25 new R&D projects approved under the "Go Portugal" Program

25 new projects have been approved and will be funded under the "Go Portugal - Global Science and Technology Partnerships Portugal" Program, with total funding of €55.2 million over the next 3 years, including €16.7 million funded by the American partner universities (UT Austin, CMU and MIT) and €7.7 million in corporate self-financing. At the national level, the projects include co-financing from European funds, namely through the COMPETE 2020 Program (11.5 M€), the PO Norte (4.3 M€), the PO Centro (2.5 M€), the PO Lisboa (5.3 M€), with an additional contribution from FCT of 7.2 M€.

The selected projects cover the following areas: Data Science; Advanced Computing; Digital Transformation in Industry; Sustainable Cities; Space-Earth Interactions in the Atlantic, Climate Change, Medical Physics and Nanomaterials. In the area of space-earth interactions, the projects approved are particularly relevant to strengthening the Atlantic International Research Center (AIR center) and the "Atlantic Interactions" agenda.

The projects will be developed in the context of Portugal's international partnerships with:

• the University of Texas at Austin (UTA), which includes 11 selected R&D projects, with total funding of €21.9M, in which UT Austin contributes €7.8M. R&D activities focus on the development of new technologies in the automotive and space industries, advanced computing and applications to medicine and biotechnology.
• Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), which includes 10 R&D projects and involves total funding of €21 million, with CMU contributing €6.2 million. It includes R&D activities focusing on Data Science and Engineering, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Design and Engineering applied to Social Problems and Mobility and Autonomy, responding to problems in the health sector, forest fire prevention, data management and simultaneous translation.
• the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with 4 R&D projects and total funding of €12.2 million, with €2.7 million from MIT. It involves activities in the areas of Digital Transformation in the Manufacturing Industry and Sustainable Cities, including communication networks, involving 5G communications and innovative digital transformation processes.

These 25 projects involve 34 companies and 27 entities from the National Scientific and Technological System (SCTN), revealing a strong commitment from the national innovation ecosystem. It is up to national companies to lead the networks and collaborative projects now approved, in order to modernize the economic fabric and accelerate the innovation process in Portugal in partnership with researchers from CMU, MIT and UT Austin.

See the list of the 25 approved projects here.