LASIGE combines cutting-edge research and recognises talent in the 11th edition of its annual Workshop

The 11th edition of the LASIGE Workshop brought together, last Wednesday, projects and researchers from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon who have been working at the forefront of the technology and computing sector. During the annual event of the LASIGE centre, organised by the LASIGE PhD students’ committee in collaboration with the centre’s executive committee, distinctions were awarded for the impact achieved in society and also to early-career researchers, in addition to prizes for doctoral and master’s students. The event also served to announce the two winners from among the 62 scientific posters presented by master’s and doctoral students.

“This event aims to bring together students, researchers, and integrated members of LASIGE in a moment of celebration of what we have been doing throughout the year. It is an event where we take the opportunity to communicate with each other about the main results we have managed to achieve with the various ongoing projects. There is also a second purpose, which is related to the visit of partners, members of other schools, and companies who come here to discover our projects and initiatives,” describes Tiago Guerreiro, director of the LASIGE research centre.

With the auditorium of building C6 filled with enthusiasm and expectation, Helena Aidos (“The Challenge of Temporal Phenotyping”) and João Guerreiro ("The Breadth and Depth of (My Research on) Blind Accessibility") delivered the keynote talks, presenting cutting-edge research and some of the latest perspectives and advances in the field of computer science.

It is also on this occasion that LASIGE recognises and rewards members of its community for the merit, excellence and impact of their work, through the categories of best PhD student, best early career researcher, and best societal impact initiative.

Bernardo Ferreira confesses that he did not expect to win the societal impact prize with the ArchiveChain project, for developing a solution that combines blockchain, energy efficiency, incentives for users, and Internet archives. “Without the support not only from LASIGE, but also from Ciências ULisboa, it would have been impossible to develop this work and have the impact we had. The LASIGE management, from early on, recognised the potential of ArchiveChain, supporting its development by awarding a research grant to the master's student who implemented it, and providing its IT infrastructure,” says Bernardo Ferreira.

The category also awarded an honourable mention to the initiative by André Rodrigues and João Guerreiro dedicated to inclusive games and accessible virtual reality. The initiative was selected for its exceptional effort in bringing this research to wider audiences, through high-profile events such as Lisboa Games Week, National Young Paralympic Day, and Biblio Gamers 2025. The work stood out for combining public engagement, accessibility, and visibility in national media, demonstrating how LASIGE’s research can promote inclusion, connect with society, and raise awareness about technology designed for everyone.

In the category of best doctoral student, the jury decided to award two prizes this year, recognising two distinct paths of excellence.

Filipa Rocha was distinguished for her work in the area of accessibility and inclusion, specifically for her research with blind and visually impaired children in various regions of the country, exploring how technology can promote more inclusive ways of learning programming and computational thinking.

Samaneh Shafee was recognised for the scientific impact of her work in the area of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, with her research already achieving high recognition in the international scientific community.

Isabel Neto was recognised with the Best Early Career Researcher award, which distinguishes the doctoral researcher at the beginning of their career with a set of outstanding contributions in the past year. Isabel Neto investigates the role of robots in inclusion within educational contexts and their influence on interactions between children with and without disabilities.

The poster exhibition was one of the highlights of the event – and it would come as no surprise if the master’s or doctoral students who presented the various works were to be recognised for the merit and impact of their research.

In total, 62 works were presented, covering areas as diverse as health and biomedical informatics, human-computer interaction, computation theory, systems reliability, decentralised systems, data processing, and cyber-physical systems. Research that, increasingly, crosses borders and promotes international collaborations.

Such was the case for Agda Costa, who presented a project dedicated to the detection of dangerous driving patterns, initially developed at the National Institute of Metrology in Brazil and later furthered during a stay at LASIGE. “I came to LASIGE to incorporate a privacy layer into my project that ensures drivers’ anonymity, because that makes a difference in the job market. Furthermore, being at LASIGE allows me to meet new people and engage with the country’s culture,” she says.

For João Pereira, it is the opinion of robots that matters most and this is the idea he explores in his master's degree, which aims to test various scenarios to determine whether or not humans' political opinions can be influenced by automatons. “I have always had some interest in political subjects and that interest was important in choosing this topic during my master's. If we already have digital agents that influence people, then we should also carry out the same kind of research with robots, as there are several companies already producing them in large quantities,” says the young researcher.

In the case of Martim Emauz, it was video games that led him to the poster exhibition. In addition to the analysis of the game Arc Raiders and the development of a video game prototype, the researcher reports collecting physiological data from players. “With this study, we aim to characterise the interactions that exist between games with cooperative logics and those with competitive logics,” emphasises the young master's student.

From electronic payment fraudsters, no cooperation is expected. And with the poster he presented, Gabriel Meirinhos notes that “he is working on indicators that may be useful for automatically identifying fraud patterns in electronic payment systems. There are millions of possible combinations (in an action or in a fraud pattern) and a human cannot test them all.”