTEN team provided feedback and the group discussed ways to leverage lessons shared to successfully achieve commercial­ization goals through effective venture creation tech­niques and careful selection of technologies for univer­sity spin-outs.

The RapidScreen assessment results were generally positive, characterizing a good infrastructure to support commercialization efforts, but there were surprising find­ings regarding existing agreements that led to a strategy review. Using the technology description developed and techniques trained during the in­ternship, three core market interviews were secured, including one with the Director of Technology for a large wood products manufacturer, an in­dustry association Certification Direc­tor, and a prolific industry journalist. These interviews defined in great de­tail exactly how the market views the technology and what characteristics of the technology matter most.

Carla will be taking these lessons back to UTAD: “With the RapidScreen and MarketLook and UTEN training, re­garding the technology in study, we were able to see the very real need for a product like New Agglomerant for Wood Particles in the market. We also learned that our office and our researcher still have work to do to be successful in the market, especially with respect to understanding the cost of production, and the prices we can expect the market to pay. We will need to do these things in order to have a more concrete answer from the companies we contacted, especially from one company in particu­lar who showed real interest in our technology. Over­all, the tools and lessons learned will help the UTAD TTO make better choices about the technologies to pursue for commercialization. Since the RapidScreen uncovers the status of the technology and research team support, and the MarketLook uncovers the market’s opinion of the technology, these two methodologies are very use­ful when we want to extend patent protection to PCT or European Patents.”

The deadline for submitting paper proposals is 15 April, 2010. For more information, please see: http://2010.cloudviews.org/site/

Gear was a 5 day event with conferences and workshops during the day and project presentations and multimedia concerts at night. Pennycook presented on April 7th together with names like Jade Walker (USA), Teresa Dilon (IRL, UK, PT) and Roger B. Dannenberg (USA) among others. This event also saw presentations of some of the main multimedia design companies in Portugal, like YDreams, Near Interaction, Edigma and CriativeBitBox.

The fascinating Radio-Television- Film department was unveiled through a comprehensive tour on the subjects and facilities offered to the students. I was also given the opportunity to visit the Videoranch 3D studios during a live performance with 3D scenery and avatars, and all the emotion of real-time!

There was a welcome evening, a wonderful get together to meet with UT researchers and Portuguese fellows in Austin, and it also was really nice to be part of the UT audience when our Portuguese fellows performed at the AMODA digital showcase.

The SXSW festival was another acquaintance from this awesome experience: sleepless nights/ days overtaken by compelling references at the conferences, workshops and networking during the interactive week, and also from the music field – an insane adventure worth the try!

Plans for the future naturally triggered from this visit, including ideas for workshops in video effects and optimization for real-time processing, as well as on directing and editing a trailer.

Austin is a simultaneously quiet and raving spacious city with an inspiring environment, and many, many trees – an enchanting setup for the RTiVISS research, and with interesting resources for the interactive installations in progress.

I’m looking forward to coming back, hopefully to work on film, real-time video and usability issues at UT, and also regarding a panel proposal focusing on real-time video in digital environments for the next SXSW Interactive.

To share this experience, I’ve posted at the research blog http://www.rtiviss.com/ and linked to the UT Austin

www.flickr.com/groups/utportugal where you can also add your comments or ask any further specificities.

By Mónica Mendes 

The International School on Digital Transformation is an intensive six-day residential program, conducted in English and bringing together emerging and established scholars and professionals from a variety of countries. During the week, innovators in digital communications will serve as teachers and mentors, presenting current projects and engaging in discussion. Presenters and students will be regarded as peers during the School. For Gary Chapman, lecturer of University of Texas at Austin, “ISDT is a unique experience, a different kind of event — a cross between a research conference and a week-long ‘camp’ of diverse people using digital technologies to help transform societies from the bottom up. And Porto is the perfect place to do this.”

Students of the School will have the opportunity to develop and apply research design skills to projects important to civil society. Consisting of approximately 30 students and 15 faculty members, the School seeks to create an atmosphere of scholarly collegiality, fostering dialogue among diverse perspectives including those of design, policy, and research backgrounds. The daily schedule will include time for presentations, workshop-style collaboration, and informal brainstorming sessions among faculty and students.

The School’s program will focus on these themes:

• Democratic transformations of society through digital media
• Innovations in transparency and political participation using new online tools
• Grassroots civic activities using digital technologies
• Prospects for digital communication in developing regions
• Economically and politically galvanizing historically underserved areas
• Developing “open cities” and municipal participation through technological interventions

For more information about the School, its faculty, and to apply, please visit: http://digitaltransformationschool.org/2010/

The futureplaces showcase at SXSW took place at the AMODA-Club DeVille evening event on March 13, and was a great success! For 40 minutes on a hot Austin night, the audience was offered a selection of recordings from the two editions of the festival (including various sound samples from the concerts by the STOP collective), as well as recordings of various local initiatives throughout Europe. A highlight of the set was the spontaneous audience interaction with samples from a demonstration in London called “Scream for Mother Earth”!

The sound tapestry, performed by Heitor Alvelos and Anselmo Canha, was accompanied by projections by João Cruz. These projections incorporated the festival´s URL (futureplaces.org), as well as slogans referring to the festival, the outcome of an oblique brainstorm which included:

VISIBLE CHALLENGES

FICTITIOUS ERAS

UNKNOWN POTENTIAL

MAGNETIC OTHERS

DISCREET FACILITATORS

ENDLESS ENDS

POTENTIAL VERTIGO

MIXABLE CITIES

HISTORICAL EXPANSION

HOPEFUL LANGUAGES

ANXIOUS CONSENSUS

The profile of the festival was raised through the showcase itself, as well as through the distribution of flyers and t-shirts. Many attendants expressed great interest in submitting work for futureplaces 2010.

The conference, hosted by the Universidade de Minho in Braga, convened researchers, game producers and computer scientists from around the world to present and discuss the latest research in the area of “serious games.” The next conference in 2011 will be held in Greece. To see complete details, including the winning research papers from the conference, please click on: http://www.vsgames2010.org/

Preceding the conference, as part of the Co-Lab effort to identify co-supervision activities for students, Professor Tyner also presented her research on digital media to graduate students at the University of Porto on March 23, 2010. The meeting was coordinated by Professor Artur Pimenta Alves, Co-Director of Digital Media at the University of Porto and offered an opportunity for students to present their current work and to learn about links to people and resources that could support their research.

Two Porto classes, two realities of sight and sound. In one, a course on documentary, film-makers shoot people at work an old couple making shoes by hand, a woman setting up her little butcher shop at the market, another woman taking a break from work behind the lunch counter to talk to the crew-she knows everyone of her customers. The students’ challenge, from U.T. Professor and filmmaker Andrew Garrison working with Porto instructor and filmmaker Soraia Ferreira, is to tell these stories in three minutes each, the first assignment in their new documentary class.

Across town in the afternoon, Garrison works with Dr. Carlos Guedes in a class where eight graduate students listen and watch rough cuts of grad student films from the University of Texas Dept. RTF. The class in Sound Design at the University of Porto will edit and design sound for these four films. They have just completed a first assignment in three days—a two-minute “sound portrait” of another member of the class. The finished pieces are fun, complex, impressive, weaving between the speakers, making use of effects, atmospheres, and spoken word.

Both courses are part of a unique, combined PhD and Masters program that is working across disciplines in Porto, and, in the case of the Sound Design class, collaborating across the waters with Texas student filmmakers. Garrison returns to Austin after the week but will continue to listen and view work and advise students in collaboration with Ferreira, Guedes, and Dr. Jose Alves, in real time and time-shifted on-line