CIÊNCIAS 2025: the year in 12 images

Throughout 2025, CIÊNCIAS was the stage for discoveries, learning, and encounters that shape the daily life of the Faculty. Between classrooms, laboratories, common spaces, and moments of sharing with the community, another year marked by the diversity of people, knowledge, and perspectives was built.

This initiative brings together a selection of images that record the time spent at CIÊNCIAS. More than illustrating events, these photographs capture gestures, environments, and moments that reveal the human dimension of the Faculty, as well as the vitality of a community in constant transformation.

CIÊNCIAS 2025: The Year in 12 Images is, therefore, an invitation to revisit the past year through the eyes of those who made the Faculty happen, celebrating the science that is built every day at CIÊNCIAS—open, concrete, and shared.

In this time of reflection and encounter, CIÊNCIAS wishes its entire community rest, inspiration, and renewed energy for the coming year, which will continue to be built together.

High school students attend Rui Agostinho's lecture during the CIÊNCIAS 2025 Christmas Conference.

The Conference invited over 600 students and 40 high school teachers to visit the CIÊNCIAS campus to participate in an event dedicated to demystifying science related to some of today's greatest challenges.

The event featured presentations by leading researchers from the Faculty: Rui Agostinho, João Duarte, and Ana Catarina Monteiro, who addressed current topics such as planetary defense, the habitability of other planets, and the role of mathematics in scientific creativity.

"We want them to see CIÊNCIAS with affection and come here to teach and learn things," shared Luís Carriço, Dean of CIÊNCIAS.

Throughout this year, Pause, the new bar and dining space in building C5, has become a privileged meeting and sharing spot for the entire CIÊNCIAS community. In this central location on campus, students take the opportunity to have lunch and relax between classes.

More than 70 students from the Vergílio Ferreira School Cluster in Lisbon and the Fernando Namora High School in Amadora participated in the mini-regatta of boats powered by solar energy — the Solar Sailors Challenge. The event was organized by students and had a jury of science teachers, including Jorge Maia Alves, the tenured professor in the photo.

The CIÊNCIAS campus opened its doors to 2,500 high school students on Open Day 2025. To welcome them, we had a Task Force of 150 volunteers from master and bachelor students, including Ruben Martinho, an master degree student in Mathematics.

In order to study the Vale Telheiro cave, in the municipality of Loulé, the team of biospeleologists led by Ana Sofia Reboleira, a professor at CIÊNCIAS and leader of the research group in Subterranean Ecology at the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (CE3C), has to transport heavy equipment through narrow passages, where only one person can fit at a time, crawling on the ground.

Luís Carriço, DEAN of CIÊNCIAS, drives one of the solar-powered cars built by the Oficina das Energias – Energy and Environment Engineering Student Group, during the Student Associations Fair.

Airplanes flying over the CIÊNCIAS campus are a recurring sight for the Faculty community. But the reverse is also true: CIÊNCIAS is one of the first Lisbon landmarks that new visitors see, even before landing in the capital.

Luís Leitão, a Master's student in Physical Engineering at CIÊNCIAS, completed his Erasmus exchange at the Sorbonne in Paris during the 2024/2025 academic year. He cycled all the way and every day from Portugal to France on his bicycle.

A moment of embrace between the outgoing president (José Maria Diogo) and the new president of the Students' Association of the Faculty of Sciences of Lisbon - AEFCL (Mário Mateus da Costa), during the inauguration ceremony of the association's new board.

The Faculty of Sciences hosted the final of the latest edition of Technovation Girls Portugal, an event coordinated by Happy Code, with the mission of guiding girls towards STEAM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics). This edition involved 245 girls, aged 8 to 18, and 76 projects were presented.

Samuel Barata sets new national record for the 10 kilometers. The athlete, a former Chemistry student at the Faculty, finished in 11th place and broke the national record during a race organized in Brasov, Romania.

In the month of her academic retirement, Margarida Santos-Reis, Vice Dean responsible for research, was the surprise guest of honor at the 7th edition of the CIÊNCIAS Research & Innovation Day. This event, which she herself conceived seven years ago and has been coordinating, had zoologist David Macdonald from the University of Oxford as a guest speaker in its most recent edition.