Instituto Superior Técnico

Biological and Medical Imaging is of key importance in advancing health care in both Portugal and Switzerland, as evidenced by strong investment of the private sector as well as research funding institutions in this area. The demands that arise from this technological development create an urgent need for advanced education in Biomedical Imaging, as well as to increase the number of researchers, faculty and PhD students working together on a given problem. The areas covered in this Focus Area include, but are not limited to, the following aspects:

• Quantitative functional imaging of the brain;
• Multimodal brain imaging using EEG-fMRI;
• 3D reconstruction (denoising, deblurring and alignment of biomedical images);
• Novel hybrid imaging approaches, such as PET-MRI and Ultrasound-fMRI.3

This Focus Area is highly interdisciplinary and involves two main research lines: (i) distributed, networked robots and (ii) cognitive personal assistant robots and devices capable of interacting with humans and understanding human actions.

1. Distributed, networked robots - Recent advances in robotics, computer vision, artificial intelligence, statistical signal processing and control theory, as well as the advent of miniaturized sensors and actuators, powerful embedded processors, and wireless communication systems, have afforded engineers with the methodologies and technologies to design and build networks of autonomous robots and systems. The applications include monitoring and operations in hazardous or remote environments (ocean, space, contaminated areas, areas destroyed by natural disasters, etc), in industrial or civil engineering structures (pipeline monitoring and surveillance, bridges, dams), and in services (buildings, public areas, traffic monitoring and surveillance).
2. Cognitive personal assistant robots - The massive deployment of sensors and robotic devices (e.g. smart appliances, robotic assistants) in offices, homes and urban environments, as opposed to factories, places the interaction with humans and the interpretation of human activity in a central role (e.g. ambient intelligence, health-care, surveillance). This challenge opens a new landscape of research directions in learning, human action recognition and cognition in a multidisciplinary approach involving (e.g. humanoid) robotic systems, as well as neuroscience and psychology. The research domains in this Focus Area include Human activity recognition from sensor data (e.g. video), context aware systems that can learn from observation and Learning by imitation in humanoid robotic assistants with biological inspiration.

This Focus Area is centered in the domain of applied mathematics, with special emphasis given to: mathematical modeling and computer simulations in fluid mechanics, with applications to biomedical problems; statistics and stochastic processes with applications in biology, medicine and telecommunications; and stochastic analysis with applications to statistical hydrodynamics Malliavin calculus.

With the great power of today’s computer systems and the development of sophisticated methods of nonlinear and numerical analysis, stochastic analysis and processes and of techniques of scientific computing, it becomes possible to model complex phenomena, using both mathematical and computational tools that were out of reach just a few years ago. This is a highly interdisciplinary research area which demands different expertise and a dynamic interplay between mathematical modeling, numerical simulations, theoretical and experimental work.

Through this research area, the interaction between the Focus Areas of the Initiative will provide an adequate framework to address important open problems from Mathematics, Biomedicine, Physics, Engineering or Computer Science. Young researchers involved in the correspondent training program will be exposed to a wide range of topics and related numerical techniques that will improve their scientific and professional skills and will prepare them to work in biomedical and engineering industries, health institutions, research centers as well as in academia.

Some of the topics to be addressed include Blood flow modeling, robust statistics and statistical genetics, Stochastic analysis.

The advent of new mass consumer wireless communication systems, or of applications like massive RFID tagging, or the need for advanced communication and probing systems for the Space segment, to mention just a few, poses tremendous challenges on antennas research and development. For instance the demand for fraction of wavelength size antennas that can fit into small handheld user terminals, operating with multiple communications standards like GSM, UMTS, Bluetooth, WiFi, WiMax and GPS, withstanding the very high data rates of some of these services and still coping with human body specific absorption rate (SAR) safety limits, defies the creativity of the researchers to push the antenna design and technology up to the limits of physics. The development of extremely low cost antennas, possibly using print-on degradable inks, for RFID intelligent tagging of billions of day-life consumer products is another present design challenge. In the Space segment, new challenges are continuously being raised, addressing e.g. antenna reconfigurability, enhancement of antenna efficiency and bandwidth for sub-millimeter wave probing systems or compact low loss microwave devices.

This focus area will tackle the following suite of problems, all involving an extremely strong environmental, political and societal impact:

1. Security problems in the valleys downstream of dams incorporating flood mapping and risk assessment, particularly for urban areas typically existent in the floodplains;
2. Environmental impacts of dams, including reservoir sedimentation, morphological changes and water quality;
3. Studying avalanches and glacier melting and their impacts in Alpine watersheds;
4. Generating knowledge and competence to deal with the predictable rise of sea-water level and associated impacts;
5. Integrating concepts of ecology in the field of hydraulics.

The activity in this area is related with the scientific exploitation of the tokamak TCV and is developed in the frame of the EURATOM Fusion Programme. There are two main research topics:

1. X-ray diagnostics based on Pulse Height Analysis for the determination of the electron plasma temperature and the identification of plasma impurities and on a rotating crystal for the measurement of the ion plasma temperature;
2. Real-time digital systems for the control of the operation of some tokamak components as well as of the plasma column. These systems are based on an on-site developed multi-Digital Signal Processor, parallel processing, VME board and on specially developed algorithms.

In the future IST/IPFN and EPFL/CRPP might develop joint work for ITER on real-time plasma control.

Architecture is a field of great importance for both institutions IST and the EPFL. The complexity of problems that concerns this discipline makes it more necessary for high scientific research to be achieved. Therefore, we will insist primarily on the cultural aspect of architecture and also on every point about space, functions and materiality. This concerns two specific main domains: history, theory and criticism; space-use analyses and architectural conception.

a) History, Theory and Criticism
This domain applies to the history and theory of architecture and city, based on the constructed environment and in that sense focused on operative history. It is concerned with the critical analysis of architectural theory and practice at different periods, from the Renaissance to the Modern Movement until up contemporary architecture.
The history is conceived as a tool supporting the intervention on architecture and the city. It is structured according to a comprehensive approach in which the world of architecture is framed within the dynamics of the artistic and urban cultural production associated with it.
The aim is to stimulate research on the following areas: cultural heritage as a facet of contemporary culture, traditional and contemporary values in architecture and the city, and the role of the avant-garde within the framework of the affinities, differences and crosspollination between art and architecture.

b) Space-use analysis and architectural conception
Space-use analysis is about methods, procedures and concepts for the evaluation of architectural space both the building and the urban scale, including computer tools. The main difference between mainstream environment-behaviour studies and space-use analysis is the emphasis on descriptive techniques in the latter, i.e., techniques that objectively describe architectural space and relate this description to specific problems of human spatial behaviour. In other words, is it about describing space, mapping user’s spatial behaviours and researching their relationships.
This domain concerns also the study of design choices and design decisions, especially in the case of conception and analysis of complex projects. It refers to subjects as the theory of the project, the connections between physical and virtual architecture and the relationship between architecture, natural and built environment.